Death by Hanging is a 1968 film directed by Nagisa Oshima.
The film begins in a sort of documentary style as a narrator explains graphics, showing that 71% of the population of Japan supports the death penalty. The film then shows the facility where executions are carried out in Japan, a place that has a waiting room for witnesses and a holding cell for the condemned. Next the film shows a condemned prisoner being taken in to the chamber. Japan uses the death penalty for hanging, so the man, who is quaking with fear, is blindfolded and placed on a trap door, as the noose is placed around his neck. Then the trap door is opened, the condemned falls through into the lower chamber, and a doctor checks his pulse. Usually the heart stops within 10-12 minutes.
Only this man, a convicted rapist-murder known only as R, does not die. Over 20 minutes after being dropped, the man's heart is still beating. The prison guards manage to wake R up, but he is strangely calm and detatched, and has forgotten who he is. The prison staff—the warden, the Education Chief, the chaplain, and others—then performing an increasingly bizarre reenactment of R's crimes, in an effort to remind him that he is R, so that he can be declared competent and be hanged.
As of 2022 the death penalty was still on the books
in Japan.
Tropes:
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Education Chief thanks everyone involved in the execution, saying a good job was done "by you, and you, and you...." This is interrupted by the voice of the narrator saying "and you, who've watched this film." And on that note the movie ends.
- Came Back Wrong: Before the hanging R's knees were buckling with terror. But when he is revived he is calm and detached in an oddly creepy way. Not only does he not remember being R, but when he's told that he's been condemned for murder and rape, he asks questions like "What is rape?" and "What is carnal desire?", all in a creepy monotone.
- Central Theme:
- The inhumanity of the death penalty and how ordinary Japanese support it because they don't have to watch it happen.
- And also Japan's colonial past and specifically Japan's occupation of and abuse of Korea. Over 20 years after the end of the war the Japanese, as represented by the prison staff, are horribly bigoted towards the ethnic Korean minority in Japan.
- Gainax Ending: Having finally accepted that he is R, R agrees to be executed. They blindfold him again, and drop him again, and the camera shows...an empty noose. The Education Chief thanks everyone for their hard work, the narrator thanks the viewer for watching, and the film ends.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: Heard when the prison staff are trying to revive R, who is unconscious but whose heart continues to beat after the unsuccessful hanging.
- I Love the Dead: It is specified that R raped his second victim after he strangled her to death.
- Imagine Spot: Maybe. Almost exactly halfway through the movie, the reenactment of R's crimes suddenly changes setting from the execution chamber to R's home in the slums. The prison staff then follows R around to the actual crime scenes. It seems like it must be an imagine spot, right up to the point where the Education Chief demonstrates how R strangled a student to death by himself strangling a student to death—then calling his coworkers for help disposing of the body.
- Insane Troll Logic: The staffer giving R artificial respiration says "We're trying to save his life!" They are in fact trying to wake him up so they can hang him.
- Lap Pillow: R rests his head on the Korean woman's lap as they commiserate about the plight of ethnic Koreans in Japan.
- Nameless Narrative: The prisoner is called R, his victim is called B, and all the other characters are addressed by their titles.
- Narrator: Only in the opening sequence, as a narrator voiced by Nagisa Oshima explains how executions are carried out in Japan and introduces the death chamber.
- The Man They Couldn't Hang: The prison staff are at a loss when R simply does not die.
- Repeat Cut:
- The staff is reenacting R's dysfunctional home life (abusive alcoholic father, not enough to eat). They are recreating a violent argument between R's parents, when repeat cuts are used to show R standing up and turning around to say "stop it". This is the first time that R, who previously watched the reenactments with all the interest a goldfish might, has engaged.
- Another repeat cut is used when R and the Korean woman roll around in the grass on a riverbank, after they fall off a bicycle.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Inspired by the 1958 case of Ri Chin'u, an ethnic Korean who killed two Japanese schoolgirls. Some of the dialogue between R and the Korean woman is lifted verbatim from correspondence between Ri and a Korean journalist.
- Stock Audio Clip: Excerpts from Adolf Hitler speeches are heard over the soundtrack a couple of times.
- Tactful Translation: The woman who spontaneously appears in the execution chamber turns out to be a Korean activist. She starts spouting angrily about how Korean-Japanese are discriminated against and that R's crimes aren't really crimes because he was striking out against the social order. The translator then lies through his teeth to the Chief Prosecutor, claiming that the woman is making patriotic comments about building a better Japan.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: A rare live-action example. The guard playing one of R's little sisters, in the recreation of his family life, wears a ribbon in his hair.
- Title Drop: And also Gratuitous English. The prison doctor, after telling an emotional story about how he served three years in jail after being unjustly accused of being a war criminal in Vietnam, ends his rant by yelling "Death by hanging!" in English.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: The Education Chief strangles a young woman, recreating R's crime, in what appears to be an Imagine Spot, although in this Mind Screw movie it's hard to tell. Later, the corpse of the woman simply appears out of nowhere in the execution chamber. At first only the Education Chief can see her, although by the end everyone but the Chief Prosecutor can see her. They conclude that believing in the presence of the mysterious woman makes her materialize.
