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List Price: $29.95Now Price: $21.03Studio: CriterionRunning time: 103Release date: 2004-03-16Theatrical Release date: 1965-02-04Formats: Black & White, Color, Subtitled, NTSCLanguages: Japanese (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
A curse hangs over Kaneto Shindo's primal Japanese classic like a looming storm cloud, but the supernatural has got nothing on the desperation and savagery of the human animal trying to survive the horrors of war. In 16th-century Japan, a hardened middle-aged woman and her young daughter-in-law have turned predator to survive, murdering the soldiers who wander into the sea of pampas grass surrounding their hut and selling their weapons for rice. When their war-deserter neighbor returns home and makes his moves on the young woman, their numb equilibrium is complicated by greed, jealousy, and lust. The consequences are terrible and not exactly surprising, but they are gripping. Shindo's unnerving close-ups, bobbing handheld camerawork, and soundtrack of pounding drums and howling flutes gives Onibaba a queasy intensity. Shooting in stark black and white, he makes even the waving of the grass look ominous as it all but swallows everyone who enters. --Sean Axmaker
A curse hangs over Kaneto Shindo's primal Japanese classic like a looming storm cloud, but the supernatural has got nothing on the desperation and savagery of the human animal trying to survive the horrors of war. In 16th-century Japan, a hardened middle-aged woman and her young daughter-in-law have turned predator to survive, murdering the soldiers who wander into the sea of pampas grass surrounding their hut and selling their weapons for rice. When their war-deserter neighbor returns home and makes his moves on the young woman, their numb equilibrium is complicated by greed, jealousy, and lust. The consequences are terrible and not exactly surprising, but they are gripping. Shindo's unnerving close-ups, bobbing handheld camerawork, and soundtrack of pounding drums and howling flutes gives Onibaba a queasy intensity. Shooting in stark black and white, he makes even the waving of the grass look ominous as it all but swallows everyone who enters. --Sean Axmaker
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