My habit is to go to see a new, usually Japanese movie every Wednesday because it’s the one night of the week in my city where I can watch for a relatively cheap price (probably around eight dollars instead of twelve). This time, because I saw the reviews were pretty good, I went to see “Rosuto Kea,” or, under it’s English title, Do Unto Others—a new film from Nikkatsu Studios. The title comes from the famous Bible verse in Matthew—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I really didn’t know what I was getting into with this movie. Note that I will be discussing some spoilers here, but if you are interested in taking a gander and don’t want the spoilers, jump to the bottom of the review.
The movie is about a particular worker named Shiba (played by Kenichi Matsuyama, probably most famous in the West for his role as super sleuth L in the Death Note films) who compassionately has devoted his life to helping the elderly as their ability to serve themselves ekes away. His coworkers look up to him, his clients adore him, he goes the extra mile every time someone on his radar needs help… and that includes a longstanding penchant for secretly murdering individuals who he deems are suffering too much, and also creating too terrible a burden on their caring families. Prosecuting Attorney Otomo (played by Masami Nagasawa, recently in Shin Ultraman) sniffs out his evil deeds, and soon discovers (as the poster shockingly points out—geez, spoilers!) Shiba killed 42 people. In the ensuing court case, though, she has to search her own heart as she considers how she has treated her own family, and Shiba’s actions seem more morally cloudy than originally suspected when his painful past comes to light.
Film critic Mark Schilling characterizes this film as making an argument for euthanasia, and I don’t fully agree. Shiba is depicted as a torn individual who has had his moral compass ripped apart by societal stresses and an economic impossibility, as well as his father asking him to help him die. Yet even as some of the families of his victims come forth in support of what Shiba has done, and even Otomo (who acts much more like a detective than a prosecutor in the film) partially comes around to his position, nevertheless there is an undercurrent pushing back against Shiba’s narrative. Of course Otomo tongue-lashes the eerily calm murderer to little outward effect, but tellingly in the court room after Otomo once again tries to justify himself, a member in the audience shrieks out, demanding he return the mother he had murdered and thus stolen away from her. A side story concerning two older lovebirds underscores the bare fact that every loving relationship means that we “cause trouble” for one another as part of what it means to love and be human. And Otomo, in a searing confession to Shiba, certainly does not come to agree with what he did—she instead finds blame in her own neglect of her father, and a stinging guilt in that her mother (a Christian) insisted in entering a nursing home when she reached dotage so that Otomo could pursue her independent adult life (I don’t think the movie gives an impression that Otomo dumped her mother into the system—it is explicitly pointed out that the decision was her mother’s, presumably coming from her Christian convictions related to that verse from the title).
I think what makes the movie interesting, and disturbing, is that it dares ask these questions, and it dares to present Shiba as more than just a crazed and vicious madman ala Satoshi Uematsu, a real-life care worker in Japan who stabbed 19 disabled individuals to death back in 2016. I am not sure that the movie wants to be fully realistic in this narrative—as with most movies, the emotions are exaggerated, the situations heightened and ridiculous, and the central question of how to care for the old and infirm (a lightning rod topic for aging Japan, where over a quarter of the population is over 65 years old) is presented in a stark and painful light that anyway worked for me as a gut-wrenching emotional trigger. The movie is filled with harsh scenes of geriatric individuals suffering from dementia causing messes, breaking into fights, living in squalor, and urinating on the floor. Comments from viewers who have written mostly positive reviews on sites like eiga.com praise the film for how it cuts home for them, citing their own experiences as caregivers for the elderly, and pointing to how uncomfortable the movie made them in considering their own position and their experiences in life. I saw comment after comment about how viewers felt “stabbed” by the movie, as if it had assaulted them with its narrative force, and I felt that uncomfortable heft as I sat bludgeoned in my seat as the film ended, too.
This movie is not a thriller per se. There is little action, and even the tense sequences are often overlaid with gentle music. It’s mawkish at times, oversimplified, and I think it’s disturbing how the movie positions Shiba in a positive light during choice sequences—but I think that dissonance is also deliberate. I like that the movie struggles with the moral quandary of its subject matter without landing on a resounding moral gong one way or the other. No one is calling for euthanasia laws at the end. Otomo is left questioning how she didn’t treat her family in a way she could be proud of, and there is a strong sense that Shiba is ravaged inside as he relives the moments that drove him to his first horrible murder. The cinematography cleverly plays the two actors against each other through reflections and their contrasting tears—each gripped in the hellish guilt of having taken part either directly or indirectly in the deaths of their respective fathers.
For me, Do Unto Others was a grinding endurance for my nerves. It asks important questions about the elderly in an outlandish way, but does so I think to shock audiences into contemplation, and the performances from leads Nagasawa and Matsumura anchor the movie, with strong supporting work by the rest of the cast–especially Akira Emoto (as Matsumura’s father). I am not entirely comfortable with where the movie went, but I want more movies to take me to places and urge me to engage with topics I don’t want to consider, and do so with a measure of craft. This movie did those things better than I expected (though I think 2019’s Talking to the Starry Sky deals with some similar issues more tactfully and with at least equal power). A thought-provoking and disturbing film, if flawed in execution—much like its villainous protagonist.