Kwaidan - The Limitations Of Anthology Horror
Thoughts On: Kwaidan (怪談, 1965)
Made by Masaki Kobayashi, this is the Japanese film of the series.
Kwaidan, meaning "ghost stories", is a collection of four folktales, which makes this an anthology film. Each experience I've had with anthology horror films has not been particularly good. Having only seen the likes of Tales of the Crypt or the 1963's Black Sabbath, anthology horror has then become synonymous with cheapness and cinematic trash in my mind. Realising that Kwaidan fell into this loose genre of film, sceptically, I watched this in search of structural self-justification. That is to say that there doesn't seem to be an entirely convincing argument for the existence of the anthology film; so often they seem to be means of collecting odds, of selecting multiple directors, actors, scripts, etc. in the hope that at least one works for the audience. Beyond this, anthology horrors, or anthology films in general, do not seem to have much purpose as there is never a real attempt to build a larger narrative through a few select shorts. It is without this, at least thematic, coherence, that I find little reason in watching them, but nonetheless hoped that Kwaidan may provide some reasoning.
In short, I do not think that Kwaidan is structurally self-justifying. Each of the four shorts could have been extended into stand-alone features and, furthermore, would have benefited from more time in which to develop characters and ponder upon the often fascinating narrative conundrums that characters find themselves in. That said, it should be emphasised that Kwaidan is not trashy like the mentioned exploitation horrors, Tales of the Crypt and Black Sabbath. One marker of this is that many have lauded this film since its release for its aesthetic beauty, and it is indeed true that this is shot with many complex camera movements and (well executed, but maybe not impressive) camera tricks that are uplifted by the elegant pace of the edit, the controlled, yet emphatic lighting, colour schemes and cinematography, and the always precise mise en scène. Presiding over each of the four narratives is then a distinct style given by Kobayashi. What unifies these films aesthetically, however, doesn't strictly concern the camera work, cinematography or editing. Instead, it is the sound and set design as well as narrative voice that cultivate a sustained tone and atmosphere which is contrived and melodramatic, but not always negatively so.
There are many instances throughout Kwaidan in which the sound-montage breaks continuity in an attempt to suspend the viewer in the emotion (the horror) of the silent, objective space within the frame. At maximal points of terror, we will then see characters fall down, scream and even break walls, but hear no consequential sounds. This is witnessed during the first short:
A swordsman leaves his devoted wife because he cannot bear the poverty in which they exist. He marries into a rich family, but finds himself with a cold and selfish wife. The swordsman spends years in the miserable relationship before returning to his old home, which, due to neglect has become overgrown with shrubbery and overcome by weather. Within the home, he finds his old wife, who has not aged a day, and reconciles with her, apologising and being accepted into her arms as he lists all the features of hers that he has missed so much (her eyes, cheeks, lips and hair). The two eventually fall asleep, yet, when the swordsman awakes, he finds that underneath his ex-wife's clothes and hair is only a skeleton, which continues to haunt him no matter his attempts at escape.
It is during the swordsman's frenzied and futile attempt to escape the bones of his first wife that the sound-montage deteriorates and we see him scramble, scream and break through walls without hearing what our eyes tell us we should be. Why Kobayashi does this seems self-evident, but, the execution is not particularly successful. In sucking all sound from his cinematic space, Kobayashi impressionistically paints it in shades of panic. After all, it is when we are panicked that sensory information seems to break down and become singular; for example, if it is a thought that bothers us, we can be blind to all else, if it is an image that possesses us, we can be deaf to everything. It is actually something of a cliche to represent this on film. Consider then that there is a character/characters in a car and the sound becomes a heavy focus - for instance, a couple starts arguing loudly, or someone sits in silent contemplation, or someone sits in buzzing frustration - we instinctively know that they are probably going to hit by another car. Two examples I could provide come from No Country For Old Men and Whiplash.
