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IMDbPro

The Eel

Original title: Unagi
  • 19971997
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 57m
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
6.1K
YOUR RATING
The Eel (1997)
Drama
A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After the release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking almost to no one except an eel he befriended while in pr... Read allA businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After the release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking almost to no one except an eel he befriended while in prison.A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After the release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking almost to no one except an eel he befriended while in prison.
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
6.1K
YOUR RATING
    • Shôhei Imamura
  • Writers
    • Shôhei Imamura
    • Daisuke Tengan
    • Motofumi Tomikawa
  • Stars
    • Kôji Yakusho
    • Misa Shimizu
    • Mitsuko Baishô
    • Shôhei Imamura
  • Writers
    • Shôhei Imamura
    • Daisuke Tengan
    • Motofumi Tomikawa
  • Stars
    • Kôji Yakusho
    • Misa Shimizu
    • Mitsuko Baishô
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 27User reviews
    • 21Critic reviews
    • 81Metascore
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards

    Photos12

    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)
    The Eel (1997)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Kôji Yakusho
    Kôji Yakusho
    • Takuro Yamashita
    Misa Shimizu
    Misa Shimizu
    • Keiko Hattori
    Mitsuko Baishô
    • Misako Nakajima
    Akira Emoto
    • Tamotsu Takasaki
    Fujio Tokita
    Fujio Tokita
    • Jiro Nakajima
    Shô Aikawa
    Shô Aikawa
    • Yuji Nozawa
    Ken Kobayashi
    • Masaki Saito
    Sabu Kawahara
    • Seitaro Misato
    Etsuko Ichihara
    • Fumie Hattori
    Tomorô Taguchi
    Tomorô Taguchi
    • Eiji Dojima
    Chiho Terada
    • Emiko Yamashita
    Shinshô Nakamaru
    Sei Hiraizumi
    Sei Hiraizumi
    Seiji Kurasaki
    Toshirô Ishidô
    Sanshô Shinsui
    • Doctor
    Kôichi Ueda
    • Keiji - A detective
    Ken Mitsuishi
    • Detective
      • Shôhei Imamura
    • Writers
      • Shôhei Imamura
      • Daisuke Tengan
      • Motofumi Tomikawa
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Winner of the 1997 Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival tied with another title Taste of Cherry from Iran.
    • Quotes

      Takuro Yamashita: An eel's all a man needs.

    • Connections
      Featured in Especial Cannes: 50 Anos de Festival (1997)

    User reviews27

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    9/10
    Truly Unpredictable, Bold, Inventive Film-making
    The Eel does something so imaginative and effective in the way it tells its story. It really makes the audience interact. Explaining this would ruin its effect, a sort of thing rarely experienced anymore in filmgoing. It's difficult to find movies that actually redirect your thinking and stimulate you and make you suffer in that great, fulfilling way. So, I will leave you to take my word for it. What is amazing about what The Eel does is how it really enlightens the audience when it comes to the judgment and expectations of characters. The Eel probes meticulously and sneakily the strange progression of a person.

    Shohei Imamura, the film's cunning, subtle, and seemingly offbeat director, fashions the opening murder with what is in the first nanosecond of reaction aggravating and promptly recognized as a brilliant little effect. As the movie's main character stabs his cheating wife to death after slashing her frightened adulterous lover, blood sprays all over the camera, the scene becoming skewed and blurred through the bloodied lens, forcing us naturally to want to peer around it to see as clearly as we can the violence the character continues to commit. And at that point we realize, as is Imamura's intention, that we are the audience and that there is the movie, and that we are voyeurs who so badly anticipate such things as the passionately vindicating slaughter of a coldly adulterous lover. And from there, Imamura exploits the weakness he knows we have, but in what way cannot be predicted.

    Later in the film, Imamura stages a ballistic, ungraceful fight that includes many characters, but with a relentlessly stationary camera. No matter how intricate certain actions get, he refuses to let it be anything more than observed. His intentions are all to make us conscious of what we are thinking as we watch these scenes. It's a creative intelligence applied more and more rarely all the time.

    The cast is very carefully balanced. Certain characters are animated, some eccentric, some very stoic, and some are combinations of all three, yet they never become even remote resemblances of clichés. They are all meant to oppose or serve as comparison to each other in nature and chemistry.

    Another plus is the film's purposely awkward, infectiously gawky musical score that, like most music in Japanese films, is recurrent and sustained, a repeated series of only a handful of melodies that are very memorable.
    helpful•4
    1
    • jzappa
    • Mar 20, 2007

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • August 21, 1998 (United States)
      • Japan
      • Japanese
    • Also known as
    • Filming locations
      • Sawara, Chiba, Japan
    • Production companies
      • Eisei Gekijo
      • Groove Corporation
      • Imamura Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • 1 hour 57 minutes
      • Color
      • Mono

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