Product: The Bad Sleep Well (1963)
Rating: 5.0
Great
Akira Kurosawa's 1960 black and white film, The Bad Sleep Well (Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru), is often compared to William Shakespeare's Hamlet, but it's an inapt comparison for, while Shakespeare's play has a higher sense of poetry, Kurosawa's film has far more relevance, realism, and complexity, even if, like Hamlet, it's a high class melodrama. The film was written by Kurosawa and four collaborators- Shinobu Hashimoto, Eijir Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni. Because it has Shakespearean pedigree, and is not set in medieval Japan, this film has not gotten its proper due, in comparison with the classics that Kurosawa made earlier in his career, such as Rashomon, Ikiru, and Seven Samurai. But, it should, for, despite its melodramatic bent, and film noir roots- heightened by Masaru Sato's wonderful soundtrack, which alternates the darkness of certain moments with almost carnivalesque music, the film is superbly paced and well written, for within the film's opening sequences at a corporate wedding, fully Westernized with a Here Comes The Bride rendition, covered by the jackal-like press- reminiscent of the paparazzi in the prior year's Federico Fellini masterpiece La Dolce Vita, ready to pounce on any irregularity, because of a budding scandal, and the subsequent brilliant montage of newspaper headlines that puts those used by Hollywood in pre-World War Two gangster films to shame, the bulk of the film's narrative setup is displayed, and allowed to unravel for the next two hours, albeit almost never following the standard melodramatic arc of allowing the characters' dumbest possible actions dictate the plot. Because of this, the film's ending is both realistic, and one of the most chilling in film history. Perhaps only Dr. Strangelove's scenes of Armageddon are more chilling, however leavened by that film's final scenes' editing.The cinematography, by longtime Godzilla series mainstay Yuzuru Aizawa, is superb. The scenes where Nishi and Wada drive Shirai mad are masterful example of pure black and white cinematography that rivals the best of the masterful Carl Theodor Dreyer. And while all the acting is first rate by the supporting cast, with the usual stellar work of Takashi Shimura as Moriyama, the perfectly restrained evil of Masayuki Mori as Iwabuchi, not to mention the wonderfully over the top looniness of K Nishimura as Shirai, the stellar cravenness of Kamatari Fujiwara as Wada, the semi-incestuous off kilter performance of Tatsuya Mihashi as Tatsuo, and the hammy enigmatic performance of Takeshi Kat as Itakura (the real Nishi), this film belongs to Toshir Mifune as Nishi (the real Itakura), for, unlike his wildly over the top-however terrific, work in Rashomon and Seven Samurai, he truly gets to display the full range of his acting chops in his boiling rages- he declares, when trying to toss Shirai out the same window his father fell from, `Even now they sleep soundly, with grins on their faces. I won't stand for it! I can never hate them enough!', his hiding of them as a corporate secretary, his acts of kindness that ultimately do him in, and in his love tenderly restrained scenes with Yoshiko, especially one where he tells of how his obsession with his father after his death is only matched by the hatred he felt for the man before his death. His internalized anguish allows Mifune to act with small gestures, not grand ones, and scenery chewing gives way to real emoting. Of the three roles I've seen him in, this is his best....easily. It takes a good half hour of the film's unfolding, though, before Nishi even emerges as the film's central character, and puppetmaster- although, ultimately, he is no match for Iwabuchi, who's been doing it longer and better. That's how much confidence Kurosawa has in his filmic and narrative talents, for imagine a Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts film going a half hour into the plot without a major scene for them. Mifune was that big a star in his day, but the film is always bigger.The DVD, by The Criterion Collection, is shown in a 2.35:1 widescreen ratio, but lacks an English soundtrack, Considering the tremendous amount of white in the film, especially in the wedding scenes, the white subtitles are very difficult to read. There's also a trailer, and a thirty-three minute episode of the Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful To Create documentary series on the making of this film. The insert includes two essays- one by Chuck Stephens, of Film Comment, and one by director Michael Almereyda. The former is a lightweight take on the film and the latter a strained attempt at, yet again, linking the film to Hamlet.Despite such senseless flagellations, The Bad Sleep Well is an excellent film, and every bit as worthy of being talked about as a masterpiece, as are Ikiru and Seven Samurai. It is, if only because of the weak end of Rashomon, even better than that universally acknowledged classic, and far better than almost all the American film noirs that I've seen, despite its melodrama. If Shakespeare teaches one thing it's that the difference between true drama and melodrama is often only the excellence of its presentation. On that score, this film is a great drama, even if, ultimately and in the real world, the bad really do sleep well.