THE MYSTERY OF RAMPO
A film review by Craig Good
Copyright 1996 Craig Good
"The Mystery of Rampo", Japan, 1994.
"If I could say it, I wouldn't have to dance it." -- Isadora Duncan
"If you can talk about it, you're not using cinema." -- David Lynch
Authors, at least the good ones, sometimes have the experience of watching their characters come to life. They stop being words on a page and start dictating their own lines and actions. For Rampo Edogawa in "The Mystery of Rampo" this comes literally true. His novel of a young wife killing her husband is banned by the government censors, and then he sees a newspaper account of an identical killing. More, when he goes to spy out the woman, she looks exactly like the character he visualized in his book. As he is drawn toward her the line between fact and fantasy, between dreams and reality, bends, blurs and then shatters.
"Rampo" is a hard movie to pidgeonhole, which is its greatest strength. It's not "Carlos Saura's Carmen" meets "The Twilight Zone", and it's not really what would happen if David Lynch had been born Japanese. It does have a palpable and convincing dreamlike quality mixed with linear storytelling.
I'm a sucker for films which blur the dream line such as "The Last Wave", "Altered States" and "Carlos Saura's Carmen". But I don't know if I should really review this movie because it touched me at such a deeply personal level that to learn that others see it differently might make me feel that I have exposed something too private.
For one thing, the woman in the film, played by former model Michiko Hada, is so beautiful that she literally wrung tears from my eyes. It wasn't until the morning after I saw the movie that I recognized the emotion. They were exactly the same tears I cried when looking at the sculpture of an incosolable woman on a tomb in Florence, Italy. The deep, anguished sadness and sense of loss on that perfect marble face generated in me one of the most powerful experiences I have ever had while beholding a work of art. And here was a walking, breathing figure equally as beautiful and touching -- at least to me.
For another, the film is so *cinematic* that to try to write about it seems as futile as trying to photograph the Grand Canyon. "The Mystery of Rampo" is filmed poetry. It operates at an emotional level which makes a strong undercurrent beneath the surface story. It is visually rich and unusually crafted, carried along in a torrent of excellent sound design and Akira Senju's lush, romantic symphonic score.
The performances by Naoto Takenaka as Rampo, Masahiro Motoki as his detective alter ego, and Michiko Hada as Shizuku the mysterious woman who may be a murderer, a victim, or merely a figment of the imagination, are all subtle and heart felt. Takenaka's smooth baritone in effect harmonizes beautifully with the flower-delicate voice of Hada as each character seems weighed down and crushed by every external force in their lives except each other. The resignation of Rampo after being rebuffed by the censor and then having to go to a superficial party to celebrate one of his mystery novels being turned into a B action movie reads in every quiet gesture. And Shizuku needs merely cast an empty gaze at the floor to convey her sadness. The magnetism drawing their characters together may be obsession, salvation, destruction, or all three.
"The Mystery of Rampo" is a strange movie, no doubt about it. It is unlikely to appeal to those who think that "Twister" is destined to be the best movie of the year. But if you're inclined to seek out something a little different, I think you could do far worse. I have no idea if it got any theatrical distribution in the US in 1994, but it is at least available now on laserdisc.
--Craig
good@pixar.com
Amore, Mangiare, Famiglia, Pace.
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