Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Cure

The focal point of the narrative in "Cure" is the lack of meaning, the absence of logical connection, the impossibility for the viewer to identify with the serial killer who seems to commit brutal murders by carving an "X" on the throats of his victims.

In "Cure," perfectly ordinary people, without any previous record and apparently for no reason, kill unknown individuals or relatives, driven by a guiding spirit that governs them through hypnosis. It is from here that begins the journey into the inferno for Inspector Takabe, incredulous when faced with a surreal mystery, who behind his mystical armor of a man of law hides a fragile creature, used to traditional investigations: evidence, motive, and thus, explanation and resolution of the case.

Here, there is no explanation, and this is enough to collapse a castle of certainties painstakingly built over the years, insinuating in Takabe the germ of madness and illness, which will lead him to identify with his wife's mental problems and immerse himself in a dead-end dark alley.

Faced with the most insoluble mystery and absence of motive, the certainties of man waver and are wrecked, leaving room for the most undeniable chaos.

After filming several movies starting already in the '70s, the Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is finally recognized by the Western eye with this "Cure," from 1997.

"Cure," which digs into the well of genres to extract new material to shape, according to Kurosawa, "My cinema is made of frayed and elusive universes, where the search for truth, a reason, or a motive seems to reach victorious conclusions that then, however, always twist, expand towards unmeasurable boundaries, transforming works that begin as genre stories into abysses of the incomprehensibility of man's reasons and actions." Who could fault him? This small great thriller, after all, starts quite normally with the discovery of a prostitute's corpse and Takabe notices the existence of other murders with the same modus operandi, but the more time passes, the more the story becomes complicated and profound, bordering on the absurd.

No need for ghosts, apparitions from the beyond, bloody oriental revenges, or Japanese folkloric specters to spread disorder and terror. Kurosawa is interested in the earthly, physical, and everyday world: everyday reality can be far more unsettling than the fantastic, the irrational, the monstrous, and in a society like ours, a skilled hypnotist can unexpectedly become a lethal tool of death and destruction.

And so the climax of the music, the suspense leading to the murder, and the hesitant fear of the victim glancing around after hearing a strange noise no longer exist: Kurosawa shows us the murder without warning and without the aid of a soundtrack (absent here).

A bolt from the blue, catching the viewer by surprise, leaving them stupefied and often incredulous about whether to believe what they’ve just seen.

The direction, once again, is astonishing: beautiful long takes, broad and rarefied editing, rarely tight and with a sober and stripped-down staging, without frills.

Another invention of thriller cinema or simply of horror is the absence of a soundtrack: while for horror film directors (both Western and Eastern), as well as in Kurosawa's recent horror films, music is important to create suspense and tension, here he leans toward absolute silence, making the sound even more crystalline and "true" in its purest form.

Because the true soundtrack of this film is what's around us, elements of daily life: the wind moving the tree branches, the waves of the sea dying on the beach, a washing machine in operation.

A small theater of the absurd, where slitting the carotids of victims with a blood-shaped "X" becomes a recognition tool and a personal signature, without psychological or scientific explanations, where memory loss (the hypnotist, who doesn't even recall his own name) is a mirror reflecting the loss of a nation’s identity—troubled and uncertain, confused and frightened—and to the simple question “who are you? What is your name?” the only response can be “and you, who are you?”, creating a potentially infinite and nerve-wracking game, once again without logical solution and meaningless.

Beautifully executed, with long silences and a skillful camera, "Cure" is a must-see movie if you want to see something truly new, where all the rules of thrill are destroyed, leaving no answers, where the actors are men who have lost their souls and hope, unable to go beyond a logical and orderly reality that no longer exists. A masterpiece of the (non)genre.

(I have already reviewed "Cure," but my writing was so abominable and horrific (see also the terrible error in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's name) that I couldn't bring myself to write again about this great film)