Man Eel Unagi
Man and the Eel: A Look at Symbolism and Themes in Unagi
In May of 1997 Unagi premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival in France and won the prestigious top honor of the Palme d'Or. Written and directed by filmmaker Shohei Imamura, Unagi tells the story of Takuro Yamashita who murders his wife after catching her sleeping with another man. After spending eight years in prison, where he learns the barber's trade, Yamashita is released on parole under the kind watch of a Buddhist monk. During his time behind bars Yamashita formed an attachment to an eel, with whom he talks to on a regular bases, and is allowed to bring out of the prison and into his normal life. With the aid of the monk, Yamashita is opens up a barber's shop and start his life anew in a small town where no one knows his past. One day, while out fishing, Yamashita happens upon and saves Keiko, a young woman who is passed out in the grass after overdosing on sleeping pills. After she recovers, Keiko comes and works with Yamashita at the barber shop; where she begins to develop feelings for him while the two uncover each other's troubled past.
The film itself seems to be a window through which the audience views Yamashita's perception of the events that take place. Firstly, the letter that Yamashita receives which reveal to him the truth of his wife's adultery. At the beginning of the film we see Yamashita almost obsessively rereading the letter. As the film progresses Yamashita begins to question who sent him the letters, or if they even existed it all. “That letter? I wonder who wrote it? [...] But maybe... there was no such letter in the first place.” (Unagi 01:21:37) By the end of the film Yamashita comes to the conclusion that everything was fabricated, after the garbage man pops out of the water and declares, “There were no letters. Jealousy made you hallucinate.” (Unagi 01:47:25) and then subsequently disappears. If this is the case, and the letters were just a hallucination of Yamashita's, then by the audience seeing them in the first few minutes of the film, you have established right away a connection between Yamashita's perception and the perception of the audience.
Secondly, the connection between Yamashita's wife and Keiko. Both roles in the film are portrayed by Misa Shimizu in an act by Imamura that seems to emphasize to the audience the similarity between the two that Yamashita notices, or perhaps creates. Yamashita first notices Keiko when she catches the eye of a customer as she passes outside the barber shop. This quick glimpse puts in Yamashita's mind the image of his wife, “[...] but she resembled someone... [...] My wife.”
(Unagi 00:31:35) which is incubated until his chance encounter at her suicide, by which time his idea of her appearance has overtaken what she actually looks like. The act of saving Keiko plays a very important role in the psyche of Yamashita. When he saves her it, in his mind, relieves some of the guilt of the murder because he feels like even though he killed his wife, he has also saved her. At the end of the film Yamashita returns to jail after a parole violation and Keiko tells him that she will be waiting for him when he gets out. However, by this point Yamashita has probably realized the folly in his affection to Keiko and will most likely never return to her. He knows that any love for Keiko is just misplaced onto the phantom of his wife.
Lastly, the color red plays a significant role in the film to accent Yamashita's guilt for killing his wife. This is first established in the scene preceding the killing of Yamashita's wife; when he stands outside his house, looks up at the street lamp, and the entire screen takes a deep red hue. Moments later, as Yamashita stabs his wife, spurts of blood spray the screen and obscure our view briefly. As Yamashita stands over his wife we can see that he is covered in blood; the spurts on the screen giving us the graphic depiction of Yamashita's viewpoint during the murder. When Yamashita first lays eyes on Keiko she is wearing a red coat, symbolizing that his guilt over his sins has transformed this woman into the image of his wife. Later on, we also see the message, “Don't be so smug, you filthy wife-killer!” written by the garbage man and posted on the window of the barber shop, accented with a red circle.
Another significant symbol in the film is that of the bentou, which represents love. At the beginning of the film, as Yamashita prepares to go fishing, his wife hands him a neatly wrapped bentou. When he leaves the fishing area to return home to investigate the rumor of his wife's adultery, Yamashita hands one of the fisherman the bentou, foreshadowing the passage of his wife's love from himself to another man. Once Keiko moves in she declares that she will make a bentou for him and drop it off as his fishing boat passes under the bridge. At this point Keiko, as illustrated by her desire to make Yamashita a bentou, is now in love with him. However, her bentou is wrapped in a red cloth, and therefore, whenever she offers her bentou (love) to Yamashita, he is only reminded of his guilt and will not accept it. It isn't until the very end of the film, as Keiko offers him the bentou on his way back to prison, that Yamashita is able to accept his guilt and the love of Keiko.
