In the japanese horror film 'Cure' the sound does horrify audience. However, they are not back ground musics nor specially made sound effects. In this film, back ground music and specially made sound effects are supporters and their usage are rare. The leading sounds which horrify, precisely, force people to feel chill in their spine are ordinary noises such as washer's noise, noise from large machinery and rustling of leaves. They are amplified so that audience can hear it better then normal noises. They serve the significant roll for the film's story and indicates that the will to murder a hateful person is spreading through the Mamiya's hypnosis. Also, they are serving the roll to express how much the detective Takabe's corruption is proceeding. So audience cannot help but to feel anxiety by the noise and to worry what they will see next.
Cure, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a high suspense, metamorphic, and disturbingly horrific film that centers on the gruesome murders in Tokyo. Not only the mysterious incidents and characters create the feeling of “strangeness” to the story, but also the small, intended details and atmospheric spaces create audience to feel psychologically disturbed. For an example, the light and sound shape the menace of the film. In the scene where Mamiya appears on the beach in the beginning, the movement of the clouds and the darkness completely dominates the character. From that moment, the audience feels captured by the “strangeness” time movement. Also, the changing scene where Mamiya’s cell is transformed into the landscape, the effect on lighting marks the separation between the two spaces. In the scene where the water is dripped from the top of the wall, its sound and blinking light effects arouse the strange consciousness. As the black stain drips from the top, the screen becomes slowly darker. Therefore, the audience is able to see how Takabe gets completely hypnotized by the sight of the black stain. These small dramatic detail movements act as tools for audience to feel psychologically disturbed.
I think the director of this film 'Cure' is genius. Through this film, he inderictly showed what he think about our society. There were many scenes that I was unable to understand ,but I still remember many of the people in the movie were suffering from the question 'Who are you?'. It is really simple question but many people answered their job to the question. At this point, I thought how am I gonna answer to this question but I felt the same way. Answering my social status, Student, was answer for that. To be honest, I think it is wrong answer. People in movie answered they are detective, teacher with one wife, and police officer. I believe the director of this film want to ask audience since when, why, and how our social status in society became true us. In 1990s was era that Japan was having trouble with their economic circumstance. So I think the producer wants to let audience to realzie true themselves not their life in modern soiety.
Seung Tae Kim here The most interesting thing about Cure is the directing and the cinematography. I cant help but see some sort of resemblance of this film's directing style to that of Stanley Kubrick, with the use of long takes, long shots, tracking shots, and a mixture of still/far distance shots. Most of the shots and takes in this film are silent, have minimal use of dialogue, and rely on atmosphere and visuals. Not only is it is very atmospheric, brutal, and gritty, it has a very Neo-Noir feel to it. It also makes you feel like you're really part of the action, almost as if you are in the room with them when something is going down. A good example are the scenes in Takabe's apartment. Almost every scene in Takabe's apartment is just a still shot, with the camera deployed in one room while you see the character's actions from a distance, along with diegetic sound effects.
Throughout Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film, ‘”The Cure”, the director portrays a gradual emtoional and personanlity change of his main character, Kenichi Takabe and Mamiya’s victims to portray an idea that the only way a human being is fully cured is if they fufill there most dark and inner temtations. To further convey this idea, Kurusawa uses various camera angles/focus, eerie sounds and focus on certain details. Most of Mamiya's victims in the film show a common theme in which his vitim’s weakness and temptations lead them to there incited murders. For example the doctor’s desire to “cut in a man flesh” and the cop’s dislike towards his fellow partner become greatly intesified through Mamiya’s hypnosis which ultimately leads to there gruesome and unintended murders. All these gruesome murders are somewhat of a “cure” to these victim’s temptations because Mamiya allows them to carry on there dark desires through murder. However, this is where Takabe differs because instead of taking mere 10-15 minutes for Mamiya other vitims to commit murder based on there temptations, it takes nearly the whole film for Takabe. This ultimately leads him to commit a sin worse then murder but instead to take the place of Mamiya. It is transparent to me throughout the film that Mamiya “cures” his victims but letting them fufill there most dark inner temeptations through his hypnosis. That is why he repeaditely says, “who are you”, to his victims in an effort to find his victim’s dark secrets. The most clear example of how Takaebe is cured is through the beginning and ending scene. There is a scene near the introduction and end of the film that shows Takeba eating and smoking in a café. During the beginning scene, the audience sees that Takaebe has a difficult time eating his food and taking nervous and short puffs of his cigarette. This is when Takebe is constantly worried about his mentally unstable wife and his constant stress from his daily work. Through this small scene, Kurusawa’s focus on these small details on Takebe’s puffing and eating allows the audience to sense Takebe’s uneasiness and enormous amount of stress. However, as the film closes and Takebe’s wife is deceased and he is finally released from his daily stress, Kurusawa shows the audience a different more relaxed Takebe taking long collected drags and finishing two full plates of food. When the audience compares these two similar scenes that have only Takabe’s attitude as an exception, the audience can clearly see that Takebe is cured or freed from his everyday stress. It is truly tragic when the audience sees these two scenes because this means that the director’s overall message is that human beings will never be fully cured without fuflling there dark temptations. A dark and sadistic idea but also a very truthful idea.
Throughout the movie, Cure, Kurosawa uses extra diegetic sounds to place additional tension into scenes, and to help show what the characters are hearing and focusing in on. What is meant by the term extra diegetic is that sounds that are produced in the environment of the scene but are overly emphasized as to stand out. For example of what is meant by extra diegetic recall the scenes when the detective, Takabe, returns home. Every time he is greeted by the loud sound of the washing machine running. While this grating sound might actually be that loud, it is more likely being used as a method to help show the weight and stress that is being placed on him by his wife’s psychological condition. This is compounded by the fact that in the one scene where he comes home to a raw steak on his plate, he turns off the washing machine only for his wife to come back and restart it. This is not the only example of diegetic sounds used in this movie; lots of thick white noise occurs during the scenes of high tension but are always coupled with an actually source. During the scene with Mamiya and Takabe in the psychiatric ward, when Takabe lights the lighter and sets it on the table the sound of rain and water builds up bringing tension to the scene. This sound overwhelms all the other sounds but it is actually raining making it an extra diegetic sound. Another choice in the movie that intriguing is the scenes involving the psychiatric hospital that Takabe sends his wife. A couple of the initial scenes are the ones with the woman and the bluebeard book interspersed between scenes of the murders and the detectives. It seems to have no relation to the actual overall story and is about a woman who seems to have extra sensory powers of some sort. This is never really mentioned in the movie, and the only other time it is somewhat shown is when Takabe commits his wife there. When on the bus towards the hospital, it seems to be floating in the clouds. The lighting and the images outside the window is bright and has a lot of wispy fog that seems to speed by faster than it should. What are we supposed to make of these scenes? The bus scene in particular makes it seem like they are going to some heavenly place; which is contrasted heavily by the previous scene where his wife’s condition is brought to the forefront and Takabe grabs a knife ominously.
The Japanese thriller film, The Cure, intensifies the horror to the audience through the colors of film and background music. The Cure is favouring dark, murky, grubby locations, transparent plastic sheeting, long-distance sequences and muted, washed-out colours. There is no huge dramatic background music featured in this film; instead, audience hears very little music (one strangely effective, out-of-place and somewhat chirpy instrumental at the beginning of the film) but lots of ambient atmospherics - vague rumblings and dead air, quickly contrasted with intercuts of loud machinery or clanking metal. The soundtrack's minimalism really helps to build up an organic and very realistic feel to the movie. Mamiya keeps asking "Who are you?" to all people in this film. Mamiya's character is so totally paradoxical that the film leaves audience with many, many questions that Kurosawa wants his audience to answer for themselves, which is the sign of a really classy and intelligent filmmaker.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film, The Cure, was one of the most unpredictable movies that I have ever seen. Kurosawa tried to show dramatic emotional changes and personalities of main character, Takabe. As a detective, and as a husband of a woman who has severe psychologic problem, Takabe had to go through too much hardness throughout the movie. For the effective convincing, Kurusawa pictures in various angles, and numerous sound details. I still do not understand the climax of this movie when hypnosis psycho dies at the old and huge building, but I can sense that the curse of Mamiya finally ends by that. Also for the very end, Takabe at the restaurant was something that says toward us about his gradual change. Unlike his first scene at that restaurant when he did not eat much, and looked like very week, the ending showed how much he becomes energetic and positive person. This dramatic change ends this movie by telling us he is cured who had go though deep darkness even murdered few people. Overall, the movie was very dark and tragic even by just watching was hard, but it was very interesting because it actually portrays human being's actual life.
The movie “Cure” shows chaotic life of losing ego in modern society. Mamiya, the person who hypnotized many to kill people, is one who lives without knowing who he is, where he is from, who he talked to just ten minutes ago. On the other hand, the detective Takabe is one who lives as he was taught before. These two characters show order and chaos on our modern society. In this film, there are many scenes with doors in side doors. Every time when anyone wants to talk to Mamiya, one has to walk through many doors. This implicates that to know the inner side; one must go through many doors to the deepest mind. Even though Mamiya himself doesn’t know who he is, he asks everyone who he meets this question. “Who are you?” Until almost at the end of the film, his action of keep asking this question was thought to be caused by his amnesia. However, when he talks to the police headquarter chief; he gives true meaning to the question. He is not asking for names or occupation as all others who asked Mamiya the same question. In fact, Mamiya is asking who they really are.
In this film as any other Japanese horror movies, usage of non-diegetic sounds is abundant. These non-diegetic sounds are usually high pitch in this film and it was used to intensify fear of audience. Also, two particular scenes were shown to tell the difference of detective Takabe from before and after the “cure”. In the first restaurant scene where he eats by himself, his plate is full when the waitress takes the plates away. Also, he looks ridiculously tired and he wears old coat that he wears every day. However, in the second restaurant scene, he is wearing a nice suit, finished his plate completely. Also, he is relaxed to have a smoke and drink coffee after dinner. From this, audience can notice that he has been “cured”.
The Cure is a movie that has a psychological scare in comparison to the visual horror that we saw in Ringu. By using the camera and manipulating the diegetic sound, the audience is given certain clues as to the actual plot twist.
While the detectives investigates the first murder case, the camera is placed in the restroom looking into the murder scene so that the sides of the door obstruct the view of the audience. It makes it seem like we are interfering with the scene and are the outcasts. It can also be seen as the murderer overlooking their work as an outside person. These kind of shots are used throughout the mo is because many scenes do not utilize many close up shots and are filmed in a way that makes the audience seem like a third person looking into whatever is unfolding on the screen, allowing us to see that the murderer is in fact using hypnosis.
Some sounds within the movie is also emphasized because they are louder than normal. For example, the tray that moves past the window in the hospital, the wind blowing, the water coming from the faucet, and even the lighter all seem very loud in comparison to the actual sound in real life. It seems to be the director's way of telling us to pay special attention to those sounds because they are signs of hypnosis.
Composed of a complex and distorted plot line, Cure delivers a frightening take on the Asian horror genre. From the introduction of a female patient responding to a doctor at a brightly lit setting, the audience does not immediately envision a typical horror film. Instead, the viewers are soon warped in a detective’s perspective on a series of brutal murders. The gory and visceral aspects are noticeable by a violent crime scene, where the film’s atmosphere complements this with the decaying and dark setting of an urban city. The twist of this genre is not abide by any vengeful spirits nor a cursed material but rather a foray into the psychology of an individual. The culprit behind these killings is revealed to the audience rather quickly, yet since the audience is following the primary character, the detective, confusion is still in the air. As the plot progresses, the puzzle is slowly being solved, but until the climax, all guesses as to how the film concludes is not applicable. The bizarre plot demonstrates director Kurosawa’s unique blend into the horror genre, especially his technological details that are not common in this genre. A primary example is the long singular shots that Kurosawa utilizes. One considerable scene that demonstrates this is on a beach, where an individual encounters a lone stranger on the beach, while this stranger is constantly asking similar questions, implying he has acquired some form of amnesia. This scene demonstrates the importance behind this unusual character and his acts, further showing the traits this character contains that is both shocking and horrifying. Where the characters are focal points in explaining the plot, Kurosawa also applies an array of crucial cinematic pieces to create a chilling product. The first glimpse into the evil influence of the character, Mamiya, is a dank and desolate room where a prostitute is shockingly murdered in a brutal fashion. Yet, Mamiya is not the individual who commits the acts, but rather an individual he manipulated to perform the horrendous killing. The interesting subject Kurosawa introduces among the antagonist is the topic of psychology, where human personalities and disorders are a common theme in this film. Another interesting note is the feature of hypnotism, a crucial instrument that exemplifies as a weapon. These features add to the scare factor of Cure, but the one notable detail is the setting. Consistently dark and moody, from the old hospital to even the quaint location of the detective’s apartment, the background of Cure is a constant reminder of how contorted the plot is. These aspects of the film all contribute to the psychological thrill of Cure, providing a different take on the horror genre.