It is in the end of No Country For Old Men that we, along with the villain of the narrative, Anton, sit in silence in a car. Anton has just left the house of the woman who was in love with the man he has been chasing the entire movie and has finally caught and killed. He threatened her with death in the house, flipping a coin, asking her to choose heads or tails as to decide her ambiguous fate. She refused to call. Whilst we sit in the car with Anton as he drives away from the house, the quite sound design forces contemplation into the atmosphere. We do not know if he killed the woman, and we cannot tell if he (uncharacteristically) placed his will above chance, the coin flip, and killed the woman without her calling heads or tails. But, the silence is sustained too long and it becomes obvious that--BANG. Another car drives into the side of his.
Around the mid-point of Whiplash, our main character, a first-year jazz student, Andrew, is given the opportunity to play with his school band in a competition as the core drummer. This is a big step towards Andrew's dream of being 'a great' and he cannot miss it for he knows that his tyrannical teacher will ruin him if he is not on time. All is going well until his bus breaks down, so Andrew decides to rent a car and rush to the venue. He arrives a little late, but, after a confrontation with his teacher in which he fights to still play, he realises that he has lost his drums sticks: he left them in the car rental place. He has to run back outside, drive back, the clock ticking, convince the owners to open the closing shop, get the sticks and drive back. On the way, however, he gets a call from one of the musicians, saying that everyone is already on stage. The relatively long shot allows us to realise the fast jazz underneath his screaming voice. The sound becomes a vacuum-like force when Andrew throws his phone down, and all too soon we know what will--BANG. He's side-swiped.
In each of these examples, and there are many more like them, we see sound and space interact to create a swell of emotion that suddenly becomes focused. The focus is the director/editor telling us something is wrong and so we are suspended in a state of frenzy and unknowing before very quickly, maybe abruptly which will lead to a jump scare, realising why we were, for example, panicked. As a slight side-note, this doesn't only work in a context of panic or terror, and this effect doesn't only require silence. We can see this in Step Brothers.
Two men-children, forty year old step-brothers whose respective mother and father have recently married one another, have been causing havoc in the home in which the four live together. The absurdly troublesome pair are told to move out and sort their lives out. The step-brothers initially hated one another, but have become the best of friends, and together have decided to embark on a business venture in which they will build an entertainment company (whatever that means). Their first endeavour for this company is to make a music video, and to do this they write a rap song titled "Boats 'N Hoes". They then steal their father/step-father's boat (his prized possession; he wants to retire and sail around the world) and hire a few women to shoot their rap video. We are shown this video at a party celebrating the step-father's birthday. This is where the sound design takes over: the loud music, the presentation given the the brothers, the obnoxious comments made by people at the dinner table, the horrified remarks made by the father, the ridiculous reactions of others, all coalesce into a comedic cacophony before--BANG. The boat crashes.
It is in all of our given examples that sound design builds tension of a certain character - it can be comedic, thrilling, interrogative, terrifying, etc. It is when the sound design erupts, when the focus it cultivates is broken, that there is a release of tension and an emotional (sometimes intellectual or interrogative - as in No Country For Old Men) outburst. This is dependent, however, on a relationship between sound and all other aspects of a cinematic space - which is to say that this effect isn't guaranteed to work unless it is orchestrated well with camera work, cinematography, acting, editing, etc. In the case of Whiplash, the speed of the car and the shot that looks out of the car window, past Andrew's face, implies an inevitable car crash. In a certain respect, the inevitability implied by the shot helps build tension, but in another respect it breaks it - all because we anticipate a car crash. In my estimation, the effect works, but rings with a cliched and predictable nature. One of the better examples of this effect working may be seen in Step Brothers; here the sound design mystifies and creates chaos before the dialogue anticipates a hurtling comedic pay-off in the boat crash.
