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41 out of 47 people found the following review useful: Reading these comments is as interesting as watching the film, 3 February 2003 Author: BusterB
One of the joys of seeing "foreign" films is catching a glimpse into other cultures. What do other people consider funny? Ordinary? Terrifying? "Cure" puts a Japanese spin on an idea that several American directors have touched on: that evil is something that can afflict perfectly ordinary people. David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" television series explored a similar idea to Kurosawa's: ordinary people afflicted with evil, rather than evil people, as such.The difference between Lynch and Kurosawa is that Lynch saw evil as some sort of independent force, whereas Kurosawa sees evil more as an idea. "Cure" presents us with a world in which words and ideas are a kind of virus that passes from person to person, leaving destruction in its wake. A carrier who doesn't fall ill himself, but who infects others with murderous instincts.For this reason, some of the comments here surprised me. Frequent complaints about how elliptical the film is, and how the characters need to be better defined. In particular, several complaints that the film never explained who the drifter was or where he came from. Surprising, because that, to me, was the point: he was nobody special. He didn't come from anywhere special. Viewers brought up on a diet of American cinema will find "Cure" frustrating: American thrillers always explain who the killer is, why he kills, and, most importantly, why he is different from you and me. This last point is to comfort the audience, to let them know that they could never be like the killer, that they are outside the drama, watching. Kurosawa presses the opposite point: this could be you; there is nothing special about these men. You should not be convinced that you are different from them.I will admit that if you dislike slowly-paced cinema, a la Tarkovsky, or if you don't buy the hypnotism "mumbo-jumbo" on which the film is based, then you will probably find "Cure" tiresome. I enjoy Tarkovsky, and I found that it wasn't a lot of work to suspend disbelief on the point of hypnotism. Finally, this film is an intellectual thriller; it's more frightening for its implications than for what actually goes on. The point is not to scare you and then wrap it all up neatly at the end (like most American thrillers), but instead to show you a possible world and then scare you after you leave the cinema with thoughts of what might follow.Check out the interview at http://www.reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/interviews/kurosawa as well.
19 out of 22 people found the following review useful: Possibly the spookiest movie I have ever seen., 20 March 2003 Author: inframan from the lower depths
The only time I can recall being as spooked by a film was when my parents took me to see "Hangover Square" - a gothic Jack the Ripper thriller - when I was 8 years old. I guess they couldn't find a baby-sitter. That took me about a year to get over, a low-key, all-too-realistic chiller about the banality of insanity. "Cure" is such a perfect depiction of madness that just about every shot could be framed & hung in a gallery. You can't analyze this one, it doesn't follow a cartesian line of logic; nor does it blast you with halloweenish surprises in the style of Elm Street & its knock-offs. This has far deeper & subtler impact. I found as I relaxed into this film that images of recurring dreams & nightmares I've had since childhood arose & blended into what I was watching. Can't get much creepier than that. That said, the images & emotions that this film evokes are on a very high level of poetic art. One of the most impressive elements of "Cure" is the director's ability to convey the magnetic manipulative appeal of Mamiya - surely one of the scariest things in real life & very difficult to convincingly convey on screen.