Midway through the film we are introduced to the character of a garbage man who spent time in prison with Yamashita. This presents a crisis for Yamashita as he struggles to keep his past hidden. The garbage man is, from the beginning, a personification of Yamashita's guilt for what he has done. Up to this point, Yamashita has been, slowly but surely, settling back into normal life, we can see this in the scene where Yamashita and Keiko are cutting hair with a shop full of customers and Yamashita kindly offers the young boy some potatoes. (Unagi 00:41:55) Shortly after their initial meeting the man gives Yamashita a letter that reads:
This is a warning. You aren't reflecting on your conduct and that's bad. You're a murderer too, but you've been chasing that girl. You haven't even visited your wife's grave. Who do you think you are? (Unagi 01:03:22)
Encapsulated in the letter is all of Yamashita's guilt over his actions since since he's left prison, and even that he hasn't done anything to change himself. “I'm no different to what I was in prison.” (Unagi 1:05:46) Near the end of the film; the garbage man, wearing red pants, confronts Yamashita at the barber shop one night. He tells Yamashita how he has done many deeds to repent his sins but no good seems to come to him, yet Yamashita is doing fine while living like nothing happened. To this Yamashita replies, “You're only acting. It's not from your heart!” (Unagi 01:29:24) echoing Yamashita's own thoughts about not changing; putting on a facade in front of people, but inside still being the man he was when he was imprisoned. After the two scuffle, Yamashita throws him outside and yells, “Why keep bothering me? I'm sick of you.” (Unagi 01:31:03) at his guilt, the garbage man, wishing to be set free from the constant haunting of his sins. At the end of the film, after he emerges from the water and tells Yamashita of his hallucinations; the garbage man disappears, begging the question of how much of the garbage man's actions towards Yamashita were real, and how much were a fabricated product of his own guilt.
One strong theme in Unagi is Yamashita's inability to express his feelings. Firstly, during his time in prison Yamashita grows close to an eel that resides in a pond inside the complex. He speaks to the eel and apparently it speaks back, supporting Yamashita, “He doesn't say what I don't want to hear.” (Unagi 00:13:40) After his psyche is broken in prison, this eel becomes the only thing that Yamashita can relate to, and it is only when he speaks to the eel that he begins to uncover things that were clouded in his past, such as the letter. It isn't until the end of the film when Yamashita finally releases the eel back into the wild that he has returned to his normal social behavior. Previously, the eel could be seen as a direct parallel to Yamashita's social existence. Like the eel, Yamashita was trapped in a 'tank', isolated and alone with no real need for communication with anyone in society. We even see Yamashita in the eel's tank during two of his hallucinations. Upon releasing the eel back into the large waters of the ocean, Yamashita has opened himself up to the vastness of human interaction. The eel itself is also symbol for Yamashita's journey throughout the film.
They used to say there were no female eels. Only males. The females carry their eggs. 2,000 kilometers or more, way down south. They only lay when the salinity's right. 2,000 kilometers! That's as far as the equator. The males follow behind. Most of 'em die right there. The tiny fry take up to six months to return to Japan. Most of 'em die on the way back. The ocean's full of dead fry. (Unagi 01:18:33)
At the end of the film it has been discovered that Keiko is pregnant with the baby of a sleazy loan shark. Instead of giving the man the pleasure, and possible leverage, against her, Yamashita declares that the child is his. In private he tells Keiko that he will help raise the child as his own. As he prepares to set the eel free, he remarks to the eel about the similarity between the two of them.
Finally I've become like you. I'll raise a kid by some unknown father. Your mother laid her eggs near the equator. Anonymous sperm fertilized them to life. Nobody knows your father. But you're still a fantastic eel. Sacrificing themselves, they escort the babies back to Japan. Those who are born should be cared for, right? (Unagi 01:48:00)
Secondly, Yamashita's passion plays a large role in his actions in the film. After her murder, Yamashita declares how much he loved, and is still in love with, his wife. Yet during the first scenes of the film, where Yamashita returns home to pick up his fishing gear, we can are given the distinct feeling of distance between the two of them. Imamura aids this through the use of two wide shots through which the scene plays and Yamashita's wife is always kept away from the camera, symbolizing the distance between the audience (Yamashita) and his wife. When Yamashita returns home that night, and find his wife sleeping with another man, it is not just the jealousy he felt at having another man sleep with his wife, it is the jealousy and guilt he feels for not being able to satisfy his wife that leads him to her murder. This is emphasized during the fight between the garbage man and Yamashita as the garbage man ridicules him for not being able to satisfy his wife sexually.
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