Mamiya seems like an inducer who has hypnotic ability. He doesn’t remember words which has talked in last minutes. He asks questions such as “who are you? Where am I? Where is that? Who am I? which uses to hypnotize people in releasing situations (no harm and attack) just verbal hints of environment implied, such as who am I repeat over and over again. He also uses implied ways to hypnotize differently (indoor light, smoke of cigarette, drops of water and patterns). In the movie, there are seldom scenes for horror attack. The performance like falling down from the roof twice without emotion. It just shows the fact and creates frightening atmosphere with the audience imaginations. Cure builds up a bizarre space. Thriller atmosphere increase strongly at the end of movie such as house ruins, which end the story but leaves an endless possibility. Takabe and his friend went the ruins twice. However, it is difficult to distinguish between real experience or false illustration. The scenes like ruined glass, old rooms, the man’s photo who spread Mesmer theory to Japan. That contacts with an old video, seems like a evil power to show conflict between facts and hidden personalities in order to release people by hypnotizing. Once people fall into hypnotic status, they will finish uninhibited ideas, and it is difficult to restrain outbreaks of their behaviors.
Cure, a 1997 Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is easily one of the most uniquely terrifying movies ever created. Kurosawa uses unconventional methods to establishing an eerie mood throughout the entirety of the film. Most horror films tend to use dramatic crescendos with non-diegetic sound to create fright and suspense. However, Kurosawa uses rapid scene changes and amplified diegetic sounds to set the ominous mood that persists throughout the entirety of the film. The first striking, unexpected scene to me was the scene involving a pipe being violently wrenched off a wall. A flickering wall light is shown, that same pipe is unexpectedly brandished as a murder weapon, and streams of bloody water emerge from a shower—all are shown within a matter of seconds. Rapid and disjointed scene changes, starting from the beginning of the movie, create an unsettled and confusing atmosphere for the viewer. The scene will depict an empty beach, then a man sitting silently by himself, and then switch to a different setting at a dry cleaners a few minutes later. Character development is slow and unsteady, raising constant questions about the seemingly senseless violence. The tension continues throughout the film, with no relief. The amplification of normal, everyday sounds also serves to maintain tension. Violence and trauma has no announcement by music in the film, creating a perpetual sense of terror, as I anxiously anticipated the next horrific murder. Music is rare and played as soft undertones. Instead, brief moments of silence punctuated by rhythmic dripping, air conditioning unit-like thuds, or footsteps intensify the eerie mood of the film. Often, I found myself yearning to detect the source of the diegetic sound on the screen. Sounds with no explanation or detectable source are often produced, echoing the senseless nature of the violence playing out in the film. Horrible, traumatic deaths are carried out with little emotion, explanation, or fanfare. The lack of music during the murders helps shape this movie as truly terrifying, since music generally serves to highlight emotional peaks in a film. Nothing is more unsettling than violence with no remorse; that is a demonstration of evil.
Kurosawa’s film “Cure” is a masterpiece at making the audience feel uncomfortable. The movie is eerie the entire way through, this is not only due to subject matter, but is also caused by the unusual way in which the film is shot. The film consists of mostly long, uninterrupted takes, which are usually shot somewhat far away from the actors. This gives the film an odd hollow feeling because the awkward distances make it more difficult to read the characters’ emotions. Along with these long shots and takes, the scenes are occasionally also shot to feel as if the audience is watching through a third party observer. In scenes that are in small rooms or relatively up close, the camera moves to catch the action the way a person who was present in the scene would. This jarring jump from long shot to being a part of the scene adds to the eerie and uncomfortable feeling that the movie exudes. Another thing about “Cure” that was rather eerie is the lack of explanation and closure, especially in regards to Moriyama. The audience is never given much of a back-story for him, or really any facts at all. I think this was intentional in order to keep him as a blank slate or “empty” as Moriyama called himself. The fact that Moriyama is never given a tragic history or valiant reason for his killings makes it all the creepier. Who is he? Was he even a real person or just a figure representing the human urge to do as we please despite social rules. Was he hypnotizing people for any reason at all or was he just a sociopath on a rampage? Was he Takabe’s “Tyler Durden,” a figure able to do the things Takabe could not himself? It’s all up in the air, as the film never gives a concrete answer, which I think makes the film all the more interesting.
Cure's camerawork and use of non-diegetic sounds emphasizes the main thrills in the movie. Although the film was quite slow at first, and at times frustrating with Mamiya's amnesia scenes, the use of the different shots and sounds made the film more interesting as it progressed. For instance, when Mamiya enacts his hypnosis, the camera focusing on the flame to the victim's face has quite an effect on the power of hypnosis in the movie. The very rapid shots of certain moments, such as when Takabe's wife's corpse was shown at the end, also were used to great effect.
The use of non-diegetic sound throughout the movie emphasized the mood and shock of the scenes in the film. For example, when Takabe is shown to have learned the power of hypnosis eerie music plays as the waitress proceeds to wield a knife to presumably kill someone. Also, when Takabe investigates the different murders and Mamiya's house, the score and sounds quite make the scenes as creepy as they should be.
To me, the things that made Cure truly thrilling/shocking was the effective use of rapid camera shots and the eerie sounds that echoed through the film.
The film reveals humans’ natural anxiety and darkness inside. The detective, Tanabe, tries to avoid what Mamiya was really asking, but Tanabe eventually admitted his burden and follow Mamiya’s footsteps in the end of the film. Mamiya’s simple question asking “Who are you” confuses the people in the movie and leads them to murder unconsciously. The victims were just an ordinary people who are likely to exist in real life. I think the movie let us agonize what we really are without the job or the social status. The point in the film is that everyone has potential violent and murderous intent. The true meaning of “Cure” is to cleanse people’s anxiety and worry through murder. The film digs into our deepest fear which cannot be done by just startling with a ghost. The actors’ psychological descriptions were perfect enough for me to be immersed in each scene. Especially, the scene of Tanabe crying in front of his dead imaginary wife emphasizes that Tanabe unconsciously considers his wife as a burden and wishes her to die. Although the film made me feel depressed and uncomfortable all day long, i think it is a well-made horror film.
The'Cure' is the most confusing movie, moreover, it deals with psychological issue and murders. The beginning was little odd because shots were cut and edited for short time and while the murder happens, it has the vivid and joyful music in the background. After the movie introduces the main protagonist, Mayami, the film starts get slower. Until a middle of movie, I thought that Mayami directly killed them and synopsis-es people to say that they killed them because all of victims had cross on their chest, engraved. While movie goes more complex, instead of being into a story, it makes us to think and be more confused. Additionally, it was little off from the prediction that i had, for example, the detective does not get synopsis-ed. However, the final scene is THE MOST confusing part of entire film. I had to google what actually happened at the end. It says that Takabe goes on Mayami's work. So basically Takabe killed his wife too?????? That fact frightens me so badly. "cure" contains lots of blood dead, murder scene, but rather than feel scary, it is horrific, awful, and obnoxious. However, it is good movie to make audience to think because it is more than a just murder involved story.
The film “Cure” directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa had a complex plot surrounding the idea of mesmerism and hypnosis. The story was based on Kenichi Takabe, a detective that investigated a bunch of murder cases that had similar characteristics. In all the murder cases, all the victims had a X-shaped slash that extended from the neck to the chest. This X shape is constantly used during the movie and is crucial to the ideas of hypnosis. As Takabe digs more into the information about Mamiya, he soon learns that the X shape is drawn repeatedly in the process of hypnotizing a woman who later ends up killing her own son. When the X shape appears in different scenes in the movie, death seems to be a reoccurring theme. As Takabe witnesses the X shape in Sakuma’s room, he realizes that Sakuma has become a victim of hypnosis. Soon after Takabe is informed that Sakuma kills himself. Every where the X symbol appears death shortly follows after.
Keeping one’s sanity is one of the main themes of this movie. All the hypnotized victims seemed to have no morals and idea of murder seems natural to them. This goes to show that the hypnosis that Mamiya does to his victims corrupts their way of thinking and convinces them to kill. Takabe’s partner, Sakuma gives in to Mamiya’s hypnosis and starts loosing his sanity. Mamiya represents the main source of everyone’s madness. He is similar to a disease of insanity that slowly spreads to its victims making them loosing their morals and sanity.
Throughout the movie “The Cure,” one of the main characters, Mamiya keep asks people a simple question, “Who are you?” People answers by saying their names, social status, or talking about their family. Those people who answers the question and gets hypnotized by Mamiya murders someone. I thought this showed how not only psychopath or insane person, but also normal and ordinary people could commit murders in ordinary lives. In murdering scenes in the movie, it ironically happens so calmly and peacefully. There was no music played in the background, which may bring some tensions to the audience. Also, there were no camera moves. The camera just observes the murderer so calmly when he or she is committing a crime. I thought this represents how the murderers are still thinking rationally even though they do not know what they are doing. They are not insane or crazy, but they are just hypnotized that even though they do not realize that they are murdering, it is still their desire to harm other people from deep inside of their mind. This is also shown when the camera catches the murders’ face after he or she kills someone. Their faces show no emotions that they look so normal and calm. I thought the director wanted to show the audience how people all have anger and evil desires deep inside of their heart. I thought it was so interesting that there was not much of music played in the background of the movie. In most of the thriller movies I watched, I thought music plays a significant role in making audiences to be tensioned. However, without much music in the background, it made the movie seem more realistic as if it is happening in our real lives, like documentaries that it made me to get more tension and get horrified while watching it. I thought these effects of the movie, such as camera movements, background music, or tone-downed colors of the movie all made the movie to seem very dark and creepy even though the movie ironically had very calm and peaceful atmosphere.
Curing in “cure” I think Mamiya meant to hypnotize people to cure them. I can be found through various hints in the movie. Mesmer who Mamiya was studying about was a doctor who thought hypnosis can cure every sickness, which means Mesmerism is based on curing people. “Who are you?” Mamiya was not asking for name or job but who you really you are. In the movie Mamiya said what was inside him came out and inside is hollow, when he hypnosis people he speaks like he became the one who is getting hypnotized and whispers to remember inner conflict. As a result just like Mamiya, what was hidden inside them came out and they acted out as it is natural thing to do saying they just killed a person out of hate. The quote Takabe said “We should all relax, enjoy ourselves, and lead peaceful lives. But society isn’t like that!” is telling us there is conflict hidden even something seems so peaceful, and what Mamiya did was only making people to act out their hidden desire. As the result of killing there problem is gone and cured. The movie show it is definitely is a cure by showing two scenes of Takabe in a restaurant. In the first scene he was wearing dirty coat and did not even finish his food. He seemed full of worries and tiredness. The second scene was after his wife’s death; he was wearing a fancy suit and finished his food and also asking for a cup of coffee. He seemed much brighter and happier than the prior scene. Takabe said to Mamiya “Lunatics like you have it easy while citizens like me go through hell!” Ironically the last scene of the movie when Takabe asked waitress to get him a cup of coffee she when to grab a knife, showing Takabe became Mamiya, not going through hell anymore.
