Hideo Nakata, Dark Water

 Hideo Nakata, Dark Water

Hideo Nakata's Dark Water is a simple yet intricate film in Asian horror cinema that contains traces of culture and identity, providing a pathway for intricacies, societal gender norms, and personal and ethnic identity to be discussed, challenged, and better understood through the film's storytelling and cinematography.

A mother's touch, as many know, is one of the most important and influential presences in a child's life. The film delves into the identity and sacrifices of a mother Yoshimi Matsubara, who to save her own child, chooses to sacrifice the life that she has with her own child. This is in addition to the life that she sacrifices working as a editor. For this movie, “the portrayal, struggle and redemption of its female protagonist is contingent on her acquiescing to and embracing an idealized feminine role — the self-sacrificing mother” (Martin). Further, the identity of a parent and the neglect that the parents can have on the children is discussed with how Yoshimi fails to care for her child as her mother did for her, creating this cycle of pain felt by her mother and her child as well. The children's identity itself, then, is questioned, where they felt alienated from the society as a result of the mother's negligence.

The cultural intricacies were seen also in how divorce is stigmatized in Japanese society as well as mental illness which is not as widely accepted as is in other societies. Martin describes this alienation of society as a landmark between the world we want to live in, and the society that is provided to us (Martin). Further, the numbers in the film were a part of the social intricacies, how room 305 is considered a taboo number and is explained to be the source of the dark water.

The societal and gender norms as discussed, provides the most intricate scene in the film, at the very end, where the mother's final sacrifice to her child, though it pained her child, watching her cry as she takes the elevator to her own death, to save her child but protect another. Crossing scenes illustrate visual connections between these characters and also highlight the cycle of guilt under which Yoshimi must suffer. When Ikuko is left waiting at the kindergarten for her mother Yoshimi, who is trapped at an interminable job interview as she desperately seeks employment, the camera once again situates the view behind the young girl’s back, her small body silhouetted and alone in the doorway. The classroom is quiet and empty as children joyfully greet their arriving parents in the outside courtyard. Ikuko, like Mitsuko and Yoshimi before her, is very still, silently gazing at the other children through the sheets of rain that drench the schoolyard. Back at the publishing firm, where Yoshimi is still forced to wait, she frantically tries to reach the school by phone. A flashback then occurs in which Yoshimi recalls her abandonment at school by her own mother, and the subsequent shame and despair she felt at the time. The scene is bathed in a warm, yellow haze to signify the past. Abruptly, the image cuts to Ikuko under an umbrella, alone in the school courtyard during a downpour. As she looks across to the distant street, she sees another young girl, also alone. This apparition is Mitsuko’s ghost watching Ikuko from under the hood of her shiny yellow slicker. Later, the film flashes back to Mitsuko’s own rainy abandonment by her parents, as she was last seen at the same kindergarten two years earlier (Martin).