寺山修司 Shûji Terayama – 監督: 寺山修司 Nito-onna: Kage no Eiga
The Woman with Two Heads (translated title)
(1977)
~ 16 minutes
IMDB 
⚠️ The rest of this post includes spoilers. You better watch the film before reading.

The Woman with Two Heads by Shûji Terayama speaks to the thing which makes us human. An excursion from the individual nihilistic melancholy to the large in scope. Using shadows for story-telling looks limited due to its hardness, but quite the contrary, I believe the shadows are a good example for the limitlessness of the cinematography and the language of the cinema.

If you have an iPhone, you don’t need to think about the cell phones anymore. You get yourself out of the conflict. The establishment is prepared to tell you what you need and serve you limited options of it. Everything is so clear, ready to be consumed. However I think using symbols by a wisely way instead of being so clear builds an stairway to the deep feelings. In every step of the stairs, metaphorical expressions get together with aesthetic beauty. After ascending the stairs, you find yourself in the director’s haunting point of view.

A song with ably chosen notes accompanies your journey and makes the movie even more hypnotic. Plodding musical score is the dialogues, the communicative soul of the movie.


<img src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/00-54-shadows.png" alt=“Shadows (00:54)”

data-lightbox-src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/00-54-shadows.png" data-lightbox-alt=“Shadows (00:54)”

The girl we see at first opened up the door to a surreal fantasy. There starts oscillation from childhood innocence to the throes of the other two characters.


<img src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/03-14-repetition.png" alt=“Repetition (03:14)”

data-lightbox-src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/03-14-repetition.png" data-lightbox-alt=“Repetition (03:14)”

Repetition of a scene isn’t mostly seen in cinema. I was engaged especially in Terayama’s glamorous camera work. Even though almost everything in the movie is shown in a one, small studio, the movie is like based in a new experimental image world.


<img src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/07-42-sex.png" alt=“Sex (07:42)”

data-lightbox-src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/07-42-sex.png" data-lightbox-alt=“Sex (07:42)”

Every shot in the movie is well composed. Cinema likes two different aspects in a one shot. Here we see the divide between the moment and the fancy.


<img src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/09-49-the-child.png" alt=“The child (09:49)”

data-lightbox-src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/09-49-the-child.png" data-lightbox-alt=“The child (09:49)”

First contact with the shadows is from the little girl. The film doesn’t settle into a concrete narrative or even definitive symbolism.


<img src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/12-13-erasing.png" alt=“Erasing (12:13)”

data-lightbox-src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/12-13-erasing.png" data-lightbox-alt=“Erasing (12:13)”

A woman erasing a man. One of the most impressive scenes.


<img src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/14-36-final.png" alt=“Final (14:36)”

data-lightbox-src="/projects/my-delusionary-rendezvous/the-woman-with-two-heads/14-36-final.png" data-lightbox-alt=“Final (14:36)”

The closing shot of the film is perhaps the most unexpected one for me. I couldn’t stop thinking why films underlying meaning became out of reach. But I’d rather seeing an in-story final instead of an observing shot zooming out. I’d prefer an end of the story instead of more philosophical context.