What caught my eye along with the long duration of the shots in “Cure” was the exceptional composition. For example, unlike many shots of crime scenes in other movies, Kurosawa did not show the whole room in its gruesomeness however always partly covers the room with objects. Due to the arrangement of the frame, for a long time we are forced to focus on the dead women’s body. The camera is neatly placed so that the corpse and the detectives are placed in the center of the picture and therefore Kurosawa is obeying the rule of thirds. Furthermore in one of the rare scenes not playing in a closed room but on the beach, the long shot is also divided into three horizontal lines, centering Mamiya and his victim. I think this is one of the main reasons for Kurosawas special and outstandingly static composition. We automatically focus on the people and their actions. To a great extent they are the only objects moving in the picture.
I assume another reason for the uncommon composition is the strong effect it has on the atmosphere throughout the whole movie. Often a scene or a shot appears to be taken from a distance. Nonetheless repeatedly there is a door, a wall or just some unknown blurry object in front of the picture, whereas the focused object always seems to be in the background. The dark and irritating silhouettes and shadows in the foreground cloud our vision of what is going on and what is going to happen in the near future. One would expect a long shot to give us more information about a persons surroundings and happenings. Yet Kurosawa managed to break this expectation and make it more difficult to predict what is going to happen to the characters in the movie. I think by taking the composition into consideration one can suddenly explain a great part of the unexplainable tension felt throughout the movie.
In the film “Cure," Mamiya constantly asks the question, “who are you?” to other characters. At first, they simply answer with their names and occupations; however, they understand the fundamental meaning of the question and engage in self reflection while gradually falling into hypnosis. It is evident in several scenes that Mamiya plays the role of one’s ego which stimulates characters to practice self examination. For instance, when Mamiya attempts to hypnotize Dr. Miyajima, he explicitly says that she can better see herself through him because he is inside-out; his interior world is completely empty. Also, the characters are usually alone with Mamiya when they engage in introspection. People tend to practice self examination when they are alone in an uninterrupted space. (For instance, people are reluctant to talk to themselves when they are with others). Instead of considering Mamiya as another person, the characters merely regard Mamiya as their ego that constantly seeks answers to self reflective questions. And through introspection, the characters are able to recollect repressed memories from their unconsciousness. But, most of these unconscious thoughts and memories are distressing which lead the characters to committing murder. For example when Dr. Miyajima is hypnotized, she remembers her repressed memory of being sexually discriminated during her college years; afterwards, she mercilessly murders a man in the restroom. Another instance is Oida, the policeman, who confesses to the detective that he killed his co-worker because he unconsciously loathed him ever since he joined the police box. As a result, these murderers suffer from guilty conscious; Hanoka, the school teacher attempts to commit suicide for killing his wife. In contrast to these murderers, Takabe, the detective, finds serenity after he murders his wife. It is evident that his sick wife is the essence of his pain and distress; he constantly worries about her and sees hallucination of his dead wife. However, after he kills his wife, he is finally liberated from his agony; he regains his appetite after her death. I believe Director Kurosawa’s intention of ending the movie with such disturbing conclusion is to question the fundamental idea of “curing” unconscious concern and anxiety. The idea of analyzing conscious and unconscious mind to better understand and “cure” one’s thoughts and behaviors through therapies was more prevalent in western culture than any other part of the world. When the idea of treating mind was adopted in East Asian culture as well, the power of introspection was more widely acknowledged. However, in this film, not all characters are “cured” through self-examination. Although Takabe feels liberated from understanding his unconscious anger and distress, other characters, including Oida and Hanoka, suffer greatly from recollecting their repressed memories. Perhaps, the director’s intention was to imply a message that the idea of “curing” one’s psychological distress is questionable.
Cure, a horror film that was directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa was not so much about other typical horror films that contends surprise gross looking ghosts or phantoms. However, throughout the movie, it was interesting to figure out what the psychological problem was which is hypnotic suggestions. It was easier to catch as the camera work was focusing on the lighter's that Mamiya had and water after Mamiya was hypnotizing people to behave in the ways that they would not do normally. Also as Takabe works hard to find out what was going on and what was the reason, the movie was focusing on the flame of the lighter. In addition, as the movie concentrates on psychological materials, it was interesting to see how Sakuma was investigating Mamiya and fails to maintain his psychiatric position and finally commits a suicide. However, more interesting facts about the movie was that at the end, the detective Takabe becomes the new killer in order to spread the hypnotic ceremony and how the movie was directed to grab the audiences' attention and psychologically disturb the audience.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film the 'Cure' plays out as a psychological thriller, while still being considered under the horror film genre. Although this film at most times was very confusing, looking at the overall bigger picture and atmosphere, it showed greater representation of a different side of the genre horror. An example of this was the long camera angles between the lens and the focused subjects show the non-intimacy of the film. All shots were usually executed in a way so 'depth of field' was shown. The various distances and shots Kurosawa displayed also were in co-ordinance with the different characters within this film. The characters within this film and in the shot were portrayed as incompatible with each other. For instance, the detective Takabe, has a very distant relationship with his wife, and at most times resents her being present. Overall Takabe does not have intimate relationships with any of the people in his life. He even says so himself, being a detective, the first thing they teach is to shut off emotions and feelings from everyone.
Mamiya symbolizes the evil within human kind and proves that each individual possess the potential threat to one another. Through this case, Takabe discovers not only the secret to Mamiya's way of thinking, but also the his own true self. The way Mamiya takes advantage of each of his victims, shows to each individuals true meaning of what they really feel. Whether it be bad relations with others around them, to even small usual quarrels with others in their work environment, Mamiya puts each victim under a hypnosis so they non-intentionally kill the opposite person. The inner meaning with each individual goes to a deeper conflict, past the smaller quarrels with people on the outside. He actually gets into the mind of the person, and sees their life problems, worries, and issues, and uses this against them. In some religion, Mamiya would be considered the devil, in non-religious terminology, it would be known as a conscious. Differing from right and wrong, the human mind naturally has a 'good/bad' option when put with a situation.
Overall, Kurosawa has shown a different part of the movie genre horror with getting into a more psychological mental state. The bigger picture of the film comes together at the end, and gives confused viewers an open ended ending in which shows the continuation of the thriller.
One of the more noticeable differences of this horror movie compared to others is that the killer/horrifying-beast is not a supernatural one. The killers in this film are regular, sane people just like ourselves: a cop, a teacher, a surgeon. I believe this is one of the sole reasons why this film is particularly disturbing. In the beginning of the film, Takabe's wife is reading a book titled "Bluebeard" which is about a seemingly innocent human daughter who kills a male god whom she was supposed to marry. This story ties into the overarching theme of this film in that there's a darker more sinister side to all of us whether we are conscious of it or not.
I also noticed that this film had a lot of really long one take shots often shrinking the characters to very small areas on the screen. There is a long shot of the beach when we first meet Mamiya and his first victim, when Takuma and his wife are discussing a vacation trip at the dinner table, and when Sakabe and Takuma are discussing the murders and life in general on the rooftop of a building, just to name a few. The wider long shots seemed to distance us from the characters and make the film more mysterious and creepy with all the empty space on the screen. This sharply contrasts the quick bursts of short flashbacks that Takuma has of the monkey trapped in the cage as well as the few close-up shots the film has. These shots may have possibly been used to highlight points of realization for the characters.
The 1997 Japanese thriller film, “Cure”, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an interesting piece of work that would easily leave an audience lingering upon questions they must ask themselves in the end. One in particular that peaks my interest was the reoccurring question asked my Mamiya , “ Who are you?” A very basic question but it really dwells upon a person. Usually people would answer their social/job status for example in this film Tamaka will say he’s a detective, or the nurse’s a nurse. But when did it begin when we start describing ourselves just through our social status? Through this film, I think Kurosawa wanted touch upon our psychological and emotional state as they’re being our true self because what we define us is not our title but burdens and obstacles we’ve overcome.
What I find interesting about Cure is the way the director brings chills to the audience. Mamiya, the mastermind of the many murders in the movie, deviates from the conventional “evil” image most ghosts or murderers have in horror movies. Mamiya appears to be homeless, constantly needing the help of others, but does not use explicit words related to murder. The gruesome murders were in fact committed because of innate human intent. It is not clear whether Mamiya carefully selects his targets, but they all have one thing in common – a feeling of repression in their daily lives. Mamiya merely incites those emotional frustrations by asking them the same few questions over and over again, then proceeds to ask them to tell him about themselves. They eventually become so frustrated such that murder would seem like “a natural thing to do”. The use of animals in the movie seems to suggest a few things. The monkey in the cage badly wants to escape, just like the female doctor from prejudice, the cop from his partner’s upright personality, and Takabe from the burden of his wife. Yet, the monkey that is not caged up is twisted. Lastly, although Sakuma states that “hypnotism cannot change a person’s moral sense”, the development of the plot says otherwise. The murders were all calm when they were killing their victims, not realizing anything, as if all their morals were put aside. Takabe, whom Mamiya seems to be struggling to hypnotise, does not immediately show his “evil side”, and the audience knows that he is different from the others. Mamiya, during his last scene tells Takabe “everyone who wants to know his true self is bound to come back”, suggesting that Takabe is different from the others because his “true self” actually has stronger murderous intent compared to the rest. Takabe eventually continues Mamiya’s killings, ending the film on a chilling note.
Another memorable thing for me is how the director puts things across in pairs. One example is the bus, where Takabe and his wife were on the way to the hospital for Takabe to seek mental help for his wife. The bus appears to be floating from the looks of the clouds behind. From that scene, one might think that it was portrayed this way because of the wife’s descent into insanity. However, the second such scene which contains only Takabe, the scene seems to be hinting that Takabe himself’s sanity might have been affected. Another such example is when Takabe is unable to eat, and the waitress clears away his plate untouched. It seems Takabe is not himself. The second such scene we see Takabe finishing his food, ordering a coffee, and smoking. He seems to have found his “true self” which Mamiya said in an earlier scene that Takabe did not have. Hence, the director has an interesting way of portraying the development of the plot by having parallel scenes.
Before watching the movie, I wondered why a thriller movie's title had to be "Cure." It was about a man who wasn't able to live his life to the fullest because he had so many shackles on his feet, finally becoming a soul of freedom. Takabe was a detective who wanted to find the criminals, and yet tried to explain their behaviors and motives. When he was off duty, he was not unleashed from his burden because he had to take care of his wife who was mentally ill. As his life was full of things he had to take care of, the first scene of Takabe not eating the meal he ordered, lethargically communicating with people shows an extreme contrast to the last scene in which he finished his meal, cheerfully answering to the waitress and the phone call. He doesn't have anything to restrain himself from doing something, he now does whatever he feels like to do. When he was the detective he used to be, he found instigating a murder guilty, and at the end of the movie, he became the one to instigate the murder by hypnotizing the waitress. It is likely to deduce from this scene that Takabe became another Mamiya now. There was a continuous sign of Takabe becoming someone like Mamiya in the movie. For example, when Takabe came to see Mamiya where he was locked up, it looked like as if they have switched their positions. Even after that, Mamiya kept saying that Takabe understood him, that Takabe is like him. Although Takabe denied, he always found the gap in his life and his mind. In the bus, he sat at the end of the bus near the emergency exit. He heard a man murmuring to himself weirdly that he is crazy in the laundry room. He lost his temper in front of Mamiya although he was the one who used to be the calm and patient one. He knew something was wrong, and realized that after he met Mamiya. Was his anger toward Mamiya possibly a jealousy toward him? A feeling that Mamiya is letting out so peacefully and yet Takabe could not feel, was not supposed to feel? When it comes to the scenes, several sources incurred tension. The first thing was the amplified sound of a wave, drier, wind and so on. Sometimes, these big sounds popping out all of a sudden scared me. There also was a sudden shift in the scenes, dragging me into the scenes, and when the scene showed something strange or threatening, it made me gasp. The dim light and a monotonic color arrangement also helped me tense up because it was dark, and gloomy. It made a strong color feel like an ominous sign. The film also used water and fire to indicate that Mamiya is hypnotizing people, and I personally thought that these items functioned as signs of death like the image of drowning in water, and burning in the fire. But at the same time, both have a connection to the word, "cure." Phoenix is said to revive from the fire, and water is a mean of cleansing before we medicate wounds. Every time I saw these items, I felt like it had something to do with Mamiya and created anxiety. Finally, the movie revealed the suspect from the start. We knew who instigated the murder, and that helped me feel unsafe because I knew something is going to happen, and the happening being very quiet and calm brought awkwardness. Eventually, the movie was trying to tell us that a drive for killing is always around us, even in ourselves. After all, even if Mamiya was the one who instigated the murder, Sakuma, the psychiatrist said that making someone kill somebody by hypnosis is not likely. Then what was it that really made the teacher, police, and the doctor, who are indispensable in our society, who we believe, kill somebody? This word 'cure,' which doesn't make sense in humanitarian way, and yet actually freed someone from their agony, and this message saying 'a murder/death is never far away from you' was the creepiest part of the movie.
