Review of Cure (1997)
Seen in 2026.
A police detective investigates a serial killer, or a series of one-time killers with a few things in common.
This was my first time seeing Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s work. I saw it in a theatre, unusually crowded for a Cinemateket screening but really just a third of the way full. It was on the night of a fresh breeze and heavy rain, which you could call a storm, but it was not a real storm. In the same way, Kurosawa’s writing doesn’t really contain what he wants it to suggest.
The premise of this film is that Franz Mesmer’s magnétisme animal was not placebo and/or that a late Meiji-era hypnotist made Mesmer’s idea work and/or, as one psychiatrist surmises, that there is a divine influence at play. Regardless of what the premise may be, the symbolism is that in a state of hypnosis, you are free, so you murder someone who bothers you and you remain free from the understanding of why you did it. The stereotypical police detective looking into this goes through a process like “Labyrinth Objects: File 538” (1987) to slowly become as mad and free as a Lovecraft protagonist, and then goes on to be the Antichrist or something. Instead of monsters, you get an old Edison phonograph cylinder and some grainy photos of people from 1898: The stuff of The Fantastic (1970).
It’s not much of a story. It’s more of a tissue of millennial angst for you to project your own ideas onto. If you look into it, it is obvious that Mesmer’s work had no miraculous or supernatural power, and the film establishes no link from Mesmerism to the notion of an infohazard propagating a quasi-religious cult, nor any link from there on to the symbolism around social pressure and relief, but the savvy viewer will enjoy the dots unconnected. The film is not scary, but it does have an effective aesthetic: Sometimes as grungy as Seven (1995) but not as gory, and sometimes darkly funny. An early, conspicuous musical choice on the soundtrack sets the tone, but from there, Kurosawa retreats, never falling into camp or kitsch. That’s a good choice, greatly helped by similarly tight direction of the principal actors.
References here: Paranoia Agent (2004).