If we return to Kwaidan and the way in which Kobayashi drains sound out of the cinematic space at the point of maximal horror, we see that he means to build panic and cultivate over many minutes a sense of terror by having a continual focus on the skeleton and the swordsman's reaction to it. However, what is missing from this sequence is either chaos or concentration of a degree that entirely captivates the senses. In Step Brothers, we are lost in the chaos, in Whiplash, we are bound by frustration, and there is assistance from both the speed of the editing and the amount of given information in both scenes. Because there is resonance, because the focus of the sound design aids in captivating and focusing the viewer's attention, the effect works. Kobayashi does not, with the speed of his edit, with his mise en scène or with the information translated, provide a counterbalance with the suspension of sound. Thus, we are not pulled into his scene, rather, left watching silent imagery rather coldly. And this occurs at many points throughout Kwaidan, giving the sound design an often cheap tone (in the third short, which focuses on a song, the sound design improves).
Such is an example of the limitations of Kobayashi's style, and thus his inability to successfully unify his four shorts, but there is one more key element of his approach. As Fellini does in the likes of Satyricon and Casanova, Kobayashi fully embraces the faux nature of his set, accepting into his cinematic space the confines which preside over a theatre production. At many points shorts then do not look like movies, but filmed plays.
With his painted backdrops in juxtaposition with seemingly real shrubbery, we are constantly made to realise that the narratives were constructed in a studio, and thus, that what we watch is not real, but a story in the process of being told. This self-reflexivity resonates across the four narratives and comes to a head in the final short, which is about incomplete folktales. This short goes as follows:
In the home of a writer, we are told that many Japanese folktales are incomplete by our narrator in V.O. He questions why this is the case; are the writers lazy? Did they come into conflict with their publishers? Did they die before finishing? Putting this aside, we are told that the following tale is an example of an incomplete text. And so we are put in a manor in which a guard sees the reflection of some unknown face in his tea. He throws many cups away before drinking the liquid that reflects the unknown man's face - almost as an act of defiance. Later that night when he paroles the ground, he comes upon a man who is in fact the person that he saw in the cup. After a confrontational exchange, the guard draws his sword and attacks, but the ghost escapes through a wall. The guard calls all the other men on duty, but no one can find the intruder - they dismiss our main character when they learn that he believes he saw a ghost. A day later, the guard cannot sleep, but is called out of his room because visitors wish to see him. These turn out to be messengers from the ghost that visited who warn him that their master will return for vengeance. The guard draws his sword and fights them. He impales all three messengers, but they do not retreat; they surround him. And this is where the tale ends. We are back in the home of a writer. His publisher comes to meet him, but is greeted by his wife; the writer is not to be found. After leading the publisher into her husband's office, the wife screams at the sight of something. What she sees, we do not know, but maybe it is a ghost or the body of her husband.
It is in this tale that the process of writing a ghost story is centralised, and so is the self-reflexive acceptance of the folktale's contrivance. The statement made here is ambiguous, but it seems to point to the audience and ask them about the purpose of retelling ghost stories, about the meaning that can be extracted out of them. Simultaneously, however, this feels like a very cheap attempt at transmitting fear across the fourth wall of the film. This is often done in terrible exploitation films that have a narrator or presenter introduce the stories, telling us to be careful ourselves as we sit in the dark or some other nonsense. This breaking of the fourth wall introduces a game to the telling of a narrative, one in which the storyteller openly tries to scare and the audience openly yearns to be scared. This is a silly game, but it has always had its place in the practice of storytelling, and so, in a certain respect, this seems to be a unifying stylistic approach in Kwaidan.
Upon reflection, we can tell now that Kobayashi does little to justify the conglomeration of these four shorts. With his sound design and general stylistic approach, he makes each short his own. And he further does this with the slightly self-reflexive tone with which each tale is told. However, in terms of technique, there is not much given to this film that unifies its separate parts. And in terms of a narrative voice, there is no coherence; in such, the narration comes off as only cliched where it clearly has a purpose of breaking the fourth wall, and needless where it does not have any clear purpose.