In retrospect to Kurosawa's Cure, I feel that the subject matter of hypnosis handled within the plot is the lasting after-effect of the movie itself. What I mean simply is that the movie hypnotizes its viewers with the rhythmic scene changes of murder, inspection, and hypnosis. Although the movie may seem wildly varying at times, I felt that there was a perpetual, almost rhythmic (not to mention the reoccurring sound-effects; washing machine, water drip, etc) give and take of the scenes, pulling my attention to and fro, making me all the more curious about a crystal clear relationship between Mamiya and Takabe. There were also an interplay of long shots and short shots, giving a musical measure and composition to the film. There's also an audio effect that is given not only through reoccurrence or rhythm; its the "creepyfication" of everyday normal sounds, such as the washing machine noise that is ambiant throughout the plot As I tried to dig further into this relationship, I began to realize that it. There's so much to speculate about in this movie, firstly the relationship he has with his troubled wife. The scenes are full of premonition cuts and the conversations with Mamiya in his cell asking "you saw your wife dead, didn't you?" We then slowly realize that Takabe himself is troubled and Mamiya takes pleasure in knowing it, although he doesnt show it. was not only a relationship, but a transference of all that is mystic about Mamiya to Takabe, and a just the exchange of words was an act of hypnosis for Mamiya getting into Takabe's mind, an act that he'll not able to pull off so easily; the movie then becomes a classic good guy versus bad guy action/thriller. In the conclusion, there's a huge flip of characters in that through those hypnotic exchanges between the two, Takabe destroys the evil that is Mamiya but the fascination of the study of hypnosis takes over Takabe and he then becomes the new Mamiya.
Cure is a complex and questionable movie that captures the audience into the film. The fact that Cure can be distinct from other horror/thriller films is that the murderers do not seem to have a certain reason to murdering; their roles come out to be teacher, police officer, and a doctor. Hypnotic exchange between characters stands as the ongoing theme of the overall movie.
The interplay of both visual and auditorial symbolism eventually aid in illustrating the "psychological" or hypnotic scenes. Water is shown throughout the entire film. It starts with the very first scene of the movie when the murderer of a woman takes a shower, then continues on with the beach where a elementary teacher finds Mamiya, to the point where Mamiya utilizes water as a hypnotic force. But why water? Water can show both destruction (natural disasters, Noah's Ark) and calmness (Mamiya emphasizes how water "will make you calm"). Another natural element used is fire. Whenever Mamiya tried to hypnotize a person, he would turn on the lighter and continually asked "Tell me about yourself". Fire, making the dark to bright - would drag out the internal self into the external, eventually bringing out the murderous side of a human being that had been hidden. Some auditorial aspects are broken background music, intense amplification of everyday sounds. Takabe's ill wife would constantly turn on the empty dryer, which its similar sound is heard on one of the last scenes where she is taken out from the hospital from a wheelchair.
The last few scenes seems to be the most important: a scene of Takabe's wife murdered similarly to other murders, a scene in the restaurant contrasting from the earlier restaurant scene, and an ending scene where the waitress suddenly carries a knife to kill someone. Just like the title, Takabe in the end seems to be "cured" or rather became hypnotized himself, ending up to a point where he is the new Mamiya.
The very first scene was a man who suddenly killed prostitute with a bar and drew X shape from her neck to chest with a knife. The irony thing that I thought was a sound during this scene happened. Usually the sound should be dark, intensive, and noisy but in this movie, it was bright, classic, and calm. Some weird unknown sounds came out several times through out this movie and I totally felt sound difference compare with other movies. People make a wall inside of their minds for several reasons. However, hypnosis crashed down the wall and brought up a reliance on murder that embedded. This horrifying story told that anyone could be a murderer if a little allusion has been given. Cure has many long-take shots rather than editing and the sound effect was mostly droning sound representing spinning empty washer rather than artificial. The flow of the movie was slow and I was very frustrated especially when Mamiya’s questions while hypnotize other people.
In the movie ‘Cure’ there were two different scenes where Takabe was eating in a restaurant. It was taken in the point of view but in one scene Takabe was having difficulty eating with trembling hand and the other scene where he was perfectly fine eating in the restaurant. This showed that Takabe is now perfectly a new man and he now became a new Mamiya after struggling with his inner mind.
Also, it was quite frightening that people always have their deepest desires and willing to kill others with just a little bit of a guidance. All the people who had a little conversation with Mamiya kill others with just a little input. Common reason for people who are hypnotized by Mamiya is that they do not know why they have committed murder. They simply committed murder just simply because they had bad feelings about others. This showed difference between inside and outside of people.
The movie “Cure” was the first movie that I could not even assumed what was the movie about; even though, I was concentrating on the screen during the whole movie hours. I was able to know the general summary of this movie after I skimmed through the Wikipedia. Whole movie is focused on detective Takabe’s changes in both behavior and emotion as the movie goes to the end. Kurosawa, director of this movie, described Takabe as strong person who endures hardships; however, Takabe’s mind was collapsing because of his wife who has psychologic problems. In fact, Takabe wants to lean on others and share his hardness, but he could not because he is detective who must not show weakness to others. The turning point of the movie is when Takabe had conversation with Mamiya, the serial killer using hypnosis, at the solitary confinement. Takabe became very sensitive after Mamiya revealed his inner pain. However, as he investigates who Mamiya is, he found that he and Mamiya have something in common. So, he killed Mamiya and decided to live like Mamiya. As a result Takabe could live more happily than before. I could find the significant change his mind at the restaurant scene. At first time, he didn’t eat much and had grimace face; however, later he finished his food and smiled. Director, Kurosawa not only shows gradual changes of Takabe, but also shows human’s inner evilness in this movie. Whenever Mamiya hypnotize others, he kept ask about themselves, and in this process I thought that Mamiya drag out their inner evilness and amplifies that thoughts which eventually made them to kill someone. It would be really ridiculous to think in this way but I thought that Mamiya’s behavior is somewhat similar to snake which temped Eve to eat apple of tree of knowledge, and people’s evilness means Original sin. So, Kurosawa might want to say that since all human being has Original sin, they are born to be easily tempted.
The film "Cure" seems like thriller movie, because there are criminal and detector. However it has different structure with those different other thriller movies. For instance, most of thriller movies usually tries to find out who is criminal, by contrast Cure let audience to know criminal and tries to find out why criminal kills people. This is kind of same structure that used by ghost movie. Like, audience know the existence of ghost, but they do not know the reason why ghost harms people. Therefore, the movie Cure is more similar to horror movie instead of thriller movie. There are two important natural elements in the movie which are water and fire. Both of these elements use to hypnosis innocence people. Water has two meanings that destruction and creation In the movie, Kiyoshi Kurosawa shows water several place in the movie. When the first murder happens, the murder takes a shower and it is able to illustrates creation and to related with cure. Also, fire is the one way that hypnosis people. Mamiya pulls out his lighter and asks victim to look at it. Fire usually lights on an uncertain things in darkness in real life, and in the movie, fire is the tool that make you see your inner instinct. There are common point between people who gets hypnosis by Mamiya. Those people has a respected job such as police, teacher and doctor. Kiyoshi Kurosawa tires to show us that murder is able to happen anyone and anywhere closely. Kiyoshi Kurosawa express anxiety to audience by many different ways in the movie. The last scene that when Mamiya keep hitting the radiator, the scene was shaking strongly as if there was earthquake. However, the man who guard the hospital does not have any motion, by contrast the nurse has reaction to surprise about this vibration. It simply shows that it is not earthquake but represents expression of individual anxiety. Finally, at the last scene in the restaurant, one equation is completed that Mimiya equal to Takabe. In the movie, Mimiya keep saying that Takabe is same as me and Takabe denies this truth by beating Mamiya. However, at the restaurant, when waitress grabs the knife, audience realizes that Takabe hypnosis her. At the middle of the movie, Takabe went to same restaurant and he did not eat food at all and seems like tired of this world. And now, it is able to feel Mamiya's shadow from Takabe's changed action that he eats all his food and smoke tobacco with his free time. From this changing, Takabe seems like actually get cured.
Even after I watched the ending of the movie, I was having a trouble with figuring out the story with a huge confusion. Even though the genre of the movie is thriller, it gave me more mysterious feeling rather than being scared. While I was watching the movie, I kept trying to assume what the hidden truth would be and what idea the director would like to convey. The movie used hypnosis as a narrator, and various kinds of sounds were represented. The detective who shows suffering husband mainly leads and solves the problem, and his radical empathy makes a connection easily with Mamiya who practices hypnotism. By using fire and water, Mamiya reveals people’s angers from the deepest mind, and encourages them to kill someone who gives stress the most. I was shocked to know two sides of people and even the desire to murder somebody. Dark and under-saturated color in the movie shows low contrast and makes the mood ambivalent and mysterious. Also, the director used intense implication of sounds with lighter, water, and dryer. Use of long and static shots with all the empty spaces on the screen highlights creepy and dark mood as well although the movie actually has a very peaceful and calm atmosphere mostly.
Besides the content of the movie, “Cure” has shown me two core aspects to consider : water and fire. In the course of movie, I noticed sceneries of water very often. Whether in taking shower, a room with water, and Mamiya used water in order to murder. I argue that water composes meanings of destroy as well as a rebirth. Religiously speaking, Exodus of Noah has been successful expressed by water. And there has been a flood as one of ten plagues. So the meaning of water in the movie can be served as a deliverer of punishment toward corrupted and grudged people. As well water can be demonstrated as a mean of rebirth. Everyone first meets water at his/her birth, mother’s womb. Also, there is Holy Water in Catholic Church, where it is served as a tool to wash away the sins. Two distinctive functions of water, it lives everyday along us and is inevitable source. Whatever it brings to us, we have to be receiving the nature of it. As the title of the movie “Cure,” it relates logically and adequately with water. Cure as supposed to be a healing matter, destroys what has been malicious and hazardous and bears a new start. The images of cure fall correctly to water. For murderers and victims, water proposed an end and a start for each other, perspectives determines how each receives the outcome. In terms of fire, just like water, it is an inevitable source of life. Fire gives warmth and burns something into dusts. It is as extreme as water. In an abstract sense, it burns something into zero and lights up as symbol of a new start. It gives direction, a way to move; it finally wakes up the unconsciousness of characters in the movie. So for certain murderers, the fire has awakened their personal characteristic of killer. Especially the long takes of the movie seemed very distinctive (or innovative time-wise). Constant long takes made somehow suspense and intensified whole time. Also darkish, gloomy setting throughout the movie brought two connections to real life situations. First, unlike the other movies where cuts and scenes change in less than one minutes, I felt those long takes like they are watch-out cameras. Watching the murdering, and conversation scene for a long time brought me into the part of the movie. I felt comfortable leaning into the movie as a whole, but uncomfortable about the contents. Also, this atmosphere of mundane, everyday style scrolls motivated an idea that a crime can occur in anywhere, anytime.
Japanese film - Cure
ReplyDeleteIn the japanese horror film 'Cure' the sound does horrify audience. However, they are not back ground musics nor specially made sound effects. In this film, back ground music and specially made sound effects are supporters and their usage are rare. The leading sounds which horrify, precisely, force people to feel chill in their spine are ordinary noises such as washer's noise, noise from large machinery and rustling of leaves. They are amplified so that audience can hear it better then normal noises. They serve the significant roll for the film's story and indicates that the will to murder a hateful person is spreading through the Mamiya's hypnosis. Also, they are serving the roll to express how much the detective Takabe's corruption is proceeding. So audience cannot help but to feel anxiety by the noise and to worry what they will see next.
