Yoshitaro Nomura's realist 1978 child-abuse drama is as shocking as ever, and makes us rethink the limits of what can be shown on screen
The little boy is lying back in a woman's arms. "Eat, you brat!" His screams are stifled because she is palming clods of rice into his mouth. "I said eat!" There's rice smeared about his face, in his eyelashes, his hair. She glares at her husband, who is standing impotently back. "You spoil him. I'm teaching him a lesson."
That's the first of several highly distressing scenes from Yoshitaro Nomura's 1978 melodrama The Demon, which stars Ken Ogata as a pathetic, philandering printer whose wife is outraged when his mistress dumps three illegitimate children on them. The wife initially vents her anger, then bullies him into abandoning his offspring, and worse. Scenes like the above are an utter shock to the modern cultural palate. With extreme violence ubiquitous,...
The little boy is lying back in a woman's arms. "Eat, you brat!" His screams are stifled because she is palming clods of rice into his mouth. "I said eat!" There's rice smeared about his face, in his eyelashes, his hair. She glares at her husband, who is standing impotently back. "You spoil him. I'm teaching him a lesson."
That's the first of several highly distressing scenes from Yoshitaro Nomura's 1978 melodrama The Demon, which stars Ken Ogata as a pathetic, philandering printer whose wife is outraged when his mistress dumps three illegitimate children on them. The wife initially vents her anger, then bullies him into abandoning his offspring, and worse. Scenes like the above are an utter shock to the modern cultural palate. With extreme violence ubiquitous,...
- 4/18/2014
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
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