It is for these shortcomings and the fact that, neither through style or an overarching narrative, does Kobayashi justify his use of the anthology, that I do not think Kwaidan is a particularly good film (but, I have to note that I'm not convinced that very many good anthology horrors exist). However, there is one short within this that struck me above all else. This was titled, The Woman of the Snow:
Two woodcutters are caught in a snow storm, but find refuge in a fisherman's hut. A ghostly woman appears as the two rest. She kneels by the elderly woodcutter and breathes over him, taking his life. She approaches the younger woodcutter, but, out of pity, she spares him. Before leaving, she warns him that if he ever tells anyone of the event, she will return and kill him. The next morning the woodcutter escapes and returns to his village. Over the years, he falls in love with a beautiful woman and starts a family. The family of five live happily in their small village, the wife loved by all, though thought of as strangely young despite all of her years. On a night before a festival, the woodcutter is making sandals for his wife and children. Memories rise within him at the sight of his wife; he remembers the night that he was caught in a snow storm and the woman that almost killed him. He tells her of the event in the snowstorm, whether it be dream of reality, remarking how similar the two women look. His wife is then forced to reveal the fact that she is the woman in the snow, and is now obliged to take his life. However, for the sake of their children, she spares him again. She leaves her family, venturing into a snowstorm, warning her husband that, if her children ever have reason to complain about him, she will return and kill him. The husband leaves her sandals outside their home and they disappear.
This is a particularly beautiful tale, one with distinct structural markers of a folktale that produces a conundrum of ambiguously profound meaning. It is then quite different from the three other tales that Kobayashi presents as it contains within it romance over horror; granted, each tale is distinct, but this has a defined individual essence and general quality that the others do not hold. It is then this tale that I wish most of all was made into a feature-length film for it has within it a fascinating and expressive exploration of the feminine, the young and forgiveness.
The fundamental motif of this narrative is embedded into the repeated acts of compassion: the woman of the snow spares the innocent and those with potential. She seems to embody nature and the natural flow of life in this. In being, for example, the force that takes the life of an old man, she does not then bend the rules of nature as it is highly probable that the cold would kill the old man without her intervention. As a result, she is solidified as a personification of nature, not necessarily a spirit or aberration separate from it. What, then, does it mean for her, having saved the youth, to not only bind him to never speak of the truth but to also start a family with him?
To answer this question, it seems important to recognise that embedded in this narrative is a constant romance and naivety that almost become interchangeable. You may then ask how the woodcutter could have three children with the woman in the snow and never realise who she was. The answer to this question seems to be ignorant (blind) love and naivety. Taking a step back, we see that the woman in the snow saves the woodcutter because he is young (because he is naive, unknowing and full of potential) and has him promise to remain so. In following her wishes, in blinding himself to his own fortune and never speaking of it, the woodcutter extends his fortune indefinitely - which is exemplified by the woman in the snow marrying and starting a family with him. It is in stepping away from naivety, in remembering the snowstorm, that the man loses his wife, yet he is saved again with the promise that he sustain and preserve his children (who are also naive, unknowing and full of potential like he was).
From our perspective, this seems to be a story about fool's luck. Furthermore, it seems to be a tale about preserving what is good until it is ready to preserve good itself. Overshadowing this is a naive worship of nature as a feminine entity - that which can both destroy and create. Maybe, then, there is something to be said about being possessed by the imago, the archetype, the ideal of nature and of fortune. This would then be a story that sees a man move away from a naive worship of his own fortune before stepping away from naivety as to cultivate the fortune of his children with his own hands.
It is disappointing that this sustains a lack of specificity thanks to its length - which is why I would have liked to see Kobayashi explore this over alone 90-120 minutes. Alas, there is an honest folkloric magic about this that, with closer analysis, may hold more coherent meaning than what I imply. With that said, however, we seem to have run aground our discussion of this film. I then leave things with you. What are your thoughts on Kwaidan?
