Onibaba the old B&W movie

 Apparently it's a big deal. Well it is on that "list" ... some snobby official movie list HBO MAX was referencing... the Criterion Collection. I need to finish watching it. Duckduckgoing "Onibaba analysis" reveals good analysis writeups but they have lots of spoilers. I'll try to avoid major spoilers. Check this out:

https://sabukaru.online/articles/guide-japanese-horror-movies

Described by master horror director, William Freidkin, (The Exorcist) as one of the most frightening films he’d ever seen, Onibaba is praised by many as being one of the formative J-horror classics, and affirmed by its director as a haunting reaction to the ravages of Hiroshima and Nahasaki and the disfiguring legacy of the atomic bomb attacks

Would never have guessed it was connected to The Exorcist. Definitely would never think the dude that made The Exorcist, the most messed up and scary movie ever, to be scared by this movie. Maybe it's the nuclear bomb reference [update: i just watched this... i guess symbolically it is another after WWII atom bomb thing), which is indeed one of the most horrific (burns) and scary (end of world) stuff around. 

UPDATE: Watched Onibaba. Interesting movie... the slowmo zoomed in grass shots are hypnotic, really loved them. Once or twice the music during those shots reminded me of Under the Skin's (2013) creepy soundtrack and feel. Also a site said the masks were designed historically to evoke different emotions depending on the mood/delivery... like it could be scary monster attacking you, could be "I'm in pain ouch get the mask off". There is a lot of analysis out on the web over this movie, let me see if I can find that one place that had soooo much info. I think this one (and I think it has one MAJOR spoiler for this movie and one MAJOR spoiler for Seven Samurai so, be careful):

https://www.deepfocusreview.com/definitives/onibaba/

Quotes:

"The old woman dons a robe with a crab decorated on the back; the daughter’s robe features a scallop. Both aquatic creatures find their sustenance by consuming the muck and microbes that fall to the bottom, and Shindo undoubtedly chose these animals to reflect his characters. The women have reverted to an animalistic state, killing and jealously shoveling food into their mouths when they have it, from bits of rice to an unfortunate stray dog. They are scavengers, not unlike the ravens that linger near the women throughout the film. Shindo admits that with Onibaba, he “wanted to convey the lives of down-to-earth people who have to live like weeds.”

"Even today, to watch Onibaba is to negotiate a bizarre combination of visual and performative styles. Shindo made several films that experiment with highly stylized period pieces, known as jidaigeki. Rather than the stories of heroic samurai and nobility usually associated with jidaigeki, which reinforced the traditional themes of Japanese storytelling,  New Wave filmmakers refigured the same settings and character types with a touch of iconoclasm. Japanese cinematic style itself was a matter of tradition, drawing from venerable representational styles found in theater and painting. Jidaigeki owes its origins to kabuki theater, but Onibaba is far from traditional. As evidenced by the hannya mask, Shindo uses touches of Noh theater in his production. Elsewhere, Otowa, Shindo’s wife at the time, bears the look of a hannya mask, complete with angular eyebrows, wild hair streaked with gray, and a winged liner on her eyes. She looks less like a realistic peasant than an actor in an open-air Noh stage drama. Similarly, Shindo’s choice of the hannya mask allows the viewer to read its various uses in the film without ever changing the mask itself. Such masks have been designed to evoke a range of emotional responses depending on the context of a scene, and the actor behind the mask expresses emotion by maneuvering their posture and shifting the audience’s perspective on the mask. At first, when it appears on the samurai in the reeds, or when ---removing spoiler--- scares away ---removing spoiler---, the mask looks frightening and monstrous. Later, when it has ---removing spoiler---, the same mask shifts from a fearsome expression to a look of pain and fear, making it an incredible tool that informs the character behind it."

My tiny analysis/critique on history

Before I forget, the kissing seems wrong, not 1300s Japan... wasn't it introduced by Western movies and such recently? The reference to hell seems out of place also, I'm pretty sure it is a much newer introduction... maybe even with 1940s+ influence of US and England on Japan. I've seen the crazy hell+oni thing in southern Japan... and it is extremely interesting, but from what I read it is all recent Christian influences. More to be researched here, I'm only like 95% sure. 

UPDATE: I might corrected once again. Seems like versions of something similar to hell have been around in the Buddhist parts of religion via Hinduism for a long while. Hellparks (probably what I saw in Southern Japan) referenced here: 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/buddhist-hell-parks-asia

quote:

Buddhist underworld

Buddhism, like Christianity and other religions, often uses art to relay information to worshippers, especially illiterate ones. According to John Skutlin, whose anthropological work in Japan has covered views of devils and hell across cultures, “conceptions of the afterlife have long been mined by artists for their rich imaginative potential. Buddhism, with its roots in Hinduism, is no exception.”