10 out of 10 people found the following review useful: Remarkable Craft, 15 January 2002 Author: Christian (christian94@hotmail.com) from Montreal, Canada
This movie has a simple premise and a simple story that is nevertheless explored in an incredibly delicate and talented way. Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an extremely talented individual and perhaps the only writer/director who is able to simultaneously scare and mentally challenge me at the same time (note that very few are capable of doing one or the other). Although the writing is very good (story and dialogue), Kurosawa's real strength is his ability to represent visually the progressive denouement of his story. He rather subtly show you and let your imagination and intellect figure it out for you than to spell out bluntly what the straightforward storyline should be. It does not, however, get to the point of chaotic untidiness or pointlessness, for he is able to guide you slowly along the way (I would then say that he is slightly easier to follow than David Lynch is, but then again who is not). He uses here a strikingly effective technique where he shows you a room from one angle and later lets you discover that room more and more as the movie advances. His camera shots are always well planned and he is thus able to draw you in the movie bit by bit-quite an eerie sensation.The acting is generally good and believable. The camera-work is a stand out.There are many scenes where you will be able to appreciate this superior artistic and technical quality. The music is good and tenseful, but it is sparse and what is used instead is a contrast of minimalist and grossly amplified everyday sounds that vibrate through the movie. When there is no sound, you often find yourself holding your breath. This is not used strictly as a ploy, but rather creates a mood and further pulls you in the general atmosphere of the movie. Most of all, again, the directing is top notch. The pace which is slow enough for you to have the time to both think and be afraid is not slow enough that it gets boring, although you should not expect a North American expeditious run through the film. Everything is there, but it comes to you in slow, meticulously chosen dosage. Only, at the end can you truly see the masterpiece that has been drawn stroke by stroke in front of you.One of the reason this movie actually works is that it is designed to play with your mind and trigger fear and reaction based not only on emotion, but on reason. People are dying, but everything is calm, rational. The tone and story are pretty much realistic and, at the end of the experience, you may feel beyond your volitional control that you are actually convinced of the "strange" things in the movie. Hopefully this feeling will subside...
12 out of 15 people found the following review useful: A modern masterpiece, 4 February 2002 Author: Lawrence (LGwriter49@aol.com) from Astoria, NY
The serial killer movie has by now been done to death (so to speak), so it's especially rewarding to see this assured film that takes a truly ingenious approach. Kurosawa's protagonist is a seemingly dazed young man who, in spite of his aimless demeanor, is a master hypnotist. To reveal any more of what happens would be to give a bit too much away.The subtlety and fluidity of this film is remarkable. The main character can be charming and simultaneously irritating when he speaks. He turns his speaking partner's question back on the speaker; he answers with vague phrases that nevertheless, over the course of the film, gradually bring out the complexity of his psyche. Pitting him against a cop whose wife seems to suffer from something like the hypnotist's 'brand' of mental wanderings underlines the thematic context of the film: what we know is almost certainly only what we think we know. And what we think we know is almost certainly based on someone else's 'knowledge', derived the same as ours.That knowledge is a collective phenomenon, a shared and critical feature of the 'hive' is not a novel concept in film. But its presentation here is bold and original. To link that idea with a person who destroys life is a master stroke; it says that what we know vanishes in a suddenly extinguished flame, or a tiny stream of water that appears, runs, and then is seen no more.This is a film that should definitely be added to the great films of the 90s. Since it was not released in the U.S. until 2001, I vote for it being one of the great films of that year here.
9 out of 10 people found the following review useful: An enigmatic hypnotic and disturbing meditation on self control and the fear of losing it, 25 August 2002 Author: Gizmoitus from Los Angeles
It's not easy to give yourself over to this film, for like the unwilling victims' it portrays, it rather slowly and methodically casts its spell, whisking you farther and farther away from the comfortable rhythm and conventions of the crime thriller it appears to be on the surface.Kyua's austere landscapes are in fitful turns picture postcard beautiful, mundane and mysterious. Much of the story unfolds in master shots, keeping you at a distance from the characters and affording the illusion of a comfortable intellectual detachment which it meticulously strips away scene by scene.The plot is deceptively simple; a weary Japanese Homicide detective is investigating a series of grotesque murders. Each murder seems to have the same ritualistic pattern, yet in each case the culprit turns out to be an ordinary individual, dazed and unable to offer any motive for their horrific crime. Nothing seems to connect the murderers to each other, until the Detective picks up the trail of an amnesia afflicted drifter who seems unable to answer even the simplest questions about himself, yet displays a disconcerting ability to reflect any line of questioning about his own identity back upon the questioner. Time