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Kwaidan, meaning "ghost stories", is a collection of four folktales, which makes this an anthology film. Each experience I've had with anthology horror films has not been particularly good. Having only seen the likes of Tales of the Crypt or the 1963's Black Sabbath, anthology horror has then become synonymous with cheapness and cinematic trash in my mind. Realising that Kwaidan fell into this loose genre of film, sceptically, I watched this in search of structural self-justification. That is to say that there doesn't seem to be an entirely convincing argument for the existence of the anthology film; so often they seem to be means of collecting odds, of selecting multiple directors, actors, scripts, etc. in the hope that at least one works for the audience. Beyond this, anthology horrors, or anthology films in general, do not seem to have much purpose as there is never a real attempt to build a larger narrative through a few select shorts. It is without this, at least thematic, coherence, that I find little reason in watching them, but nonetheless hoped that Kwaidan may provide some reasoning.
In short, I do not think that Kwaidan is structurally self-justifying. Each of the four shorts could have been extended into stand-alone features and, furthermore, would have benefited from more time in which to develop characters and ponder upon the often fascinating narrative conundrums that characters find themselves in. That said, it should be emphasised that Kwaidan is not trashy like the mentioned exploitation horrors, Tales of the Crypt and Black Sabbath. One marker of this is that many have lauded this film since its release for its aesthetic beauty, and it is indeed true that this is shot with many complex camera movements and (well executed, but maybe not impressive) camera tricks that are uplifted by the elegant pace of the edit, the controlled, yet emphatic lighting, colour schemes and cinematography, and the always precise mise en scène. Presiding over each of the four narratives is then a distinct style given by Kobayashi. What unifies these films aesthetically, however, doesn't strictly concern the camera work, cinematography or editing. Instead, it is the sound and set design as well as narrative voice that cultivate a sustained tone and atmosphere which is contrived and melodramatic, but not always negatively so.
There are many instances throughout Kwaidan in which the sound-montage breaks continuity in an attempt to suspend the viewer in the emotion (the horror) of the silent, objective space within the frame. At maximal points of terror, we will then see characters fall down, scream and even break walls, but hear no consequential sounds. This is witnessed during the first short:
A swordsman leaves his devoted wife because he cannot bear the poverty in which they exist. He marries into a rich family, but finds himself with a cold and selfish wife. The swordsman spends years in the miserable relationship before returning to his old home, which, due to neglect has become overgrown with shrubbery and overcome by weather. Within the home, he finds his old wife, who has not aged a day, and reconciles with her, apologising and being accepted into her arms as he lists all the features of hers that he has missed so much (her eyes, cheeks, lips and hair). The two eventually fall asleep, yet, when the swordsman awakes, he finds that underneath his ex-wife's clothes and hair is only a skeleton, which continues to haunt him no matter his attempts at escape.
It is during the swordsman's frenzied and futile attempt to escape the bones of his first wife that the sound-montage deteriorates and we see him scramble, scream and break through walls without hearing what our eyes tell us we should be. Why Kobayashi does this seems self-evident, but, the execution is not particularly successful. In sucking all sound from his cinematic space, Kobayashi impressionistically paints it in shades of panic. After all, it is when we are panicked that sensory information seems to break down and become singular; for example, if it is a thought that bothers us, we can be blind to all else, if it is an image that possesses us, we can be deaf to everything. It is actually something of a cliche to represent this on film. Consider then that there is a character/characters in a car and the sound becomes a heavy focus - for instance, a couple starts arguing loudly, or someone sits in silent contemplation, or someone sits in buzzing frustration - we instinctively know that they are probably going to hit by another car. Two examples I could provide come from No Country For Old Men and Whiplash.
