Blind Beast (1969)

Better Late Then Never

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Moju is ambitious art-house film. It's staged as homage to fine arts and for the most part theatrical. Artist's studio is huge, dark exhibition place for human limbs and parts of human body sculpt out of clay, with two giant naked female body forms in the center. That's the psychedelic stage where this story is to take place. I think it soon became clear there was one most likely scenario for me as viewer: to approach it on intellectual level. Blind Beast has a lot to offer visually, but it's stripped down in its core, an extreme psychology workshop with highly effective, post modern interior. I have noticed certain restraint here, it's not trying to evoke emotional response as primary goal.Blind sculptor (Michio) with slight Oedipal complex becomes fascinated with young s&m model. With the help of his mother he kidnaps the young girl (Aki) hoping to use her as model for his art. Things do not go quite as planned, turns out the girl is strong willed and stubborn with certain dislike of her new position. Battle of wills thus ensues. Using basic psychology she manipulates naive, asocial artist to gain his trust and up her chances for escaping the house. But, after several failed attempts she is forced to accept her fate and form a relationship with him.Both of them go through changes, each new step force them to adapt, and find a way to cope with the situation. It resembles a weird game, with ever changing dynamics between the two protagonists. It becomes apparent the girl, whom I first though was superficial or simply ordinary, shows considerable intelligence, and new found appreciation for the world of touch (the only world known to her captor), senses and darkly pleasures. And things escalate from there.Although protagonists are taking the realm of senses to extremes and turn pleasure into pain, most of violence happens off screen so Blind Beast's subtle and visually beautiful while demonstrating excessive, pathological desires and ideas. I first thought the titular Blind Beast is the sculptor, but have changed my mind during the film...twice. Having seen it, I don't think either of the characters are, I think the title refers to lust, surrender to senses, confirming there is such thing as too much of a good thing.

Part of the Japanese New Wave of the 1960's and early 1970's, - which, like the French Nouvelle Vague developed a new form of cinema, largely made up of film critics, and deconstructionists - Yasuzo Masumura's deeply psycho-sexual drama about power and sensuality, explored ideas such as the changing roles in society (particularly of women), surprisingly - unlike the French wave - through the studio system. Based upon Rampo Edogawa's novel, published in 1931, the film has been previously compared to John Fowles's excellent 1963 novel, 'The Collector' - and certainly some of the themes are similar.Self-proclaimed "disliked model," Aki (Mako Midori), begins the film in a gallery, her modelling career not going to plan within the commercial world, she had taken a job posing for a famous photographer in "erotic" S&M style images. The exhibition is a success, but here, now, it is early, and she views a strange man fondling a sculpture effigy of her, that resides at the centre of the room. Having hired a masseur, the blind, Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), enters her flat and begins lasciviously to touch her body, proclaiming she has the most perfect body. Michio, along with his mother kidnap Aki, and take her to his warehouse studio - there he states his aim to create a new genre of art, made by and for the blind that is based upon the sensation of touch alone.As Aki begins to bring deception and manipulation into the mother-son relationship, things begin to spiral out of control, their relationship develops into a strangely symbiotic form, that increasingly leads to a masochistic tryst. As their depravity progresses, the masochistic tendencies become more dangerous (which could easily be seen as absolute influence on Jennifer Lynch's famous failure, Boxing Helena (1993) - it would be surprising if she had not seen it).Most of the film is set within the cavernous, yet claustrophobic warehouse, which lends an air of stage play. However, the production design is absolutely beautiful, with abstractions of lighting, and the walls covered with hundreds of clay body parts - over sized eyes, noses, legs etc, - of all the women he has previously touched. It is a very interesting film, that will endure for it's psychotic and debasing character studies, and the destruction of the traditional family unit.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

I thought that Blind Beast which was directed by Yazuzo Masumara. was a very weird sort of film. A blind sculptor kidnaps a young model and takes her back to his home. He and his mother live in a warehouse that he has turned into a tribute to the senses. It is filled with huge sculptures of body parts He is obsessed with exploring the senses to the fullest. At first, the model only wants to escape from this bizarre place, but eventually she succumbs to his strange vision and even surpasses his obsession. This was a very disturbing sort of film a that contains some weird seanses. But i found it to be quite an interesting film in the end.

