Cure

All the things that used to be inside of me… now they’re all outside. This is what Mamiya, the film’s driving antagonistic force, says in order to explain how he’s able to delve into someone else’s psyche. Cure is a film about many things, but the topic that stands out the most is Identity. Mamiya’s identity has been lost to him, as he explains that he is now devoid of it, empty, as he calls himself. But this gives him the ability to truly know someone else. A doctor who has been treated unfairly her whole life for being a woman holds repressed feelings about those who have talked down on her, but this amnesiac patient seems to know all of this just from observing her?  An older police officer past his prime is forced to work together with a younger, more disciplined officer. Both work diligently, but the older policeman knows deep inside of himself how much he dislikes working with his partner, but nonetheless, they work together. So how is it possible that one conversation with an insouciant building jumper could cause him to murder his partner in broad daylight? The true meaning of this film isn’t hidden or as subversive as one might think.  Around halfway through the film there is a scene where our protagonist, Takabe, attempts to interrogate Mamiya. This is where we see our first close-up shots, since the majority of the camera work so far had been distant but majestic master shots. But instead of finally getting intimate with the character of Mamiya, all the questions get directed to Takabe.  The detective or the husband? Which is the real you? Neither one is the real you. There is no real you. This is to told to Takabe, whose life is deteriorating from trying to balance his heavy detective work life with his personal life of taking care of his mentally ill wife. This split of identities has broken Takabe to the point where even Mamiya knows that there is no real Takabe left. When one has to hide their true self in order to be welcomed and accepted by others, do they even have a true self anymore? Are everyone’s personalities an amalgamation of standards set by one another? Does this even qualify as an individual identity at this point? These are questions asked by the film without attempting to answer them. Mamiya’s sole existence is to question one’s own sense of identity to the point that one’s most sinister urges are completely unlocked of societal norms.  All these messages are interwoven in a beautifully shot film with top tier acting and even greater sound design that had me scared of a glass of water. You become so entranced that you question if you’re getting hypnotized yourself. This isn’t a film that needs a plot analysis because there’s simply no point in trying to make sense of a character like Mamiya and why he chooses to act the way he does. Whether or not he’s faking his amnesia truly does not matter, as does the fate of Takabe’s wife. Dead or not, Takabe has long wanted for her gone and is seen at a much better place with her out of the picture in the last scene of the movie.  —————————————————————————— It is said that Kurosawa conceived the idea for this film when he watched a news report of a killer’s neighbors saying how the killer was such a normal guy and how he was the type “ you’d want your sister to marry”. He thought, what if these people were right? What if something else made this person commit such an act? But at the end of the day, you can’t probe into a person’s mind and find the truth and reasoning behind their actions. You simply are not someone else. The best thing you can do is sit back, look into their eyes and ask, *Who are you? *