"The times are dislocated, it's terrible, I'm going to straighten it out." This is a line from Hamlet. And Makoto Shibata (Keisuke Kudo), a theatrical actor, plays Hamlet on stage, and in real life, he also rubs Hamlet's blood into the blood, an avenger bent on revenge for his sister.
But what he wants to fight is the laws of this era. Article 39 of the Criminal Law of Japan stipulates that "the execution of a person who is physically or mentally abnormal shall not be punished" and "the sentence for a crime committed by a person with a physical or mental disability shall be commuted".
At the beginning of the film, Article 39 of the Criminal Law, the name of the film is red, vertical and white, and the cross structure is presented. The cross represents both suffering and a punishment, the death penalty.
So who bears the suffering? And who should be executed? Who should forgive? Who deserves salvation?
We doubt, we cannot judge, we are like a blind man, we can neither forgive nor redeem. We wander, we mourn. There seems to be nothing we can do, however, we also have to elaborate.
During this film, I thought of a novel by Keigo Higashino, and I thought about it for a long time before I remembered the name of that novel, "The Blade of Wandering". Chang Feng's daughter was brutally trampled to death, only because the suspect was a minor, and he would only receive a slight punishment. Chang Feng thought of his own revenge and pursued and killed the criminal suspect all the way. Wanted by the police, he did not complete his revenge plan and died at the gunpoint of the police. And in this film, the director has exhausted the reverse suspense, making you want to stop.
The film begins with a rainy day. Since then, it has often rained, even if it does not rain, and it is also based on gray, white and black. The whole world, gray and gloomy. Objective, subjective, it seems, is all the case. A world without hope must also fight to the end.
This film is based on gray, white and black, after watching it for a long time, I thought it was a black and white film? In the male protagonist's memories, the gray sea, the screaming seagulls, the dilapidated buildings, the children buried in the sand, and the drama staged, all gray and black.
Everything is gloomy, everything is hopeless.
However, in this gray world, there is a large clown-like mouth painted bright red on the lips, (what is this to devour?). Between devouring and being devoured, Eros exists. Where does Eros exist? There is a lot of food, (Ogawa's mother always makes a table of meals waiting for Ogawa to return, which is a kind of flattering bondage, right?) There are blood-red tulips, (that is the warmth of other people's worlds, the happiness that cannot be expected), and there are red trains, green trains. (I wanted to escape from it all, but it wasn't over yet.) They paint the whole film with a touch of charm, weirdness, and confusion, making you unable to withdraw, making you waver, making you sympathetic and hateful.
These vivid and abnormal scenes and the whole world of gray, white and black tones are in stark contrast, both embellishment and contrast. A little warm color reflects the cruelty of this world.
The heroine of the film, Kafumi Ogawa, appears in the rain and comes to the research institute where Fujishiro practices. Fujishiro handed her a black package and said that there was a sharp case in which the suspect had to be mentally identified. Kaokawa, with a pair of glasses, looks timid and cowardly, but is actually stubborn and persistent. She had a mentally ill mother. Her obedience to her mother, the final rebellion, and then reconciliation. (To be honest, Ogawa licked the rice grains from her mother's mouth with his mouth, which really made people a little sick to their stomachs.) Because both are deeply in love with a man. A man who escapes by killing people drunk. That man was her mother's husband, her father.
Kazumi Ogawa tells his father a story, leading Makoto Shibata (Keisuke Kudo) to show more signs of fraud in the process of psychiatric identification.
She made public the results of the psychiatric process in court, exposing Keisuke Kudo who tried to cover up his crimes with multiple personalities, but this could not be notarized as a court of attorney. Spirit is a veil of ethereality, and no one can lift it to see clearly.
She followed the professor Teng Dai, a psychiatrist who was more like a psychiatric person than a mental patient, always walking with a sad and compassionate look. He seemed to understand, but he didn't understand. He was not necessarily upset that Ogawa had overturned his appraisal results. But there is a meaningful scene in which Ogawa and Fujishiro walk out of the courtroom and the two go their separate ways in front of a gray dilapidated building, seemingly suggesting that psychiatric identification cannot actually support the law.
The male protagonist in the film, Keisuke Kudo, is a highly intelligent, calm, and questioning the avenger of Article 39 of the Criminal Law. In order to get revenge, he changed his identity and pushed his beloved wife to a wanderer to live instead of his identity; for revenge, he studied psychology with his heart, studied drama, and he wanted to become a real actor with multiple personalities.
Like Hamlet, he has deliberately pretended to be crazy and stupid, and his will to take revenge is becoming more and more determined.
He had been deliberate for a long time, he had designed everything, and he had finally picked up the dagger, but what he saw was an even more tragic scene, a pregnant woman lying in a pool of blood, already dead and dead. In the end, he strangled the enemy to death. He faked the killing scene. He was caught performing a play. He intimidated defense lawyer Nagamura in the detention center. His only purpose was revenge, but not to bear the punishment of the law. Is he an angel or a demon?
Pay for your teeth with your teeth, and your blood debt will be paid in blood. This was not originally the solution, but there was no way around it.
What does it say that people cannot be resurrected from the dead? What is a virtue of forgiveness? When the little policeman informed Chida of the verdict of the trial, Keisuke Kudo must have carved a big no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
When his mother died prematurely due to grief, and when he saw Chida alive without guilt, Kudo Kesuke must have devised a step of revenge and continued to improve.
Chida, a psychopath and an incorruptible devil, brutally raped and killed a first-grade girl, Keisuke Kudo's sister, at the age of 15, and broke her hands and feet. Only because he was a minor, he was also identified by the hospital as a mental patient, so he escaped the punishment of the law. After six months in the hospital, he was discharged home.
Go to college, get a job, get married, and you're about to have kids. He had completely forgotten his crimes, and he was at ease and happy. How can fate be arranged in this way? How can heaven have eyes and no pearls? Of course, he must have ruined this happiness with his own hands. Finally the psychosis relapsed, killing his wife and the child in her belly. He must be punished as he deserves. In the end, he was strangled to death by Keisuke Kudo. Although this is a justified sin.
Sheriff Nagoshi, in the pursuit of Chidaji's case, seems to be lazy and loose, but he also pursues it to the end. He loves to chew gum. When he put the gum in a paper cup and kneaded it into a ball and threw it in front of Keisuke Kudo, it seemed to be disdainful. I don't know if he despised Kudo, or Kudo's criminal methods, or the law. He said: You like acting. How nice it would be if you had been acting and not killing people! Kudo replied: "I think so too." Listening to Kudo's answer, he stood there, he should know everything, so he could not convict Kudo Keisuke.
Finally, in court, Kudo said that my murder weapon was aimed at this unreasonable law. He confessed that he was Keisuke Kudo. He exited the courtroom in slow motion, leaving Ogawa standing alone in the empty courtroom.
At the end of the film, the procuratorate changes the complaint and requests another trial. Keisuke Kudo eventually became an independent person. The case is still pending. The director handed over the open-ended ending to the audience, how do you judge Keisuke Kudo?
Who does the law protect? How can loopholes in the law be remedied?
The rhythm of the whole film is not hurried, the memories and reality are constantly alternating, the description is delicate, and there are many meaningful scenes and details. For example, in the process of Ogawa's spiritual appraisal of Kudo, the director used a lot of shaky shots to express the uncertainty of the psychiatric appraisal. When Ogawa tells his father's story, he uses a strange low-pitched string orchestral soundtrack, which is heartwarming, depressing, and repressive until it explodes.
It's a movie that makes people sigh and have to reflect.