An Obsession Review
As Artsmagic continues to work their way through Shinji Aoyama's back catalogue it is impossible not to be impressed by the sheer range of the man's work. Though Aoyama is best known for his serious art house drama Eureka Artsmagic began their run through his back catalog with his gory horror film EM Embalming before moving on to the wryly comic crime film Wild Life. For their third Aoyama release Artsmagic have gone with Aoyama's hazy, dreamlike noir An Obsession.
When the Aum cult launched their sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system it left an indelible mark on the Japanese psyche. Not only was this a horrific terrorist act that killed hundreds and injured thousands, many of whom are still dealing with the long term health consequences of exposure to a deadly nerve agent, but this was an attack by their own, by an entirely home grown group. What could have caused these people to attack their own homeland, and how do you go on living your day to day lives in the aftermath of such an event?
Aoyama clearly had Aum in mind when making An Obsession, a film that takes Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog as it's launching point. Armed men in decontamination suits patrol the city and the media are hounding the leader of the Great Truth Cult over a group of missing women. The police are tracking a man for an unstated reason but stand by powerless when their target guns down the leader of Great Truth in the midst of a crowd of media. One pair of officers attends to the gunned down cult leader while another sets off on foot in pursuit of the gun man.
One of the officers in pursuit is Sosuke, our central character. A driven man, Sosuke has been working non stop for three weeks, accepting extra shifts, sleeping in a capsule hotel and completely ignoring his wife. “Women expect too much,” he tells his partner. “Work comes first for a man.” When Sosuke closes in on the assailant in a tunnel the man wheels and opens fire on him, striking him once in the chest. He is taken to hospital and survives - although at the cost of one of his lungs, which is removed leaving a literal empty space within his chest – but in the confusion following Sosuke's shooting an unknown man takes his gun.
Sosuke's wife leaves him while he is in hospital and he quits his job. While he can function with only one lung he is frequently winded and short of breath. He is set to live a quiet life until his former partner informs him that his gun has been used in a shooting. And then another. Although it is no longer any of his concern Sosuke becomes increasingly obsessed by his missing gun and begins a search for it based on the only piece of information he has: the remembered clatter of wooden clogs echoing through the abandoned tunnel where he was shot.
An Obsession is a film that moves in the shadow of death, a subtle haze that drags against the film's momentum as if it were moving through liquid. It is informed by an omnipresent sadness that infects everything it comes in contact with, though I doubt any of the film's souls could track it to any specific source. Sosuke's lost lung is a clear reference to the after effects of the sarin attacks and the death wish of his target, who simply seems to wish to liberate as many as possible from this pointless existence before dying himself, is clearly meant to mirror the mindset of the Aum cult members. Aoyama's fluid camera work is in full effect here, the film shot largely hand held in low light, high contrast, the camera weaving through Sosuke's physical and emotional landscape.
An Obsession plays like grieving. It asks no questions. It offers no solutions. It is simply a quiet reflection on an unfathomable tragedy and it shows once again that Aoyama is a remarkably subtle director with a shockingly wide range of skills.
An Obsession is due for release on DVD October 25th.
