A one time AD to Kiyoshi Kurosawa director Shinji Aoyama has become one of Japan’s most respected young directors, but before making a name for himself with the multiple award winning Eureka – which took home the FIPRESCI Award and Ecumenical Jury prize from the 2000 Cannes Film Festival – Aoyama spent a good bit of time making low budget genre films. He’s done his romances, his yakuza films and, just prior to his break through film, a psychological horror film with 1999’s Embalming.
As the title suggests Embalming revolves around the practice of preserving the dead, something so commonplace here that we hardly give it any thought at all but something still unusual enough in Japan that Aoyama is able to spin his subject matter off into questions of immortality and what people are willing to do to hold on to life, or at least the appearance of it. But don’t go thinking that this one is going to be a philosophical character study. Oh, no. Aoyama takes his material and wraps it up in as many layers of genre convention as he possibly can.
Embalming revolves around Miyako Murakami, a woman who became an embalmer after her mother was killed in America and returned in an embalmed state to Japan. Miyako was so struck by her mother’s lifelike appearance that she chose to become an embalmer herself. The film begins with Miyako being summoned to the scene of an apparent suicide of a teenaged boy by her would-be boyfriend, a police detective. The boy’s mother is so distraught over his death that she demands that his body be preserved forever and so Miyako is called in to embalm the corpse.
Things begin calmly enough but questions are raised when the pressure of the inbound embalming fluids force a small needle out through the boy’s eye and things take a hard left turn into strangeness when the embalming studio is flooded with sleeping gas, broken into, and the head of the corpse stolen. What was once a fairly straightforward suicide has now become a possible murder investigation as well as a case of “Where’s the head?” Enter a stream of corrupt politicians, fanatical religious leaders, a mad scientist on the run from the law, an underground society trafficking in stolen body parts and a vicious case of Multiple Personality Disorder.
Embalming is a rather odd little film. Aoyama has become known for a signature style marked by a strong sense of naturalism in his film work. He doesn’t gloss things up, often shoots handheld, and most often uses natural lighting to convey the sense that these are real, actual people that he’s dealing with, and despite the extreme subject matter that style is in full effect here. Aoyama is effectively refusing to sensationalize what is a very extreme script and you have to ask why. Is he trying to make you feel what his characters feel? Possibly, and the film does work to a certain extent on that level. Much more likely, however, is that Aoyama is creating a subtle parody of the Japanese horror film industry. While trying to create a film that works in its own right Aoyama is also pointing out how incredibly false the horror industry is by having his characters be so incredibly blasé about all that is happening around them. He tips his hand in this direction on a couple of levels. Firstly by casting Japanese cult auteur Seijun Suzuki is a key support role. Suzuki is such an iconoclast that it’s almost impossible to imagine him being present in any film meant to be taken as straightforward mainstream fare. Second, Aoyama lifts a pair of scenes from other landmark films. An early shot reminded me just enough of the final sequence in Se7en to raise the possibility that Aoyama was lampooning the genre and a late shot lifted directly from Hideo Nakata’s Ringu sealed the deal. Really, though, is anyone surprised that a pupil of Kurosawa’s would rather subvert the horror genre than play straight into it?
Though the embalming sequences would likely have been considered quite shocking by 1999 standards - particularly in Japan where it is a cultural taboo for a corpse to be handled by a non-family member - they are relatively tame in this post-CSI world. There’s enough here for genre fans to sink their teeth into but if you come looking for shock-a-minute gore you will most likely leave disappointed. Embalming is far more of a curiosity than a classic but it’s a good look at the development of Aoyama’s signature style and fans of his other work, or even Kurosawa or Seijun Suzuki, will most likely want to give it a spin.
As for the DVD itself, it follows the typical Artsmagic mold. The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen with an informative twenty minute interview with the director and a full length commentary by Midnight Eye's Jasper Sharp. And let me tell you that Sharp isn't just rambling on about the film here - the man came prepared, so be ready for some serious J-horror education if you dip into the commentary. The image quality is marginal. The print is clean but soft. I have no way of confirming this but my guess would be that the transfer used a tape source, probably Betamax, rather than working straight from a print. I've certainly seen much worse than this but I've also seen significantly better.
EM Embalming releases on June 28th.