Kiga kaikyo (1965) aka A Fugitive from the Past

William Faulkner once said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." That maxim succinctly sums up Tomu Uchida's sprawling, decade-spanning detective story about the hunt for a man who murdered a family, stole their money, burned down a town, and killed his accomplices. Shot in a flat, grainy, widescreen black and white, Uchida's direction is about as grim as it gets. There is something very affecting about his conjuring of these specific times and places. I would not exactly call this film realist, because it has certain metaphysical overtones, but it manages to really plant the viewer into its very detailed world. Uchida takes his time telling the story, never rushing things along. The entire last third of the film, when Rentaro Mikuni takes center stage in what is certainly one of the great performances of the cinema, is masterful filmmaking. There is also a very careful attention to detail and narrative symmetry here. In the first half of the film we meet the family of the detective trying to catch the killer, and ten years later we meet the family again, and see how much, and how little has changed. Though these sequences only make up a small fraction of the overall running time, they are prime examples of how Uchida does everything in his power to make us really feel a part of these people's lives. He is not a director who wears his emotions on his sleeve, and instead prefers to allow the emotional content to slowly grow out of the quiet moments. However, this does not mean Uchida is not afraid to go baroque, and his use of expressionist shadows, thunderstorms, and negative exposures lend A Fugitive from the Past a mythical and epic quality. This is surely one of the most perfect detective stories ever filmed.