Buddhist texts and art traditionally depict the cyclical nature of the universe as a wheel containing six worlds. “While the upper levels are surely magnificent, it is the lurid depictions of the lowest realm of hell—known as Naraka—that have produced the most shocking and fascinating artworks,” Skutlin says.

In early Buddhist texts, Naraka is described as a dark underworld ruled over by Yama, the god of death and justice, according to the Hindu Vedas. Around the first century B.C., the concept of multiple hells within Naraka took hold with increasingly creative and gruesome descriptions of the agonies within each. The Devaduta Sutta, for example, details a level called Excrement, where torturers with needle mouths bore holes into your marrow.
Artistic depictions of Buddhist hell also grew more vivid over the centuries. In Tibet, Yama became a monstrous figure with a fanged red face and crown of skulls, while a 13th-century Japanese scroll shows demons wielding hammers and tongs in a sea of fire. “These graphic depictions served as both spectacle and as inducements to live a moral life, or else suffer ghastly consequences,” Skutlin says.

The emergence of hell parks

In line with this tradition, some small temples in Japan, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam erected educational dioramas of scenes from Buddhist hell, often with elements of local folklore about evil spirits and underworlds. However, it was Myanmarese-Chinese entrepreneurs Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par—the brothers who invented the pungent pain reliever Tiger Balm—that took hell gardens to the next level.

The businessmen opened Singapore’s Haw Par Villa in 1937, one of the few recreational spaces geared toward the Asian community during the nation’s colonial era. It’s aim was to teach the public about Asian history, religion, and folklore in an entertaining way. The most popular section, “10 Courts of Hell,” was particularly graphic. “There were dioramas of sinners being decapitated, being tossed into a pool of blood, and so on,” says Cherylyn Tok, research manager at Haw Par Villa. “It was both repulsive and yet strangely attractive.”

Me: YEP, this horror park next to the giant Buddha statue sounds a lot like what I saw in southern Japan around 2015. 

Oh, we should visit: https://www.visit-kyushu.com/en/see-and-do/spots/hells-beppu/

And this Tofugu site makes light of the many versions of hell you can find in Japan. Want to visit hell, book a flight to Japan they say. Shinto Hell, etc. 

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-hells/

"If someone tells you to go to hell, book your flight to Japan. There are plenty of hells to chose from! Different religious and folklore traditions combined with Japan's natural volcanic activity have created some fascinating, if terrifying, visions of the afterlife. Let's take a look, if you're brave enough."

"Jigoku 地獄じごく, Buddhist hell, is a lot more hellish than Shinto hell. It's got your demons and your fire and all the punishment you might expect. When I first came across the idea of Buddhist hell, I was surprised. I had always thought of Buddhism as a peaceful religion that believed in reincarnation after death. We have to keep in mind that there are a lot of different Buddhist sects in Japan and across the world. Some of them teach that there is a sliding scale of reincarnation. If you live a good life, you will be reincarnated into a better life until you reach Nirvana. However, there's the other end of the scale too: If you live a life that is not worthy of reincarnation, you might find yourself in one of the Buddhist hells."

Onibaba translated

Also to note, the translation for Onibaba is all over the place on the English speaking analysis and review sites. I feel somewhat qualified to clear that up a little, because I hear "Onibaba" used a lot around the house, and it has zero to do with this movie. 

https://www.filminquiry.com/onibaba-1964-review/   

says Onibaba means Devil Woman. Another one translated it as Demon Hag or something. 

What do I say? Well, Oni is a type of monster that could easily be called a demon in English. They have horns, they are usually the bad guys in stories... and usually (always?) cruel. The recent Christian influence via that Hell-Disneyworld place I visited with the animatronic(?) Onis and depictions of hell definitely make you think they are demons. But traditionally, I'm not sure they came from a place called hell but were more like monsters, eh? Let's research that more. Yeah wikiped says they live in caves and deep in mountains... sounds right to me. 

Onibaba I always thought was a singular mean old witch-like, somewhat monsterous lady that eats people in all the stories my household recounts. Kids stories, eh? So maybe "Demon hag" is a decent translation. Soo..... checking wikipedia, sounds like the good ole singular vs. plural thing in Japanese had me tricked this whole time. Onibaba is not a singular person from stories... there are many and perhaps anybody can be turned into an onibaba, any woman. Old ones called onibaba, young ones called kijo so says wikip. 

Let's not forget, "ba-chan" and "o-ba-san" are words for aunts and grandmothers and old ladies and such. So "ba-ba" I'm pretty sure is related to that. I'm putting in all the hypens for emphasis/clarity here.