and again he returns to a question at the core of the mystery:"Who are you?"It seems more and more, as the drifter is passed from detective, to guard, to clinician to pyschiatrist, that this question is far more dangerous than anyone might have guessed.Kyua is a model of subtlety and restraint. Although there's a significant amount of implied violence and several shocking scenes of murder, these aren't gratuitous. Kyua's particular genius is it's ability to transform it's urban Japanese landscapes and even the most common objects from familiar to suspect and eventually sinister: a length of piping, a flashing traffic sign, a blast furnace, the sound of ocean surf at night, a flickering lighter, a dark apartment lined with academic tomes, a puddle of spilled water, the letter X smeared on a wall, a deserted rundown building.There are few filmmakers with the audacity and imagination to venture into the places Kyua wants to take you. Fincher, Lynch and Cronenberg come to mind as those who time and time again have shown their willingness, and perhaps compulsion to return to the unsettling territory of perception, identity, and the boundary between normalcy and psychosis. If the director's first name were only David (it's not, his name is Kiyoshi Kurosawa) we'd have the makings of a good conspiracy theory here.The film was released in 1997 but only recently has made it's way to western shores, and US distribution by Cowboy Pictures, and has wound its way inevitably to cable networks like Sundance. It's cast includes Koji Yakusho as the detective Takabe. Fans of Japanese cinema will recognize this fine actor from his award winning roles in "Shall we Dance" and "The eel".Kyua isn't the type of visceral immediate drama that the average suspense film provides. If you can put aside your preconceived notions and allow it to unfold in it's own time, I suspect you will find the questions it asks and secrets it reveals to be all the more disquieting, problematic and in the end profound. Many critics have lined up to call this film a masterpiece, and pegged Kurosawa as one of a number of japanese directors worth watching.
9 out of 12 people found the following review useful: unsettling, 21 February 2002 Author: superfly-13
In the wake of the sarin-gas attack mounted by the Aum Shinrikyo cult on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, horror films enjoyed a sudden spurt of popularity in Japan. Many of the films focus on hypnosis or media-induced violence, the fragile normalcy of modern life, and grisly deeds committed by seemingly ordinary citizens. This unnerving 1997 thriller, which seems like a direct response to the Aum Shinrikyo incident, offers a glimpse of how our own national cinema may absorb the blow of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A rash of senseless murders wracks Tokyo; the victims have deep X-shaped gashes across their throats, and the killers (often their loved ones) are found in a daze. The only connection appears to be a mysterious drifter (Masato Hagiwara) who gets into random strangers' heads with a single, oft-repeated question: "Who are you?" What makes this subtle, quiet shocker so unsettling is the idea that everyone has secret resentments that render him or her hypnotically pliable--that everyone harbors some glimmer of murderous rage that can be exploited, whether by a drifter or by religious extremists. The writer-director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a prolific Japanese filmmaker who's developing a large cult following here, heightens the unease with buzzing soundtrack noise and eerie long takes that leave us consistently unprepared for the violence to come. And the last sequence will leave people arguing--it requires close attention, culminating in an ending even more disturbing in its implications than the conclusion of SEVEN.
8 out of 11 people found the following review useful: An unusual pattern of murder., 1 June 2001 Author: awalter1 (acwalter@verizon.net) from Seattle, WA ~ USA
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
People are turning up dead, and the murders are connected by a similarity in the mutilation of the corpses. However, each murder seems to have been committed by a different person--a person who, in some cases, was a close relative or acquaintance of the victim. Eventually the police discover that an amnesiac man has turned up at many of the murder sites. This man, though, seems to have neither long-term nor short-term memories; he often cannot remember a question long enough to answer it. A certain police detective Katabe follows a trail to uncover the man's dangerous secrets, and he risks getting far more involved than he should."Cure" treads similar psychic territory to "The Cell" and "Paperhouse" while avoiding the shared-dream phenomenon and relying on imagery which is much more subtle and often more effective. The director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is consistently elliptical in his methods--meaning that he leaves certain gaps in the film and invites the audience to fill them in. Well-considered ingenuity is good, but abstraction taken to the point of chaos is bad. When it comes to imagery, Kurosawa's elliptical method compliments his audience, assuming that people can make certain necessary logical deductions, associating visual cues with their psychic equivalent. But when this technique is applied to plot, things get a little messy. Something is definitely wrong when, even after the film is finished, the audience has to wonder: When did this particular event occur? Who did it? Did it really happen or not? Such questions plague the film's ending, and confusion in a plot-dependent film is, quite obviously, bad.Regardless of its flaws, "Cure" is a welcome addition to the genre for its spare use of graphic imagery and for the attitude of intellectual respect Kurosawa shows his audience.