Cure, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a high suspense, metamorphic, and disturbingly horrific film that centers on the gruesome murders in Tokyo. Not only the mysterious incidents and characters create the feeling of “strangeness” to the story, but also the small, intended details and atmospheric spaces create audience to feel psychologically disturbed. For an example, the light and sound shape the menace of the film. In the scene where Mamiya appears on the beach in the beginning, the movement of the clouds and the darkness completely dominates the character. From that moment, the audience feels captured by the “strangeness” time movement. Also, the changing scene where Mamiya’s cell is transformed into the landscape, the effect on lighting marks the separation between the two spaces. In the scene where the water is dripped from the top of the wall, its sound and blinking light effects arouse the strange consciousness. As the black stain drips from the top, the screen becomes slowly darker. Therefore, the audience is able to see how Takabe gets completely hypnotized by the sight of the black stain. These small dramatic detail movements act as tools for audience to feel psychologically disturbed.
ReplyDeleteEunice Won
I think the director of this film 'Cure' is genius. Through this film, he inderictly showed what he think about our society. There were many scenes that I was unable to understand ,but I still remember many of the people in the movie were suffering from the question 'Who are you?'. It is really simple question but many people answered their job to the question. At this point, I thought how am I gonna answer to this question but I felt the same way. Answering my social status, Student, was answer for that. To be honest, I think it is wrong answer. People in movie answered they are detective, teacher with one wife, and police officer. I believe the director of this film want to ask audience since when, why, and how our social status in society became true us. In 1990s was era that Japan was having trouble with their economic circumstance. So I think the producer wants to let audience to realzie true themselves not their life in modern soiety.
ReplyDeleteSeung Tae Kim here
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting thing about Cure is the directing and the cinematography. I cant help but see some sort of resemblance of this film's directing style to that of Stanley Kubrick, with the use of long takes, long shots, tracking shots, and a mixture of still/far distance shots. Most of the shots and takes in this film are silent, have minimal use of dialogue, and rely on atmosphere and visuals.
Not only is it is very atmospheric, brutal, and gritty, it has a very Neo-Noir feel to it. It also makes you feel like you're really part of the action, almost as if you are in the room with them when something is going down. A good example are the scenes in Takabe's apartment. Almost every scene in Takabe's apartment is just a still shot, with the camera deployed in one room while you see the character's actions from a distance, along with diegetic sound effects.
Throughout Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film, ‘”The Cure”, the director portrays a gradual emtoional and personanlity change of his main character, Kenichi Takabe and Mamiya’s victims to portray an idea that the only way a human being is fully cured is if they fufill there most dark and inner temtations. To further convey this idea, Kurusawa uses various camera angles/focus, eerie sounds and focus on certain details. Most of Mamiya's victims in the film show a common theme in which his vitim’s weakness and temptations lead them to there incited murders. For example the doctor’s desire to “cut in a man flesh” and the cop’s dislike towards his fellow partner become greatly intesified through Mamiya’s hypnosis which ultimately leads to there gruesome and unintended murders. All these gruesome murders are somewhat of a “cure” to these victim’s temptations because Mamiya allows them to carry on there dark desires through murder. However, this is where Takabe differs because instead of taking mere 10-15 minutes for Mamiya other vitims to commit murder based on there temptations, it takes nearly the whole film for Takabe. This ultimately leads him to commit a sin worse then murder but instead to take the place of Mamiya.
ReplyDeleteIt is transparent to me throughout the film that Mamiya “cures” his victims but letting them fufill there most dark inner temeptations through his hypnosis. That is why he repeaditely says, “who are you”, to his victims in an effort to find his victim’s dark secrets. The most clear example of how Takaebe is cured is through the beginning and ending scene. There is a scene near the introduction and end of the film that shows Takeba eating and smoking in a café. During the beginning scene, the audience sees that Takaebe has a difficult time eating his food and taking nervous and short puffs of his cigarette. This is when Takebe is constantly worried about his mentally unstable wife and his constant stress from his daily work. Through this small scene, Kurusawa’s focus on these small details on Takebe’s puffing and eating allows the audience to sense Takebe’s uneasiness and enormous amount of stress. However, as the film closes and Takebe’s wife is deceased and he is finally released from his daily stress, Kurusawa shows the audience a different more relaxed Takebe taking long collected drags and finishing two full plates of food. When the audience compares these two similar scenes that have only Takabe’s attitude as an exception, the audience can clearly see that Takebe is cured or freed from his everyday stress. It is truly tragic when the audience sees these two scenes because this means that the director’s overall message is that human beings will never be fully cured without fuflling there dark temptations. A dark and sadistic idea but also a very truthful idea.
Throughout the movie, Cure, Kurosawa uses extra diegetic sounds to place additional tension into scenes, and to help show what the characters are hearing and focusing in on. What is meant by the term extra diegetic is that sounds that are produced in the environment of the scene but are overly emphasized as to stand out. For example of what is meant by extra diegetic recall the scenes when the detective, Takabe, returns home. Every time he is greeted by the loud sound of the washing machine running. While this grating sound might actually be that loud, it is more likely being used as a method to help show the weight and stress that is being placed on him by his wife’s psychological condition. This is compounded by the fact that in the one scene where he comes home to a raw steak on his plate, he turns off the washing machine only for his wife to come back and restart it. This is not the only example of diegetic sounds used in this movie; lots of thick white noise occurs during the scenes of high tension but are always coupled with an actually source. During the scene with Mamiya and Takabe in the psychiatric ward, when Takabe lights the lighter and sets it on the table the sound of rain and water builds up bringing tension to the scene. This sound overwhelms all the other sounds but it is actually raining making it an extra diegetic sound.
ReplyDeleteAnother choice in the movie that intriguing is the scenes involving the psychiatric hospital that Takabe sends his wife. A couple of the initial scenes are the ones with the woman and the bluebeard book interspersed between scenes of the murders and the detectives. It seems to have no relation to the actual overall story and is about a woman who seems to have extra sensory powers of some sort. This is never really mentioned in the movie, and the only other time it is somewhat shown is when Takabe commits his wife there. When on the bus towards the hospital, it seems to be floating in the clouds. The lighting and the images outside the window is bright and has a lot of wispy fog that seems to speed by faster than it should. What are we supposed to make of these scenes? The bus scene in particular makes it seem like they are going to some heavenly place; which is contrasted heavily by the previous scene where his wife’s condition is brought to the forefront and Takabe grabs a knife ominously.
The Japanese thriller film, The Cure, intensifies the horror to the audience through the colors of film and background music. The Cure is favouring dark, murky, grubby locations, transparent plastic sheeting, long-distance sequences and muted, washed-out colours. There is no huge dramatic background music featured in this film; instead, audience hears very little music (one strangely effective, out-of-place and somewhat chirpy instrumental at the beginning of the film) but lots of ambient atmospherics - vague rumblings and dead air, quickly contrasted with intercuts of loud machinery or clanking metal. The soundtrack's minimalism really helps to build up an organic and very realistic feel to the movie. Mamiya keeps asking "Who are you?" to all people in this film. Mamiya's character is so totally paradoxical that the film leaves audience with many, many questions that Kurosawa wants his audience to answer for themselves, which is the sign of a really classy and intelligent filmmaker.
ReplyDeleteKiyoshi Kurosawa’s film, The Cure, was one of the most unpredictable movies that I have ever seen. Kurosawa tried to show dramatic emotional changes and personalities of main character, Takabe. As a detective, and as a husband of a woman who has severe psychologic problem, Takabe had to go through too much hardness throughout the movie. For the effective convincing, Kurusawa pictures in various angles, and numerous sound details.
ReplyDeleteI still do not understand the climax of this movie when hypnosis psycho dies at the old and huge building, but I can sense that the curse of Mamiya finally ends by that. Also for the very end, Takabe at the restaurant was something that says toward us about his gradual change. Unlike his first scene at that restaurant when he did not eat much, and looked like very week, the ending showed how much he becomes energetic and positive person. This dramatic change ends this movie by telling us he is cured who had go though deep darkness even murdered few people.
Overall, the movie was very dark and tragic even by just watching was hard, but it was very interesting because it actually portrays human being's actual life.
The movie “Cure” shows chaotic life of losing ego in modern society. Mamiya, the person who hypnotized many to kill people, is one who lives without knowing who he is, where he is from, who he talked to just ten minutes ago. On the other hand, the detective Takabe is one who lives as he was taught before. These two characters show order and chaos on our modern society. In this film, there are many scenes with doors in side doors. Every time when anyone wants to talk to Mamiya, one has to walk through many doors. This implicates that to know the inner side; one must go through many doors to the deepest mind. Even though Mamiya himself doesn’t know who he is, he asks everyone who he meets this question. “Who are you?” Until almost at the end of the film, his action of keep asking this question was thought to be caused by his amnesia. However, when he talks to the police headquarter chief; he gives true meaning to the question. He is not asking for names or occupation as all others who asked Mamiya the same question. In fact, Mamiya is asking who they really are.
ReplyDeleteIn this film as any other Japanese horror movies, usage of non-diegetic sounds is abundant. These non-diegetic sounds are usually high pitch in this film and it was used to intensify fear of audience. Also, two particular scenes were shown to tell the difference of detective Takabe from before and after the “cure”. In the first restaurant scene where he eats by himself, his plate is full when the waitress takes the plates away. Also, he looks ridiculously tired and he wears old coat that he wears every day. However, in the second restaurant scene, he is wearing a nice suit, finished his plate completely. Also, he is relaxed to have a smoke and drink coffee after dinner. From this, audience can notice that he has been “cured”.
The Cure is a movie that has a psychological scare in comparison to the visual horror that we saw in Ringu. By using the camera and manipulating the diegetic sound, the audience is given certain clues as to the actual plot twist.
ReplyDeleteWhile the detectives investigates the first murder case, the camera is placed in the restroom looking into the murder scene so that the sides of the door obstruct the view of the audience. It makes it seem like we are interfering with the scene and are the outcasts. It can also be seen as the murderer overlooking their work as an outside person. These kind of shots are used throughout the mo is because many scenes do not utilize many close up shots and are filmed in a way that makes the audience seem like a third person looking into whatever is unfolding on the screen, allowing us to see that the murderer is in fact using hypnosis.
Some sounds within the movie is also emphasized because they are louder than normal. For example, the tray that moves past the window in the hospital, the wind blowing, the water coming from the faucet, and even the lighter all seem very loud in comparison to the actual sound in real life. It seems to be the director's way of telling us to pay special attention to those sounds because they are signs of hypnosis.
Composed of a complex and distorted plot line, Cure delivers a frightening take on the Asian horror genre. From the introduction of a female patient responding to a doctor at a brightly lit setting, the audience does not immediately envision a typical horror film. Instead, the viewers are soon warped in a detective’s perspective on a series of brutal murders. The gory and visceral aspects are noticeable by a violent crime scene, where the film’s atmosphere complements this with the decaying and dark setting of an urban city. The twist of this genre is not abide by any vengeful spirits nor a cursed material but rather a foray into the psychology of an individual. The culprit behind these killings is revealed to the audience rather quickly, yet since the audience is following the primary character, the detective, confusion is still in the air. As the plot progresses, the puzzle is slowly being solved, but until the climax, all guesses as to how the film concludes is not applicable. The bizarre plot demonstrates director Kurosawa’s unique blend into the horror genre, especially his technological details that are not common in this genre. A primary example is the long singular shots that Kurosawa utilizes. One considerable scene that demonstrates this is on a beach, where an individual encounters a lone stranger on the beach, while this stranger is constantly asking similar questions, implying he has acquired some form of amnesia. This scene demonstrates the importance behind this unusual character and his acts, further showing the traits this character contains that is both shocking and horrifying. Where the characters are focal points in explaining the plot, Kurosawa also applies an array of crucial cinematic pieces to create a chilling product.
