The Bad Sleep Well

That photo is from The Bad Sleep Well. Right now a couple of the bad are undergoing extended police interrogation while under arrest. But so far they are staying silent.

I think this is a movie that Kung-san would like. It’s centered around a couple Japanese corporations that have apparently been engaged in illegal activities. The movie starts with a wedding of a wanna-move-up son to the daughter of one of the higher executives. But scandal taints even this would-be happy occasion. It's worth it so far just to hear the toast given by the bride's brother: "If you make my sister unhappy, I'll kill you." He was shown to have had a little too much to drink.

Whether this is showing Japanese culture as it is (or was then), I don’t know. Whether this is a enlarged stereotype movie-image (even if produced by Japanese filmmakers), I don’t know. But what I do know is that this is quite different from an American film, and that aspect I very much like.

I finished this movie last night. I would say the first 3/4 is excellent. The last 1/4 jumps the shark a bit. It both runs on too long and the plot becomes peppered with absurdities.

Spoiler alert. I think this movie is good enough to watch. But if you want to know more about it, I’ll tell you.

A man marries the daughter of the Vice President of a gigantic Japanese public corporation. The president is but a figurehead so it’s the Vice President who is in charge. This man somehow wheedles his way into the good graces of the Vice President’s daughter and marries her. We soon learn this is part of his long-range plan for getting revenge on the Vice President (and others) who caused the death of his father.

A huge scandal is brewing regarding illegal kickbacks and the fixing of contracts at the Public Corporation. The police investigate but are constantly stymied when they bring in the corporation underlings for interrogation. They remain silent.. And if the police start to get close to something, word comes from the boss at the corporation that they must “take the last full measure of loyalty” (or something like that). And that means that they should commit suicide in order to cover for their bosses. At least two underlings do.

And this goes on and gets a bit more complicated when one of the supposed suicides turns out to be fake. The son-in-law enlists the man in his cause to bring down the bosses and thus this fellow, Wada, simply fakes his own death and then stays hidden.

And this is all going well. We even reach the crucial plot point as we realize that Kôichi Nishi (the son-in-law who is trying to bring down his Vice President father-in-law) is involved in a tragedy of the type that reads: Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. Given the title of the movie (The Bad Sleep Well), we do not expect a happy outcome for him.

But the ending is mishandled badly. It’s not so much that it’s not a happy ending. It’s that it takes a lot of gadgety plot work to get there. However, there is great charm in this movie, particular with the unhurried, deliberate pacing, one that allows all these fine actors to show their craft in a way that the usual hyperventilated Hollywood movie cannot do. And thus the end is all the more disappointing with the very over-acted climactic scene from a heretofore minor character (the friend of Nishi) who goes crazy with grief, but in the wake of so much fine acting by the others, it lands with a thud.

Toshirô Mifune is competent, but not excellent, in the lead role of Kôichi Nishi. But where the movie really shines is in the supporting characters, particularly the villains. Masayuki Mori is terrific as the crooked father-in-law, Public Corporation Vice President Iwabuchi. And to watch him bow and grovel while talking on the telephone to a superior gives you presumably an authentic insight into how stiff the honor-bound pecking order is in Japanese business and culture.

Takashi Shimura is hauntingly effective as Administrative Officer Moriyama, one of the evil underlings of the corporation who helps prompt the convenient suicides of other underlings when the law is getting too close. Kamatari Fujiwara is also superb as Assistant-to-the-Chief Wada, one of the underlings who is told to commit suicide but instead is diverted and enlisted by Nishi in his attempt to bring down the corrupt bosses.

And it is in Wada that the main moral element plays out, as well as where it gets fumbled a bit. Wada, despite being a victim of the corrupt bosses, doesn’t care for the harsh methods of Nishi. He urges Nishi to find some kind of peaceful resolution, especially because he has learned that Nishi has actually fallen in love with Yoshiko Nishi, the daughter of the corrupt Vice President of Public Corporation.

So it’s all set up for a good (if tragic) end. But then it all sort of turns into a gadgety Three’s Company sort of plot. It’s a shame because this movie has so much to commend it. But it’s still worth watching. And the print streamed from The Criterion Channel is pristine and looks as it it was shot just yesterday. Besides that, the black-and-white cinematography is obviously done by a master. And I do believe the Japanese had excellent black-and-white film stock back then, although I don’t know what film they were using.

And the streaming of the movie from the The Criterion Channel went off without a hitch.