Mock Review – Takashi Miike Revisits the Infamous ‘Murder Guru’ Trial in Unflinching Courtroom Drama | film

TAkashi Miike, Japan’s extreme maestro, now tackles a relatively staid and mainstream genre: the courtroom drama. But he can’t help but bring to it his trademark shocks and imprecise metaphors. “Sham” is based on a real-life case from 2003 that shook Japanese media and public opinion. In the city of Fukuoka in southwestern Japan, elementary school teacher Seiichi Yabushita was accused of racially abusing and beating a student and pushing him to the brink of suicide on the grounds that the child was supposed to have an American grandfather and that his pure Japanese blood was contaminated with foreigners. But was the child lying on the instructions of his mother, the real aggressor? The film is based on “Fabrication: The Truth About the Fukuoka ‘Murder Teacher’,” a 2007 book by investigative journalist Masumi Fukuda about the case.

By mirroring the prosecution and defense cases in court, Miike presents us with both sides of the story in an almost Rashomon style: first, the behavior of the boy’s mother Mrs. Himuro (Ko Shibasaki) and in this version, the behavior of the teacher (Go Ayano) is truly evil. Then – after the “trial” version covers very little of the film – we get the teacher’s own account, and it soon becomes clear that this is in fact the objective reality. He is a kind and reasonable man, beloved by his students; He wouldn’t hurt a fly and his observations about the boy’s family background are completely innocent. The problem arose from convincing a horrified headteacher to apologize to the parents in a doomed attempt to end the case and admit to corporal punishment on the basis of faulty discipline following an incident of bullying, with the aim of showing how horrific the violence was.

In the end, this film is not neutral; There is no Rashomon-style mystery about where the truth lies. However, I think that Miike’s own creative energies are stimulated by showing the teacher in his “evil” guise, and perhaps also by showing Lady Himuro as a virtual horror villain with long, straight black hair and a pale, emotionless face – not far, in some ways, from the avenger Asami in his classic Chilled Audition. The bullying scenes, the teacher plagued by slanderous rumours, the school’s insincere apologies, and the atmosphere of mystery and mystery… This may be evidence that the original 2003 case also indirectly inspired Hirokazu Kore-eda’s mystery drama “The Monster” from 2023.