ReplyDeleteThe first glimpse into the evil influence of the character, Mamiya, is a dank and desolate room where a prostitute is shockingly murdered in a brutal fashion. Yet, Mamiya is not the individual who commits the acts, but rather an individual he manipulated to perform the horrendous killing. The interesting subject Kurosawa introduces among the antagonist is the topic of psychology, where human personalities and disorders are a common theme in this film. Another interesting note is the feature of hypnotism, a crucial instrument that exemplifies as a weapon. These features add to the scare factor of Cure, but the one notable detail is the setting. Consistently dark and moody, from the old hospital to even the quaint location of the detective’s apartment, the background of Cure is a constant reminder of how contorted the plot is. These aspects of the film all contribute to the psychological thrill of Cure, providing a different take on the horror genre.
Qiutong Meng
ReplyDeleteResponse of Cure
Mamiya seems like an inducer who has hypnotic ability. He doesn’t remember words which has talked in last minutes. He asks questions such as “who are you? Where am I? Where is that? Who am I? which uses to hypnotize people in releasing situations (no harm and attack) just verbal hints of environment implied, such as who am I repeat over and over again. He also uses implied ways to hypnotize differently (indoor light, smoke of cigarette, drops of water and patterns).
In the movie, there are seldom scenes for horror attack. The performance like falling down from the roof twice without emotion. It just shows the fact and creates frightening atmosphere with the audience imaginations. Cure builds up a bizarre space. Thriller atmosphere increase strongly at the end of movie such as house ruins, which end the story but leaves an endless possibility.
Takabe and his friend went the ruins twice. However, it is difficult to distinguish between real experience or false illustration. The scenes like ruined glass, old rooms, the man’s photo who spread Mesmer theory to Japan. That contacts with an old video, seems like a evil power to show conflict between facts and hidden personalities in order to release people by hypnotizing. Once people fall into hypnotic status, they will finish uninhibited ideas, and it is difficult to restrain outbreaks of their behaviors.
Cure, a 1997 Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is easily one of the most uniquely terrifying movies ever created. Kurosawa uses unconventional methods to establishing an eerie mood throughout the entirety of the film. Most horror films tend to use dramatic crescendos with non-diegetic sound to create fright and suspense. However, Kurosawa uses rapid scene changes and amplified diegetic sounds to set the ominous mood that persists throughout the entirety of the film.
ReplyDeleteThe first striking, unexpected scene to me was the scene involving a pipe being violently wrenched off a wall. A flickering wall light is shown, that same pipe is unexpectedly brandished as a murder weapon, and streams of bloody water emerge from a shower—all are shown within a matter of seconds. Rapid and disjointed scene changes, starting from the beginning of the movie, create an unsettled and confusing atmosphere for the viewer. The scene will depict an empty beach, then a man sitting silently by himself, and then switch to a different setting at a dry cleaners a few minutes later. Character development is slow and unsteady, raising constant questions about the seemingly senseless violence. The tension continues throughout the film, with no relief.
The amplification of normal, everyday sounds also serves to maintain tension. Violence and trauma has no announcement by music in the film, creating a perpetual sense of terror, as I anxiously anticipated the next horrific murder. Music is rare and played as soft undertones. Instead, brief moments of silence punctuated by rhythmic dripping, air conditioning unit-like thuds, or footsteps intensify the eerie mood of the film. Often, I found myself yearning to detect the source of the diegetic sound on the screen. Sounds with no explanation or detectable source are often produced, echoing the senseless nature of the violence playing out in the film. Horrible, traumatic deaths are carried out with little emotion, explanation, or fanfare. The lack of music during the murders helps shape this movie as truly terrifying, since music generally serves to highlight emotional peaks in a film. Nothing is more unsettling than violence with no remorse; that is a demonstration of evil.
Kurosawa’s film “Cure” is a masterpiece at making the audience feel uncomfortable. The movie is eerie the entire way through, this is not only due to subject matter, but is also caused by the unusual way in which the film is shot. The film consists of mostly long, uninterrupted takes, which are usually shot somewhat far away from the actors. This gives the film an odd hollow feeling because the awkward distances make it more difficult to read the characters’ emotions. Along with these long shots and takes, the scenes are occasionally also shot to feel as if the audience is watching through a third party observer. In scenes that are in small rooms or relatively up close, the camera moves to catch the action the way a person who was present in the scene would. This jarring jump from long shot to being a part of the scene adds to the eerie and uncomfortable feeling that the movie exudes.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing about “Cure” that was rather eerie is the lack of explanation and closure, especially in regards to Moriyama. The audience is never given much of a back-story for him, or really any facts at all. I think this was intentional in order to keep him as a blank slate or “empty” as Moriyama called himself. The fact that Moriyama is never given a tragic history or valiant reason for his killings makes it all the creepier. Who is he? Was he even a real person or just a figure representing the human urge to do as we please despite social rules. Was he hypnotizing people for any reason at all or was he just a sociopath on a rampage? Was he Takabe’s “Tyler Durden,” a figure able to do the things Takabe could not himself? It’s all up in the air, as the film never gives a concrete answer, which I think makes the film all the more interesting.
Ryan Chang
ReplyDeleteCure's camerawork and use of non-diegetic sounds emphasizes the main thrills in the movie. Although the film was quite slow at first, and at times frustrating with Mamiya's amnesia scenes, the use of the different shots and sounds made the film more interesting as it progressed. For instance, when Mamiya enacts his hypnosis, the camera focusing on the flame to the victim's face has quite an effect on the power of hypnosis in the movie. The very rapid shots of certain moments, such as when Takabe's wife's corpse was shown at the end, also were used to great effect.
The use of non-diegetic sound throughout the movie emphasized the mood and shock of the scenes in the film. For example, when Takabe is shown to have learned the power of hypnosis eerie music plays as the waitress proceeds to wield a knife to presumably kill someone. Also, when Takabe investigates the different murders and Mamiya's house, the score and sounds quite make the scenes as creepy as they should be.
To me, the things that made Cure truly thrilling/shocking was the effective use of rapid camera shots and the eerie sounds that echoed through the film.
The film reveals humans’ natural anxiety and darkness inside. The detective, Tanabe, tries to avoid what Mamiya was really asking, but Tanabe eventually admitted his burden and follow Mamiya’s footsteps in the end of the film. Mamiya’s simple question asking “Who are you” confuses the people in the movie and leads them to murder unconsciously. The victims were just an ordinary people who are likely to exist in real life. I think the movie let us agonize what we really are without the job or the social status. The point in the film is that everyone has potential violent and murderous intent. The true meaning of “Cure” is to cleanse people’s anxiety and worry through murder. The film digs into our deepest fear which cannot be done by just startling with a ghost. The actors’ psychological descriptions were perfect enough for me to be immersed in each scene. Especially, the scene of Tanabe crying in front of his dead imaginary wife emphasizes that Tanabe unconsciously considers his wife as a burden and wishes her to die. Although the film made me feel depressed and uncomfortable all day long, i think it is a well-made horror film.
ReplyDeleteThe'Cure' is the most confusing movie, moreover, it deals with psychological issue and murders. The beginning was little odd because shots were cut and edited for short time and while the murder happens, it has the vivid and joyful music in the background. After the movie introduces the main protagonist, Mayami, the film starts get slower. Until a middle of movie, I thought that Mayami directly killed them and synopsis-es people to say that they killed them because all of victims had cross on their chest, engraved.
ReplyDeleteWhile movie goes more complex, instead of being into a story, it makes us to think and be more confused. Additionally, it was little off from the prediction that i had, for example, the detective does not get synopsis-ed. However, the final scene is THE MOST confusing part of entire film. I had to google what actually happened at the end. It says that Takabe goes on Mayami's work. So basically Takabe killed his wife too?????? That fact frightens me so badly. "cure" contains lots of blood dead, murder scene, but rather than feel scary, it is horrific, awful, and obnoxious. However, it is good movie to make audience to think because it is more than a just murder involved story.
The film “Cure” directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa had a complex plot surrounding the idea of mesmerism and hypnosis. The story was based on Kenichi Takabe, a detective that investigated a bunch of murder cases that had similar characteristics. In all the murder cases, all the victims had a X-shaped slash that extended from the neck to the chest. This X shape is constantly used during the movie and is crucial to the ideas of hypnosis. As Takabe digs more into the information about Mamiya, he soon learns that the X shape is drawn repeatedly in the process of hypnotizing a woman who later ends up killing her own son. When the X shape appears in different scenes in the movie, death seems to be a reoccurring theme. As Takabe witnesses the X shape in Sakuma’s room, he realizes that Sakuma has become a victim of hypnosis. Soon after Takabe is informed that Sakuma kills himself. Every where the X symbol appears death shortly follows after.
ReplyDeleteKeeping one’s sanity is one of the main themes of this movie. All the hypnotized victims seemed to have no morals and idea of murder seems natural to them. This goes to show that the hypnosis that Mamiya does to his victims corrupts their way of thinking and convinces them to kill. Takabe’s partner, Sakuma gives in to Mamiya’s hypnosis and starts loosing his sanity. Mamiya represents the main source of everyone’s madness. He is similar to a disease of insanity that slowly spreads to its victims making them loosing their morals and sanity.
Throughout the movie “The Cure,” one of the main characters, Mamiya keep asks people a simple question, “Who are you?” People answers by saying their names, social status, or talking about their family. Those people who answers the question and gets hypnotized by Mamiya murders someone. I thought this showed how not only psychopath or insane person, but also normal and ordinary people could commit murders in ordinary lives. In murdering scenes in the movie, it ironically happens so calmly and peacefully. There was no music played in the background, which may bring some tensions to the audience. Also, there were no camera moves. The camera just observes the murderer so calmly when he or she is committing a crime. I thought this represents how the murderers are still thinking rationally even though they do not know what they are doing. They are not insane or crazy, but they are just hypnotized that even though they do not realize that they are murdering, it is still their desire to harm other people from deep inside of their mind. This is also shown when the camera catches the murders’ face after he or she kills someone. Their faces show no emotions that they look so normal and calm. I thought the director wanted to show the audience how people all have anger and evil desires deep inside of their heart.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was so interesting that there was not much of music played in the background of the movie. In most of the thriller movies I watched, I thought music plays a significant role in making audiences to be tensioned. However, without much music in the background, it made the movie seem more realistic as if it is happening in our real lives, like documentaries that it made me to get more tension and get horrified while watching it. I thought these effects of the movie, such as camera movements, background music, or tone-downed colors of the movie all made the movie to seem very dark and creepy even though the movie ironically had very calm and peaceful atmosphere.
Curing in “cure”
ReplyDeleteI think Mamiya meant to hypnotize people to cure them. I can be found through various hints in the movie. Mesmer who Mamiya was studying about was a doctor who thought hypnosis can cure every sickness, which means Mesmerism is based on curing people.
“Who are you?” Mamiya was not asking for name or job but who you really you are. In the movie Mamiya said what was inside him came out and inside is hollow, when he hypnosis people he speaks like he became the one who is getting hypnotized and whispers to remember inner conflict. As a result just like Mamiya, what was hidden inside them came out and they acted out as it is natural thing to do saying they just killed a person out of hate. The quote Takabe said “We should all relax, enjoy ourselves, and lead peaceful lives. But society isn’t like that!” is telling us there is conflict hidden even something seems so peaceful, and what Mamiya did was only making people to act out their hidden desire. As the result of killing there problem is gone and cured. The movie show it is definitely is a cure by showing two scenes of Takabe in a restaurant. In the first scene he was wearing dirty coat and did not even finish his food. He seemed full of worries and tiredness. The second scene was after his wife’s death; he was wearing a fancy suit and finished his food and also asking for a cup of coffee. He seemed much brighter and happier than the prior scene. Takabe said to Mamiya “Lunatics like you have it easy while citizens like me go through hell!” Ironically the last scene of the movie when Takabe asked waitress to get him a cup of coffee she when to grab a knife, showing Takabe became Mamiya, not going through hell anymore.
