Page 164 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema
P. 164
Spiraling into Apocalypse 151
who alone reaches out to comfort Mitsuko following her boyfriend’s
suicide. If Sono Shion’s Suicide Circle can be read as espousing even the
faintest glimmer of optimism or hope in the face of a seemingly
apocalyptic crisis, such an understanding hinges upon the sporadic, yet
strategically placed representations of Shibusawa’s altruism. Sono
provides perhaps the most important representation of Shibusawa’s
selflessness in Suicide Circle’s penultimate sequence, a tense series of
tracking and static shots that recall the film’s shocking opening. After a
multitude of female high school students descend the wide concrete steps
leading to a subway platform, a parade accompanied by ringing cell
phones playing the refrains of various Desert/Dessert/Dessret tunes, Sono
cuts to a medium shot of Shibusawa scanning the crowd for Mitsuko
until, in a reverse shot, we see her waiting for the approaching train. Next,
in a medium two shot, Shibusawa approaches Mitsuko and grasps her arm
to prevent her from potentially leaping to her death. With an expression
that vacillates between annoyance and confusion, Mitsuko pulls her arm
from Shibusawa’s grip and continues towards the platform’s edge before
looking back over her shoulder at the detective. The camera zooms in
quick to a closer shot of Mitsuko, followed by a series of cross-cuts
between a close up of the young detective’s worried visage and a medium
shot of Mitsuko looking sad but determined. As the train arrives, Sono
cuts back to a close up of Shibusawa, and then cuts back to a full shot of
Mitsuko as she slowly turns, boards the train, and then looks back again
at the detective, her body now framed by the closing subway door.
Finally, Sono cuts back to a medium shot of Shibusawa watching as the
subway cars roll out of the station with a metallic hiss and squeal.
Of course, the wordless exchange described above is an
ambivalent conclusion at best. The troubled expressions and abortive
gestures throughout the sequence promote this sense of ambiguity.
Mitsuko, after all, pulls away from Shibusawa; the subway door
ultimately slides shut, separating the protagonists both literally and
figuratively. However, it is precisely this indeterminacy that allows
viewers to read the film’s denouement as ultimately hopeful. Although
‘cut off’ from one another in a geographical space (a subway station)
linked throughout the film’s diegesis with notions of ‘transience’ or