It is in the end of No Country For Old Men that we, along with the villain of the narrative, Anton, sit in silence in a car. Anton has just left the house of the woman who was in love with the man he has been chasing the entire movie and has finally caught and killed. He threatened her with death in the house, flipping a coin, asking her to choose heads or tails as to decide her ambiguous fate. She refused to call. Whilst we sit in the car with Anton as he drives away from the house, the quite sound design forces contemplation into the atmosphere. We do not know if he killed the woman, and we cannot tell if he (uncharacteristically) placed his will above chance, the coin flip, and killed the woman without her calling heads or tails. But, the silence is sustained too long and it becomes obvious that--BANG. Another car drives into the side of his.
Around the mid-point of Whiplash, our main character, a first-year jazz student, Andrew, is given the opportunity to play with his school band in a competition as the core drummer. This is a big step towards Andrew's dream of being 'a great' and he cannot miss it for he knows that his tyrannical teacher will ruin him if he is not on time. All is going well until his bus breaks down, so Andrew decides to rent a car and rush to the venue. He arrives a little late, but, after a confrontation with his teacher in which he fights to still play, he realises that he has lost his drums sticks: he left them in the car rental place. He has to run back outside, drive back, the clock ticking, convince the owners to open the closing shop, get the sticks and drive back. On the way, however, he gets a call from one of the musicians, saying that everyone is already on stage. The relatively long shot allows us to realise the fast jazz underneath his screaming voice. The sound becomes a vacuum-like force when Andrew throws his phone down, and all too soon we know what will--BANG. He's side-swiped.
In each of these examples, and there are many more like them, we see sound and space interact to create a swell of emotion that suddenly becomes focused. The focus is the director/editor telling us something is wrong and so we are suspended in a state of frenzy and unknowing before very quickly, maybe abruptly which will lead to a jump scare, realising why we were, for example, panicked. As a slight side-note, this doesn't only work in a context of panic or terror, and this effect doesn't only require silence. We can see this in Step Brothers.
Two men-children, forty year old step-brothers whose respective mother and father have recently married one another, have been causing havoc in the home in which the four live together. The absurdly troublesome pair are told to move out and sort their lives out. The step-brothers initially hated one another, but have become the best of friends, and together have decided to embark on a business venture in which they will build an entertainment company (whatever that means). Their first endeavour for this company is to make a music video, and to do this they write a rap song titled "Boats 'N Hoes". They then steal their father/step-father's boat (his prized possession; he wants to retire and sail around the world) and hire a few women to shoot their rap video. We are shown this video at a party celebrating the step-father's birthday. This is where the sound design takes over: the loud music, the presentation given the the brothers, the obnoxious comments made by people at the dinner table, the horrified remarks made by the father, the ridiculous reactions of others, all coalesce into a comedic cacophony before--BANG. The boat crashes.
It is in all of our given examples that sound design builds tension of a certain character - it can be comedic, thrilling, interrogative, terrifying, etc. It is when the sound design erupts, when the focus it cultivates is broken, that there is a release of tension and an emotional (sometimes intellectual or interrogative - as in No Country For Old Men) outburst. This is dependent, however, on a relationship between sound and all other aspects of a cinematic space - which is to say that this effect isn't guaranteed to work unless it is orchestrated well with camera work, cinematography, acting, editing, etc. In the case of Whiplash, the speed of the car and the shot that looks out of the car window, past Andrew's face, implies an inevitable car crash. In a certain respect, the inevitability implied by the shot helps build tension, but in another respect it breaks it - all because we anticipate a car crash. In my estimation, the effect works, but rings with a cliched and predictable nature. One of the better examples of this effect working may be seen in Step Brothers; here the sound design mystifies and creates chaos before the dialogue anticipates a hurtling comedic pay-off in the boat crash.