The composition in Cure
ReplyDeleteWhat caught my eye along with the long duration of the shots in “Cure” was the exceptional composition. For example, unlike many shots of crime scenes in other movies, Kurosawa did not show the whole room in its gruesomeness however always partly covers the room with objects. Due to the arrangement of the frame, for a long time we are forced to focus on the dead women’s body. The camera is neatly placed so that the corpse and the detectives are placed in the center of the picture and therefore Kurosawa is obeying the rule of thirds. Furthermore in one of the rare scenes not playing in a closed room but on the beach, the long shot is also divided into three horizontal lines, centering Mamiya and his victim. I think this is one of the main reasons for Kurosawas special and outstandingly static composition. We automatically focus on the people and their actions. To a great extent they are the only objects moving in the picture.
I assume another reason for the uncommon composition is the strong effect it has on the atmosphere throughout the whole movie. Often a scene or a shot appears to be taken from a distance. Nonetheless repeatedly there is a door, a wall or just some unknown blurry object in front of the picture, whereas the focused object always seems to be in the background. The dark and irritating silhouettes and shadows in the foreground cloud our vision of what is going on and what is going to happen in the near future.
One would expect a long shot to give us more information about a persons surroundings and happenings. Yet Kurosawa managed to break this expectation and make it more difficult to predict what is going to happen to the characters in the movie. I think by taking the composition into consideration one can suddenly explain a great part of the unexplainable tension felt throughout the movie.
In the film “Cure," Mamiya constantly asks the question, “who are you?” to other characters. At first, they simply answer with their names and occupations; however, they understand the fundamental meaning of the question and engage in self reflection while gradually falling into hypnosis. It is evident in several scenes that Mamiya plays the role of one’s ego which stimulates characters to practice self examination. For instance, when Mamiya attempts to hypnotize Dr. Miyajima, he explicitly says that she can better see herself through him because he is inside-out; his interior world is completely empty. Also, the characters are usually alone with Mamiya when they engage in introspection. People tend to practice self examination when they are alone in an uninterrupted space. (For instance, people are reluctant to talk to themselves when they are with others). Instead of considering Mamiya as another person, the characters merely regard Mamiya as their ego that constantly seeks answers to self reflective questions. And through introspection, the characters are able to recollect repressed memories from their unconsciousness. But, most of these unconscious thoughts and memories are distressing which lead the characters to committing murder. For example when Dr. Miyajima is hypnotized, she remembers her repressed memory of being sexually discriminated during her college years; afterwards, she mercilessly murders a man in the restroom. Another instance is Oida, the policeman, who confesses to the detective that he killed his co-worker because he unconsciously loathed him ever since he joined the police box. As a result, these murderers suffer from guilty conscious; Hanoka, the school teacher attempts to commit suicide for killing his wife.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast to these murderers, Takabe, the detective, finds serenity after he murders his wife. It is evident that his sick wife is the essence of his pain and distress; he constantly worries about her and sees hallucination of his dead wife. However, after he kills his wife, he is finally liberated from his agony; he regains his appetite after her death. I believe Director Kurosawa’s intention of ending the movie with such disturbing conclusion is to question the fundamental idea of “curing” unconscious concern and anxiety. The idea of analyzing conscious and unconscious mind to better understand and “cure” one’s thoughts and behaviors through therapies was more prevalent in western culture than any other part of the world. When the idea of treating mind was adopted in East Asian culture as well, the power of introspection was more widely acknowledged. However, in this film, not all characters are “cured” through self-examination. Although Takabe feels liberated from understanding his unconscious anger and distress, other characters, including Oida and Hanoka, suffer greatly from recollecting their repressed memories. Perhaps, the director’s intention was to imply a message that the idea of “curing” one’s psychological distress is questionable.
Cure, a horror film that was directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa was not so much about other typical horror films that contends surprise gross looking ghosts or phantoms. However, throughout the movie, it was interesting to figure out what the psychological problem was which is hypnotic suggestions. It was easier to catch as the camera work was focusing on the lighter's that Mamiya had and water after Mamiya was hypnotizing people to behave in the ways that they would not do normally. Also as Takabe works hard to find out what was going on and what was the reason, the movie was focusing on the flame of the lighter. In addition, as the movie concentrates on psychological materials, it was interesting to see how Sakuma was investigating Mamiya and fails to maintain his psychiatric position and finally commits a suicide.
ReplyDeleteHowever, more interesting facts about the movie was that at the end, the detective Takabe becomes the new killer in order to spread the hypnotic ceremony and how the movie was directed to grab the audiences' attention and psychologically disturb the audience.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film the 'Cure' plays out as a psychological thriller, while still being considered under the horror film genre. Although this film at most times was very confusing, looking at the overall bigger picture and atmosphere, it showed greater representation of a different side of the genre horror. An example of this was the long camera angles between the lens and the focused subjects show the non-intimacy of the film. All shots were usually executed in a way so 'depth of field' was shown. The various distances and shots Kurosawa displayed also were in co-ordinance with the different characters within this film. The characters within this film and in the shot were portrayed as incompatible with each other. For instance, the detective Takabe, has a very distant relationship with his wife, and at most times resents her being present. Overall Takabe does not have intimate relationships with any of the people in his life. He even says so himself, being a detective, the first thing they teach is to shut off emotions and feelings from everyone.
ReplyDeleteMamiya symbolizes the evil within human kind and proves that each individual possess the potential threat to one another. Through this case, Takabe discovers not only the secret to Mamiya's way of thinking, but also the his own true self. The way Mamiya takes advantage of each of his victims, shows to each individuals true meaning of what they really feel. Whether it be bad relations with others around them, to even small usual quarrels with others in their work environment, Mamiya puts each victim under a hypnosis so they non-intentionally kill the opposite person. The inner meaning with each individual goes to a deeper conflict, past the smaller quarrels with people on the outside. He actually gets into the mind of the person, and sees their life problems, worries, and issues, and uses this against them. In some religion, Mamiya would be considered the devil, in non-religious terminology, it would be known as a conscious. Differing from right and wrong, the human mind naturally has a 'good/bad' option when put with a situation.
Overall, Kurosawa has shown a different part of the movie genre horror with getting into a more psychological mental state. The bigger picture of the film comes together at the end, and gives confused viewers an open ended ending in which shows the continuation of the thriller.
One of the more noticeable differences of this horror movie compared to others is that the killer/horrifying-beast is not a supernatural one. The killers in this film are regular, sane people just like ourselves: a cop, a teacher, a surgeon. I believe this is one of the sole reasons why this film is particularly disturbing. In the beginning of the film, Takabe's wife is reading a book titled "Bluebeard" which is about a seemingly innocent human daughter who kills a male god whom she was supposed to marry. This story ties into the overarching theme of this film in that there's a darker more sinister side to all of us whether we are conscious of it or not.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed that this film had a lot of really long one take shots often shrinking the characters to very small areas on the screen. There is a long shot of the beach when we first meet Mamiya and his first victim, when Takuma and his wife are discussing a vacation trip at the dinner table, and when Sakabe and Takuma are discussing the murders and life in general on the rooftop of a building, just to name a few. The wider long shots seemed to distance us from the characters and make the film more mysterious and creepy with all the empty space on the screen. This sharply contrasts the quick bursts of short flashbacks that Takuma has of the monkey trapped in the cage as well as the few close-up shots the film has. These shots may have possibly been used to highlight points of realization for the characters.
Billy Vang
ReplyDeleteThe 1997 Japanese thriller film, “Cure”, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an interesting piece of work that would easily leave an audience lingering upon questions they must ask themselves in the end. One in particular that peaks my interest was the reoccurring question asked my Mamiya , “ Who are you?” A very basic question but it really dwells upon a person. Usually people would answer their social/job status for example in this film Tamaka will say he’s a detective, or the nurse’s a nurse. But when did it begin when we start describing ourselves just through our social status? Through this film, I think Kurosawa wanted touch upon our psychological and emotional state as they’re being our true self because what we define us is not our title but burdens and obstacles we’ve overcome.
What I find interesting about Cure is the way the director brings chills to the audience. Mamiya, the mastermind of the many murders in the movie, deviates from the conventional “evil” image most ghosts or murderers have in horror movies. Mamiya appears to be homeless, constantly needing the help of others, but does not use explicit words related to murder. The gruesome murders were in fact committed because of innate human intent. It is not clear whether Mamiya carefully selects his targets, but they all have one thing in common – a feeling of repression in their daily lives. Mamiya merely incites those emotional frustrations by asking them the same few questions over and over again, then proceeds to ask them to tell him about themselves. They eventually become so frustrated such that murder would seem like “a natural thing to do”. The use of animals in the movie seems to suggest a few things. The monkey in the cage badly wants to escape, just like the female doctor from prejudice, the cop from his partner’s upright personality, and Takabe from the burden of his wife. Yet, the monkey that is not caged up is twisted. Lastly, although Sakuma states that “hypnotism cannot change a person’s moral sense”, the development of the plot says otherwise. The murders were all calm when they were killing their victims, not realizing anything, as if all their morals were put aside. Takabe, whom Mamiya seems to be struggling to hypnotise, does not immediately show his “evil side”, and the audience knows that he is different from the others. Mamiya, during his last scene tells Takabe “everyone who wants to know his true self is bound to come back”, suggesting that Takabe is different from the others because his “true self” actually has stronger murderous intent compared to the rest. Takabe eventually continues Mamiya’s killings, ending the film on a chilling note.
ReplyDeleteAnother memorable thing for me is how the director puts things across in pairs. One example is the bus, where Takabe and his wife were on the way to the hospital for Takabe to seek mental help for his wife. The bus appears to be floating from the looks of the clouds behind. From that scene, one might think that it was portrayed this way because of the wife’s descent into insanity. However, the second such scene which contains only Takabe, the scene seems to be hinting that Takabe himself’s sanity might have been affected. Another such example is when Takabe is unable to eat, and the waitress clears away his plate untouched. It seems Takabe is not himself. The second such scene we see Takabe finishing his food, ordering a coffee, and smoking. He seems to have found his “true self” which Mamiya said in an earlier scene that Takabe did not have. Hence, the director has an interesting way of portraying the development of the plot by having parallel scenes.
Before watching the movie, I wondered why a thriller movie's title had to be "Cure." It was about a man who wasn't able to live his life to the fullest because he had so many shackles on his feet, finally becoming a soul of freedom. Takabe was a detective who wanted to find the criminals, and yet tried to explain their behaviors and motives. When he was off duty, he was not unleashed from his burden because he had to take care of his wife who was mentally ill. As his life was full of things he had to take care of, the first scene of Takabe not eating the meal he ordered, lethargically communicating with people shows an extreme contrast to the last scene in which he finished his meal, cheerfully answering to the waitress and the phone call. He doesn't have anything to restrain himself from doing something, he now does whatever he feels like to do. When he was the detective he used to be, he found instigating a murder guilty, and at the end of the movie, he became the one to instigate the murder by hypnotizing the waitress. It is likely to deduce from this scene that Takabe became another Mamiya now. There was a continuous sign of Takabe becoming someone like Mamiya in the movie. For example, when Takabe came to see Mamiya where he was locked up, it looked like as if they have switched their positions. Even after that, Mamiya kept saying that Takabe understood him, that Takabe is like him. Although Takabe denied, he always found the gap in his life and his mind. In the bus, he sat at the end of the bus near the emergency exit. He heard a man murmuring to himself weirdly that he is crazy in the laundry room. He lost his temper in front of Mamiya although he was the one who used to be the calm and patient one. He knew something was wrong, and realized that after he met Mamiya. Was his anger toward Mamiya possibly a jealousy toward him? A feeling that Mamiya is letting out so peacefully and yet Takabe could not feel, was not supposed to feel?
