the bad sleep well (w&d kurosowa, w. hideo oguni, eijirô hisaita, ryûzô kikushima, shinobu hashimoto)

Kurosowa’s modern day take on Hamlet is in stark contrast to his other Shakespeare versions. Any film that opens with a twenty minute wedding set piece can hardly be called pared down, but in contrast to Ran and Throne of Blood, this is a sober vision of Shakespeare, with Nishi, his Hamlet, a superbly tailored, charismatic protagonist. (As an aside, the tailoring in the film captures the eye just as much as it does with the more flamboyant period films. Kurosowa’s eye for detail is always both exquisite and to the film’s benefit.) There’s a brooding confidence in this opening. We are introduced to a large cast, located in a complex plot. It’s too much for the viewer to take on board; nevertheless details - the drunken brother-in-law, the second wedding cake, the crippled bride - leap out. As the film unfolds, everything we have seen begins to makes increasing sense. The opening is a puzzle which the film will resolve. Nowadays, there’s a phobia of losing the audience in the first ten minutes, which prohibits this type of approach, (reminiscent of The Deer Hunter), but Kurosowa reveals how effective it can be. 

As the film takes shape, the connections to the source material start to become apparent. This is a film about corruption and families, which feels just as relevant as ever. The Shakespearian element maps onto 1950s Japanese politics, not to mention 21st C USA politics. Kurosowa’s Nishi-Hamlet is an unashamed hero, the doubts articulated by Hamlet himself are kept at bay. The Japanese director’s fascination is focused on the way he exercises his revenge for his father’s death, infiltrating himself into the confidence of the company boss by marrying his daughter and making himself indispensable in the workplace. The more brilliant his strategy, the more terrible his eventual fate. The Bad Sleep Well is a jaunty 140 minutes, which never drag, a kind of vertical insertion into the closed world of post-war Japanese power which feels like a hybrid of The West Wing and The Sweet Smell of Success.