If we return to Kwaidan and the way in which Kobayashi drains sound out of the cinematic space at the point of maximal horror, we see that he means to build panic and cultivate over many minutes a sense of terror by having a continual focus on the skeleton and the swordsman's reaction to it. However, what is missing from this sequence is either chaos or concentration of a degree that entirely captivates the senses. In Step Brothers, we are lost in the chaos, in Whiplash, we are bound by frustration, and there is assistance from both the speed of the editing and the amount of given information in both scenes. Because there is resonance, because the focus of the sound design aids in captivating and focusing the viewer's attention, the effect works. Kobayashi does not, with the speed of his edit, with his mise en scène or with the information translated, provide a counterbalance with the suspension of sound. Thus, we are not pulled into his scene, rather, left watching silent imagery rather coldly. And this occurs at many points throughout Kwaidan, giving the sound design an often cheap tone (in the third short, which focuses on a song, the sound design improves).
Such is an example of the limitations of Kobayashi's style, and thus his inability to successfully unify his four shorts, but there is one more key element of his approach. As Fellini does in the likes of Satyricon and Casanova, Kobayashi fully embraces the faux nature of his set, accepting into his cinematic space the confines which preside over a theatre production. At many points shorts then do not look like movies, but filmed plays.
With his painted backdrops in juxtaposition with seemingly real shrubbery, we are constantly made to realise that the narratives were constructed in a studio, and thus, that what we watch is not real, but a story in the process of being told. This self-reflexivity resonates across the four narratives and comes to a head in the final short, which is about incomplete folktales. This short goes as follows:
In the home of a writer, we are told that many Japanese folktales are incomplete by our narrator in V.O. He questions why this is the case; are the writers lazy? Did they come into conflict with their publishers? Did they die before finishing? Putting this aside, we are told that the following tale is an example of an incomplete text. And so we are put in a manor in which a guard sees the reflection of some unknown face in his tea. He throws many cups away before drinking the liquid that reflects the unknown man's face - almost as an act of defiance. Later that night when he paroles the ground, he comes upon a man who is in fact the person that he saw in the cup. After a confrontational exchange, the guard draws his sword and attacks, but the ghost escapes through a wall. The guard calls all the other men on duty, but no one can find the intruder - they dismiss our main character when they learn that he believes he saw a ghost. A day later, the guard cannot sleep, but is called out of his room because visitors wish to see him. These turn out to be messengers from the ghost that visited who warn him that their master will return for vengeance. The guard draws his sword and fights them. He impales all three messengers, but they do not retreat; they surround him. And this is where the tale ends. We are back in the home of a writer. His publisher comes to meet him, but is greeted by his wife; the writer is not to be found. After leading the publisher into her husband's office, the wife screams at the sight of something. What she sees, we do not know, but maybe it is a ghost or the body of her husband.
It is in this tale that the process of writing a ghost story is centralised, and so is the self-reflexive acceptance of the folktale's contrivance. The statement made here is ambiguous, but it seems to point to the audience and ask them about the purpose of retelling ghost stories, about the meaning that can be extracted out of them. Simultaneously, however, this feels like a very cheap attempt at transmitting fear across the fourth wall of the film. This is often done in terrible exploitation films that have a narrator or presenter introduce the stories, telling us to be careful ourselves as we sit in the dark or some other nonsense. This breaking of the fourth wall introduces a game to the telling of a narrative, one in which the storyteller openly tries to scare and the audience openly yearns to be scared. This is a silly game, but it has always had its place in the practice of storytelling, and so, in a certain respect, this seems to be a unifying stylistic approach in Kwaidan.
Upon reflection, we can tell now that Kobayashi does little to justify the conglomeration of these four shorts. With his sound design and general stylistic approach, he makes each short his own. And he further does this with the slightly self-reflexive tone with which each tale is told. However, in terms of technique, there is not much given to this film that unifies its separate parts. And in terms of a narrative voice, there is no coherence; in such, the narration comes off as only cliched where it clearly has a purpose of breaking the fourth wall, and needless where it does not have any clear purpose.