5 out of 6 people found the following review useful: Subliminal to Visceral and back, 21 September 2001 Author: jaycbird from Atlanta and San Francisco
A delicate, yet exceptionally gorey murder mystery from Japan. Truly so psychological, that I'm still not sure what might have been real and what might have been a Jungian chase through the house of a man's mind. The images bleed from the mundane and sterile to the nightmarish with such subtlety and grace, that I began to question the reality of the simplest scenes.The film is as dreamlike and subliminal as the villain it chases. Not really a thriller, though I had no clue what might happen to who next. Not really suspenseful, though I couldn't look away in fear of missing a detail. It is DELIBERATELY PACED, which might put off the typical murder mystery fan. However, if you just sit back and stare into the light, as do the hapless victims of the film, you will find it to be an unnerving experience.
6 out of 8 people found the following review useful: wild and weird--but in a good way, 4 March 2006 Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
This is certainly one of the stranger Japanese movies I have ever seen. It's a sort of horror and crime film rolled together and will probably be of interest to lovers of both genres--provided they have a high tolerance for a very unusual and, at times, vague film. The plot involves a sick freak that has devoted years to investigating an older, forgotten form of hypnosis where you CAN make people do things against their wills and moral code. For kicks, he makes them commit horrendous murders and for a while the police are at a loss for why all these seemingly senseless murders occur. Well, about midway through the film the perpetrator is caught. From then on, it's a bizarre and at times surreal exploration of his demented world. The ending is very unusual and a tiny bit unclear, but overall the film is very good and sure to make you think.NOTE--there is some nudity and very explicit murders. This is not a movie for kids!
8 out of 13 people found the following review useful: No Cure for Confusion?, 16 April 2006 Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls
I had high expectations for "Cure", partly because I'm intrigued by serial-killer stories and several people had claimed this one was even better than "Seven" and "Silence of the Lambs" (ahem!) but mostly because this movie was released shortly BEFORE the Asian horror/thriller hype forever broke loose with "Ringu". Maybe this still was an Asian thriller that is genuinely good and/or earned its cult reputation in an honest way, rather than because everyone praises it blindly? Well, the answer is yes...and no. The basic premise of "Cure" is truly compelling and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's filming style is definitely impressive, but eventually the exaggerated complexity ruins the whole lot. Just once, I'd like to see a Japanese occult-thriller that doesn't leave me scratching my head after the final denouement. Anyway, let's just focus on the first hour and the atmosphere! Fatigue copper Takabe is tormented by a mysterious series of killings in Tokyo. The culprits are always caught immediately at the scene of the crime and, even though they're seemly unrelated, they're all highly unlikely assassins and mysteriously marked their victims' bodies with a large "X". The one thing they all have in common turns out to be a brief encounter with Mr. Mamiya; an odd drifter with amnesia and a dubious past involving the study of hypnosis. "Cure" features a high tension level during the first hour (when the murders still are a giant riddle) and you also definitely sympathize with the main characters. Detective Takabe is a good man with noble ideals, the unfortunate "murderers" truly evoke feelings of compassion and Mr. Mamiya has a fascinating personality, despite his malicious (?) intentions. The acting performances are amazing and Kurosawa patiently gives his cast the opportunity to show their versatile talents. There's few explicit gore but several highly disturbing images of mutilated corpses and suicides that really aren't for the weak-hearted. The music is excellent and Kurosawa's directing is solid up until the last sequences, when he regretfully leaves too many questions unanswered and relies too much on the supernatural aspect.
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