Shirô Toyoda's Jigohuken or Portrait of Hell (1969) builds steadily to a shattering penultimate sequence, then peters out in a disappointing denouement. If you cut the climax off, I bet it would haunt people forever, and such is the power of its individual high points that it still commands attention.The great Tatsuya Nakadai (Harakiri, Ran) plays a Korean painter at the court of a nasty lord who fancies his daughter. Both men are tyrants: Nakadai forbids his daughter to marry her lover because he's not Korean, but then has her taken away from him by the corrupt and lascivious ruler. He then conceives the idea of a painting of the inferno: his patron/tormentor, the lord, doubts his ability to render so abstract a concept, but Nakadai says he sees Hell all around him, so it will be no particular challenge.This is all good stuff. Nakadai is superhumanly intense,...
- 1/17/2018
- MUBI
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