My response to this movie is a little different than others I've read. Many point to themes like sadomasochism, the cruelty of art, and addiction. However, no one seems to have noted the rather obvious moral. In fact, the movie constantly tells viewers how to interpret its symbolism. Far from subtle, it bludgeons us with the desired interpretation with the same force Michio uses to drive his sculptor's knife through his model's limbs. It is a cautionary coming-of-age tale that enacts a distinctly Japanese version of the Oedipal myth in which the son must overcome his mother rather than his father (there are no fathers here).The blind Michio is incomplete. As the model Aki tells him, he is not a real man but a momma's boy, a child who still sleeps with his mother (which he does). His mother has done everything in her power to preserve Michio's infantile dependence. She helped him build the cavernous warehouse and fill it with the grotesquely bizarre sculptures of female body parts. The model Aki quickly realizes these are just more symbols of Michio's infantilism. Michio reacts with stunned recognition when Aki points out to him that he has made the figures so large because they represent his childish perspective. To a certain extent, Aki lessens Michio's blindness by repeatedly opening his eyes to the reality of his situation.Aki's mother, on the other hand, will go to any lengths to preserve Michio's blind reliance on her. She is more than willing to participate in kidnapping and perhaps worse to provide him a new plaything. Indeed, without this accomplice, Michio could never have captured or held Aki. After Michio has chloroformed Aki, his mother leads the way back to the den and guards the door to prevent Aki's escape. However, when Aki starts to become more than a toy to Michio by awakening his romantic and sexual desires, she threatens the mother's dominance.Again, Aki offers the interpretation of what must follow. She promises to have sex with Michio, even marry him, but only if he will break totally with his mother. In effect, she tells him that to become a man he must reject his mother and assert his mature sexuality with her. She adds that any good (Japanese?) mother would welcome such a change in her son. This sets up a literal tug of war between Aki and the mother for Michio's affection. The seductive Aki stands on one side of Michio exhorting him to choose her in return for her sexual favors, and the mother pulls at him from the other side, warning Michio that Aki is a lying slut who will betray him. The symbolic psychological triangle was so explicitly rendered that I couldn't help but laugh out loud as Michio repeatedly knocks his mother to the floor during this struggle. Then the mother pulls out the big guns, reminding Michio of all her sacrifices in bearing, birthing, and raising him. But Michio fires back with the ultimate guilt trip, accusing his mother of being the cause of his blindness. With one final shove, Michio ends his psychological struggle by knocking his mother against a pillar, after which she dies from the blow to her head.Michio has literally and figuratively broken the triangle and started on the path to manhood by choosing Aki and an adult sexual relationship. But he doesn't stop there. With the mother no longer blocking the door, Aki believes she can now escape her blind captor. She bolts, but Michio intercepts her. No longer needing his mother to control Aki's feminine assertiveness, Michio drags Aki back into the sculpture gallery and rapes her on top of the gigantic nude sculpture. Earlier, Michio had asked Aki why she agreed to pose nude for a photographer but refused to allow him to feel her body so he could sculpt it. She replied that the photographer was a famous and respected artist who presented her in a way she wanted to be viewed, as the image of the "new woman." In fact, the photographs depicted her in various states of naked bondage. Michio now explicitly forces Aki to accept the traditional role of women in Japanese culture that the photographer only symbolically portrayed -- as an utterly submissive sex object.Interestingly, it is only when Michio begins to physically abuse Aki that the director Masumura allows the viewer to enjoy Aki's full sexuality, exposing her breasts for the first time in live action (they were also visible at the beginning of the movie in the portraits exhibited by the photographer, another "real" man). Once violently subjugated, the formerly willful Aki not only accepts the submissive role but embraces it to such an extreme that she adopts Michio's disability, becoming blind herself and symbolically accepting his view of the world. She encourages him to beat and mutilate her, and she ultimately allows him to objectify her totally by dismembering her. She becomes like the sculpted body parts that adorn Michio's world, another product of his artistic vision.With Aki dead, Michio also commits suicide and validates his mother's warning. The mother had cautioned that Michio did not know the real world. Once Michio leaves the safety of her symbolic womb for the path to manhood, his end is inevitable. Maturity ultimately means death. So we're left with a very transparent rendering of a basic maturation myth with some peculiarly Japanese elements. To become a man, a boy must reject his umbilical dependence on women and take on the dominant role. Independent women, on the other hand, are seductive charlatans (except for you, Mom). To be proper members of society, they must submit totally to the desires of men. And of course, sex, as always, equals death for both, but neither has any choice but to accept it as an inevitable consequence of growing up. Obviously, Blind Beast is a feminist's allegorical nightmare. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating rendering of an archetypal story.