It is for these shortcomings and the fact that, neither through style or an overarching narrative, does Kobayashi justify his use of the anthology, that I do not think Kwaidan is a particularly good film (but, I have to note that I'm not convinced that very many good anthology horrors exist). However, there is one short within this that struck me above all else. This was titled, The Woman of the Snow:
Two woodcutters are caught in a snow storm, but find refuge in a fisherman's hut. A ghostly woman appears as the two rest. She kneels by the elderly woodcutter and breathes over him, taking his life. She approaches the younger woodcutter, but, out of pity, she spares him. Before leaving, she warns him that if he ever tells anyone of the event, she will return and kill him. The next morning the woodcutter escapes and returns to his village. Over the years, he falls in love with a beautiful woman and starts a family. The family of five live happily in their small village, the wife loved by all, though thought of as strangely young despite all of her years. On a night before a festival, the woodcutter is making sandals for his wife and children. Memories rise within him at the sight of his wife; he remembers the night that he was caught in a snow storm and the woman that almost killed him. He tells her of the event in the snowstorm, whether it be dream of reality, remarking how similar the two women look. His wife is then forced to reveal the fact that she is the woman in the snow, and is now obliged to take his life. However, for the sake of their children, she spares him again. She leaves her family, venturing into a snowstorm, warning her husband that, if her children ever have reason to complain about him, she will return and kill him. The husband leaves her sandals outside their home and they disappear.
This is a particularly beautiful tale, one with distinct structural markers of a folktale that produces a conundrum of ambiguously profound meaning. It is then quite different from the three other tales that Kobayashi presents as it contains within it romance over horror; granted, each tale is distinct, but this has a defined individual essence and general quality that the others do not hold. It is then this tale that I wish most of all was made into a feature-length film for it has within it a fascinating and expressive exploration of the feminine, the young and forgiveness.
The fundamental motif of this narrative is embedded into the repeated acts of compassion: the woman of the snow spares the innocent and those with potential. She seems to embody nature and the natural flow of life in this. In being, for example, the force that takes the life of an old man, she does not then bend the rules of nature as it is highly probable that the cold would kill the old man without her intervention. As a result, she is solidified as a personification of nature, not necessarily a spirit or aberration separate from it. What, then, does it mean for her, having saved the youth, to not only bind him to never speak of the truth but to also start a family with him?
To answer this question, it seems important to recognise that embedded in this narrative is a constant romance and naivety that almost become interchangeable. You may then ask how the woodcutter could have three children with the woman in the snow and never realise who she was. The answer to this question seems to be ignorant (blind) love and naivety. Taking a step back, we see that the woman in the snow saves the woodcutter because he is young (because he is naive, unknowing and full of potential) and has him promise to remain so. In following her wishes, in blinding himself to his own fortune and never speaking of it, the woodcutter extends his fortune indefinitely - which is exemplified by the woman in the snow marrying and starting a family with him. It is in stepping away from naivety, in remembering the snowstorm, that the man loses his wife, yet he is saved again with the promise that he sustain and preserve his children (who are also naive, unknowing and full of potential like he was).
From our perspective, this seems to be a story about fool's luck. Furthermore, it seems to be a tale about preserving what is good until it is ready to preserve good itself. Overshadowing this is a naive worship of nature as a feminine entity - that which can both destroy and create. Maybe, then, there is something to be said about being possessed by the imago, the archetype, the ideal of nature and of fortune. This would then be a story that sees a man move away from a naive worship of his own fortune before stepping away from naivety as to cultivate the fortune of his children with his own hands.
It is disappointing that this sustains a lack of specificity thanks to its length - which is why I would have liked to see Kobayashi explore this over alone 90-120 minutes. Alas, there is an honest folkloric magic about this that, with closer analysis, may hold more coherent meaning than what I imply. With that said, however, we seem to have run aground our discussion of this film. I then leave things with you. What are your thoughts on Kwaidan?
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