Product: The Bad Sleep Well (1963)
Rating: 4.0
An interesting Kurosawa film about corporate corruption, with a fine performance by Toshiro Mifune
Despite many good elements, The Bad Sleep Well is one Kurosawa movie that didn't involve me much, either emotionally or in the story telling. I've always found it hard to take seriously movie stories where the villain, either an individual or an organization, is so all-powerful and so competent that he or it simply can't be touched. Here we have a tale of massive corporate corruption in post-war Japan which is led by an unseen evil which can arrange not just for suicides, blackmail, murder and the cover ups, but for all those messy details like cleaning up afterwards and immaculate body disposal. Bureaucratic self-sacrifice is the expected behavior of subordinates, when necessary. As one character says, "You don't understand bureaucrats. A good official never implicates a superior, no matter what the cost." For me, the pervasive success of the bad ones doesn't lead to great drama or to wrenching, paranoid discovery, but just to melodrama,Adding to the distance I felt is the behavior of the...well, not hero, exactly. Protagonist? Nishi (Toshiro Mifune) is so consumed by revenge that he unhesitatingly takes upon himself the role of judge and executioner, destroying many of those around him who are either innocent of anything other than loving him or who are small potatoes in the schemes of corruption. And the Mr. Bigs? Nishi tells us "Even now they sleep soundly, with grins on their faces. I won't stand for it! I can never hate them enough!" Do the ends justify the means? I seldom think so, certainly not in a movie, yet it is difficult to feel sympathy for Nishi unless we're willing to give that question the benefit of the doubt. In the last quarter of the movie, when Nishi softens a bit and even seems of the verge of success with no further great violence, I think I had just spent too much time finding his obsession with revenge tiring.That last quarter brings things into focus in ways that make at least some of the preceding time seem unnecessary. Still, Nishi's feeling about his wife, his questioning of his own methods, his background, all brought him into a more interesting light, where before he simply seemed to me a creature of obsession and ruthlessness.The film opens with a great-story setting scene. Everything we need to know about the plot is given to us here, largely by exposition from some reporters. We're at the elaborate wedding dinner of Nishi and the daughter of a senior officer of a large construction company. We see and learn about the corrupt characters and the background of corruption. We see notes being passed, a police inspector showing up, reporters talking to themselves (and to us). We see the strangely expressionless face of Nishi. We see a large cake decorated to look like an office building come rolling in right after the wedding cake, and we note a red rose sticking out from a seventh floor window of the cake. We learn this represents the window where five years earlier a mid-level bureaucrat jumped to his death. And off we go into the rest of the tale.Mifune does a terrific job as Nishi. He made Nishi's obsession believable. I also liked very much Takashi Shimura's portrayal of Moriyama, the obsequious and reliable bureaucrat, and Tatusuya Mihashi as Nishi's brother-in-law. Probably the most thankless role was played by Kyoko Kagawa as Nishi's wife. She noted in an interview on the disc that almost every emotion her character felt had to be shown indirectly and with reserve. She does a fine job.Don't mistake me; the movie is interesting and the story keeps moving ahead. Just don't expect a Kurosawa masterpiece. If at all possible, don't read the two essays in the booklet that accompanies the disc. The one written by Chuck Stephens, identified as a contributing editor to something called Film Comment, is particularly mannered and pretentious. With their labored pedantry and jarring attempts at similes and alliteration, the essays do the film no good service.The Criterion DVD picture looks just fine. The important extra is a 33-minute documentary on the making of the film. Several of the actors look back and comment on their roles and what it was like working with Kurosawa.