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the scenes, several sources incurred tension. The first thing was the amplified sound of a wave, drier, wind and so on. Sometimes, these big sounds popping out all of a sudden scared me. There also was a sudden shift in the scenes, dragging me into the scenes, and when the scene showed something strange or threatening, it made me gasp. The dim light and a monotonic color arrangement also helped me tense up because it was dark, and gloomy. It made a strong color feel like an ominous sign. The film also used water and fire to indicate that Mamiya is hypnotizing people, and I personally thought that these items functioned as signs of death like the image of drowning in water, and burning in the fire. But at the same time, both have a connection to the word, "cure." Phoenix is said to revive from the fire, and water is a mean of cleansing before we medicate wounds. Every time I saw these items, I felt like it had something to do with Mamiya and created anxiety. Finally, the movie revealed the suspect from the start. We knew who instigated the murder, and that helped me feel unsafe because I knew something is going to happen, and the happening being very quiet and calm brought awkwardness. Eventually, the movie was trying to tell us that a drive for killing is always around us, even in ourselves. After all, even if Mamiya was the one who instigated the murder, Sakuma, the psychiatrist said that making someone kill somebody by hypnosis is not likely. Then what was it that really made the teacher, police, and the doctor, who are indispensable in our society, who we believe, kill somebody? This word 'cure,' which doesn't make sense in humanitarian way, and yet actually freed someone from their agony, and this message saying 'a murder/death is never far away from you' was the creepiest part of the movie.
In retrospect to Kurosawa's Cure, I feel that the subject matter of hypnosis handled within the plot is the lasting after-effect of the movie itself. What I mean simply is that the movie hypnotizes its viewers with the rhythmic scene changes of murder, inspection, and hypnosis. Although the movie may seem wildly varying at times, I felt that there was a perpetual, almost rhythmic (not to mention the reoccurring sound-effects; washing machine, water drip, etc) give and take of the scenes, pulling my attention to and fro, making me all the more curious about a crystal clear relationship between Mamiya and Takabe. There were also an interplay of long shots and short shots, giving a musical measure and composition to the film. There's also an audio effect that is given not only through reoccurrence or rhythm; its the "creepyfication" of everyday normal sounds, such as the washing machine noise that is ambiant throughout the plot
ReplyDeleteAs I tried to dig further into this relationship, I began to realize that it. There's so much to speculate about in this movie, firstly the relationship he has with his troubled wife. The scenes are full of premonition cuts and the conversations with Mamiya in his cell asking "you saw your wife dead, didn't you?" We then slowly realize that Takabe himself is troubled and Mamiya takes pleasure in knowing it, although he doesnt show it.
was not only a relationship, but a transference of all that is mystic about Mamiya to Takabe, and a just the exchange of words was an act of hypnosis for Mamiya getting into Takabe's mind, an act that he'll not able to pull off so easily; the movie then becomes a classic good guy versus bad guy action/thriller. In the conclusion, there's a huge flip of characters in that through those hypnotic exchanges between the two, Takabe destroys the evil that is Mamiya but the fascination of the study of hypnosis takes over Takabe and he then becomes the new Mamiya.
Cure is a complex and questionable movie that captures the audience into the film. The fact that Cure can be distinct from other horror/thriller films is that the murderers do not seem to have a certain reason to murdering; their roles come out to be teacher, police officer, and a doctor. Hypnotic exchange between characters stands as the ongoing theme of the overall movie.
ReplyDeleteThe interplay of both visual and auditorial symbolism eventually aid in illustrating the "psychological" or hypnotic scenes. Water is shown throughout the entire film. It starts with the very first scene of the movie when the murderer of a woman takes a shower, then continues on with the beach where a elementary teacher finds Mamiya, to the point where Mamiya utilizes water as a hypnotic force. But why water? Water can show both destruction (natural disasters, Noah's Ark) and calmness (Mamiya emphasizes how water "will make you calm"). Another natural element used is fire. Whenever Mamiya tried to hypnotize a person, he would turn on the lighter and continually asked "Tell me about yourself". Fire, making the dark to bright - would drag out the internal self into the external, eventually bringing out the murderous side of a human being that had been hidden. Some auditorial aspects are broken background music, intense amplification of everyday sounds. Takabe's ill wife would constantly turn on the empty dryer, which its similar sound is heard on one of the last scenes where she is taken out from the hospital from a wheelchair.
The last few scenes seems to be the most important: a scene of Takabe's wife murdered similarly to other murders, a scene in the restaurant contrasting from the earlier restaurant scene, and an ending scene where the waitress suddenly carries a knife to kill someone. Just like the title, Takabe in the end seems to be "cured" or rather became hypnotized himself, ending up to a point where he is the new Mamiya.
The very first scene was a man who suddenly killed prostitute with a bar and drew X shape from her neck to chest with a knife. The irony thing that I thought was a sound during this scene happened. Usually the sound should be dark, intensive, and noisy but in this movie, it was bright, classic, and calm. Some weird unknown sounds came out several times through out this movie and I totally felt sound difference compare with other movies.
ReplyDeletePeople make a wall inside of their minds for several reasons. However, hypnosis crashed down the wall and brought up a reliance on murder that embedded. This horrifying story told that anyone could be a murderer if a little allusion has been given. Cure has many long-take shots rather than editing and the sound effect was mostly droning sound representing spinning empty washer rather than artificial. The flow of the movie was slow and I was very frustrated especially when Mamiya’s questions while hypnotize other people.
In the movie ‘Cure’ there were two different scenes where Takabe was eating in a restaurant. It was taken in the point of view but in one scene Takabe was having difficulty eating with trembling hand and the other scene where he was perfectly fine eating in the restaurant. This showed that Takabe is now perfectly a new man and he now became a new Mamiya after struggling with his inner mind.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it was quite frightening that people always have their deepest desires and willing to kill others with just a little bit of a guidance. All the people who had a little conversation with Mamiya kill others with just a little input. Common reason for people who are hypnotized by Mamiya is that they do not know why they have committed murder. They simply committed murder just simply because they had bad feelings about others. This showed difference between inside and outside of people.
The movie “Cure” was the first movie that I could not even assumed what was the movie about; even though, I was concentrating on the screen during the whole movie hours. I was able to know the general summary of this movie after I skimmed through the Wikipedia. Whole movie is focused on detective Takabe’s changes in both behavior and emotion as the movie goes to the end. Kurosawa, director of this movie, described Takabe as strong person who endures hardships; however, Takabe’s mind was collapsing because of his wife who has psychologic problems. In fact, Takabe wants to lean on others and share his hardness, but he could not because he is detective who must not show weakness to others.
ReplyDeleteThe turning point of the movie is when Takabe had conversation with Mamiya, the serial killer using hypnosis, at the solitary confinement. Takabe became very sensitive after Mamiya revealed his inner pain. However, as he investigates who Mamiya is, he found that he and Mamiya have something in common. So, he killed Mamiya and decided to live like Mamiya. As a result Takabe could live more happily than before. I could find the significant change his mind at the restaurant scene. At first time, he didn’t eat much and had grimace face; however, later he finished his food and smiled.
Director, Kurosawa not only shows gradual changes of Takabe, but also shows human’s inner evilness in this movie. Whenever Mamiya hypnotize others, he kept ask about themselves, and in this process I thought that Mamiya drag out their inner evilness and amplifies that thoughts which eventually made them to kill someone. It would be really ridiculous to think in this way but I thought that Mamiya’s behavior is somewhat similar to snake which temped Eve to eat apple of tree of knowledge, and people’s evilness means Original sin. So, Kurosawa might want to say that since all human being has Original sin, they are born to be easily tempted.
The film "Cure" seems like thriller movie, because there are criminal and detector. However it has different structure with those different other thriller movies. For instance, most of thriller movies usually tries to find out who is criminal, by contrast Cure let audience to know criminal and tries to find out why criminal kills people. This is kind of same structure that used by ghost movie. Like, audience know the existence of ghost, but they do not know the reason why ghost harms people. Therefore, the movie Cure is more similar to horror movie instead of thriller movie.
ReplyDeleteThere are two important natural elements in the movie which are water and fire. Both of these elements use to hypnosis innocence people. Water has two meanings that destruction and creation In the movie, Kiyoshi Kurosawa shows water several place in the movie. When the first murder happens, the murder takes a shower and it is able to illustrates creation and to related with cure. Also, fire is the one way that hypnosis people. Mamiya pulls out his lighter and asks victim to look at it. Fire usually lights on an uncertain things in darkness in real life, and in the movie, fire is the tool that make you see your inner instinct. There are common point between people who gets hypnosis by Mamiya. Those people has a respected job such as police, teacher and doctor. Kiyoshi Kurosawa tires to show us that murder is able to happen anyone and anywhere closely.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa express anxiety to audience by many different ways in the movie. The last scene that when Mamiya keep hitting the radiator, the scene was shaking strongly as if there was earthquake. However, the man who guard the hospital does not have any motion, by contrast the nurse has reaction to surprise about this vibration. It simply shows that it is not earthquake but represents expression of individual anxiety. Finally, at the last scene in the restaurant, one equation is completed that Mimiya equal to Takabe. In the movie, Mimiya keep saying that Takabe is same as me and Takabe denies this truth by beating Mamiya. However, at the restaurant, when waitress grabs the knife, audience realizes that Takabe hypnosis her. At the middle of the movie, Takabe went to same restaurant and he did not eat food at all and seems like tired of this world. And now, it is able to feel Mamiya's shadow from Takabe's changed action that he eats all his food and smoke tobacco with his free time. From this changing, Takabe seems like actually get cured.
Even after I watched the ending of the movie, I was having a trouble with figuring out the story with a huge confusion. Even though the genre of the movie is thriller, it gave me more mysterious feeling rather than being scared. While I was watching the movie, I kept trying to assume what the hidden truth would be and what idea the director would like to convey. The movie used hypnosis as a narrator, and various kinds of sounds were represented. The detective who shows suffering husband mainly leads and solves the problem, and his radical empathy makes a connection easily with Mamiya who practices hypnotism. By using fire and water, Mamiya reveals people’s angers from the deepest mind, and encourages them to kill someone who gives stress the most. I was shocked to know two sides of people and even the desire to murder somebody. Dark and under-saturated color in the movie shows low contrast and makes the mood ambivalent and mysterious. Also, the director used intense implication of sounds with lighter, water, and dryer. Use of long and static shots with all the empty spaces on the screen highlights creepy and dark mood as well although the movie actually has a very peaceful and calm atmosphere mostly.
ReplyDeleteCure
ReplyDeleteBesides the content of the movie, “Cure” has shown me two core aspects to consider : water and fire. In the course of movie, I noticed sceneries of water very often. Whether in taking shower, a room with water, and Mamiya used water in order to murder. I argue that water composes meanings of destroy as well as a rebirth. Religiously speaking, Exodus of Noah has been successful expressed by water. And there has been a flood as one of ten plagues. So the meaning of water in the movie can be served as a deliverer of punishment toward corrupted and grudged people. As well water can be demonstrated as a mean of rebirth. Everyone first meets water at his/her birth, mother’s womb. Also, there is Holy Water in Catholic Church, where it is served as a tool to wash away the sins. Two distinctive functions of water, it lives everyday along us and is inevitable source. Whatever it brings to us, we have to be receiving the nature of it. As the title of the movie “Cure,” it relates logically and adequately with water. Cure as supposed to be a healing matter, destroys what has been malicious and hazardous and bears a new start. The images of cure fall correctly to water. For murderers and victims, water proposed an end and a start for each other, perspectives determines how each receives the outcome.
In terms of fire, just like water, it is an inevitable source of life. Fire gives warmth and burns something into dusts. It is as extreme as water. In an abstract sense, it burns something into zero and lights up as symbol of a new start. It gives direction, a way to move; it finally wakes up the unconsciousness of characters in the movie. So for certain murderers, the fire has awakened their personal characteristic of killer.
Especially the long takes of the movie seemed very distinctive (or innovative time-wise). Constant long takes made somehow suspense and intensified whole time. Also darkish, gloomy setting throughout the movie brought two connections to real life situations. First, unlike the other movies where cuts and scenes change in less than one minutes, I felt those long takes like they are watch-out cameras. Watching the murdering, and conversation scene for a long time brought me into the part of the movie. I felt comfortable leaning into the movie as a whole, but uncomfortable about the contents. Also, this atmosphere of mundane, everyday style scrolls motivated an idea that a crime can occur in anywhere, anytime.