Pitfall

1962 something-rather

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Well, it's not about a guy running through a jungle and swinging over big holes or skipping across ponds on the heads of crocodiles but never ever getting anywhere. It is sort of like that though. A migrant worker and his son meander. Stalking them is a man in a white suit who at first just snaps photographs from afar but eventually attacks and fatally stabs the father. Oh, snap! He returns as a ghost and finds himself in a world of ghosts while he tries to uncover the mystery of why the man in the white suit killed him.

What a terrific debut movie from that Teshigahara dude! Some truly haunting moments. Hypnotic and cautiously paced, lots of wow moments abound in this little Kafka-esque existential ghost-mystery. The first walk through the ghost town, the unbroken shot of the chase preceding the murder, the first moments of the afterlife shared simultaneously for a pair of enemies, the landscape. There's surreal convolution--dips into a Lynchian syrup--and I wonder whether repeated viewings would help unravel things. Beautifully and ambitiously shot, and although it's not as experimental or weird as The Face of Another or as stunning as Woman in the Dunes, it's still an amazingly accomplished work for an auteur's debut. Depressing stuff, although Dylan saw quite a bit of it while working on some writing and kept laughing at it.