In an opinion poll organized in Japan sometime in the forties, 71% of those
interviewed were against the abolition of capital punishment. Since then years
have passed: we still have death penalty here and there, and still many people
believe that in extreme cases such a verdict is justified. Have they witnessed
an execution, ever?

Koshikei (Death by Hanging), made in 1968 by Nagisa Oshima.

I'm taking this time a totally non-systematic approach; trying to understand a
whole cinematic current just by watching movies that are totally unknown to me.
Each new movie as a new experience, adding just my own understanding to what I
have already got from films previously seen (I mean, films of the Japanese New
Wave).

It's refreshing while it makes serious folks crazy. I'm feeling like the
illiterate guy who went to a movie first time in life and was impressed just by
a little mouse who had been for one second in a scene: a tinny spot on one
corner. Nobody else had noticed the mouse (even the authors of the movie,
director, screenwriter, whichever).

What's more, Oshima seems to change the style with each new movie, so my way to
see his works is hundred percent craziness.

I started to write this post just a couple of hours after watching his Death by
Hanging. I had gone to the theater very tired and the extreme violence of
Oshima's sarcasm made me sick. Though I felt it was a great movie (how could
that happen? vibes, probably :)

So, I went the following day to watch it again. Crazy, isn't it? Well, not
exactly. Believe it or not, I was rewarded this time: a great movie deserves to
be tasted.

If The Night of the Killer reminded me of Jarmusch, this time the huge talent in
building a universe of macabre insanity sent me to La Muerte De Un Burócrata of
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (and to all great Latino-Americans). And Kafka, too, came
into picture.

Is it a movie against the capital punishment? I think it's much more: it's the
whole system; the system is just bullshit. I cannot remember now a more nihilist
movie!

It starts in a strictly documentary style: the execution of a convict. The facts
are clear as hell: the convict raped and killed two high-school girls.

The prosecutor is present, also the prison educational officer: he has had long
discussions with the convict, to help him understand the gravity of the crimes.

A priest officiates the last rites. There is a small Buddhist shrine on the
wall. It is now closed, as the convict is a Catholic. After the religious
service is over, the convict is offered his last meal: cakes and fruit, along
with a cup of tea; then the last cigarette.

After all this is done, the convict is blindfolded and handcuffed, then led to
the execution room. A noose is passed over his neck. He is brought over a trap
that opens at the signal made by the execution officer. The body falls through
this trap and is throttled by the noose. A doctor establishes the absence of
vital signs and pronounces the death.

The legal procedure carries an inherent solemnity and is carefully observed in
all details: the system is acting to keep us safe; the system is in full
control.

However, there is a little something this time: the vital signs do not fade!
Usually it takes around twelve minutes, fifteen at most. Now, twenty five
minutes have passed, and nothing: the body refuses to die.

Who will take the control? The prosecutor declines: his only responsibility is
to witness. It comes to the prison commander: the convict should be hanged
again. Impossible: he is unconscious. The convict must be aware of what happens,
otherwise it would be no punishment, just killing. It comes to the doctor to
resuscitate the convict.

The thing is that the convict comes back to life with amnesia. He does not know
who he is, where he is, what's going on. So it comes to the educational officer.
He starts to explain, but the convict is like a new born: he is completely
ignorant of society, laws, morale, passions, and the like.

So the educational officer has to reenact the crimes in front of the convict, to
make him understand what he's done.

And once the reenactment takes the stage there is no more limit to pure
insanity: this film director, Nagisa Oshima, is nothing short of a madman
genius. What follows is a mix of real and imaginary (because some facts cannot
be recreated, only imagined), a mix more and more confusing for the personages
on the screen: from a point on nobody there knows any more what's real and
what's imaginary.

As the reenactment of the crimes advances the criminal himself seems more and
more innocent, while the prison officials get more and more out of control; and
the criminal cannot understand what's with this bunch of idiotic perverts with
hidden sadistic desires and killer instincts, each one with a background of real
war crimes. They are Japanese, for them he's just an anonymous R, the common
nickname they give to each Korean immigrant (one more detail, just to add to
this craziness: his real name is K, just as Kafka's hero).

The only person to keep cool remains Oshima himself, who's sitting at the
invisible board of the game and pushes the controls, adding to real and
imaginary a third dimension: the whole reenactment is so to speak reenacted
again for us, as The film director knows when to cut the action and insert his
own comments.

There is an amazing scene somewhere toward the end, like a complex musical
structure with two parallel motives: the prison personnel got drunk and they
chat about their own war crimes, ignoring the convict who is talking with his
sister (reenacted through the imagination of the educational officer); little by
little the convict understands from her what's all this about; meanwhile the
officials are progressing in their drunkenness.

And in the end the convict will understand that he is just a creation of the
system, he belongs to the system the same way the prison officials belong, the
same way all of us belong. He understands he is guilty, because once in the
system, each one is guilty; so he accepts to be hanged again, in the name of all
R's in the world, i.e. in our name. And the noose remains empty!

Is it because the movie played all time between real and imaginary? Is it
because we cannot distinguish anymore between real and imaginary? Oshima would
probably say that everybody deserves capital punishment: killing everybody is
killing nobody.