Nightmare Detective

In a Nightmare Detective a cornucopia of suicidal thoughts, trauma-related memories, dream analysis and the paranormal are linked together, creating a commanding harrowing story of death and redemption. The viewer enters a world of despondency and fear as Tsukamoto intelligently and compassionately focuses on the consciousness of a group of people, whose desire for death surpasses the will to live. Tsukamoto’s cast of broken characters creates a vision that lays bare the anguish of the disillusioned. He also describes a malevolent spirit that spreads a trail of blood and heartrending recollection of buried pain in its wake.

The Nightmare Detective is a man called Mr Kagenuma. He casts a solitary figure of wretchedness; his head hung low, world-weary and emotionally plagued by his extraordinary abilities, which allow him to see inside people’s minds and enter their dreams. His gentle face and waiflike appearance highlight his vulnerability. Dressed in a simple black hooded cloak, he appears to have stepped out of a monastery during medieval times, instead of the modern decade that he lives in.

At the beginning of the film he is hired by a dying man to find out the cause of his nightmares. We see him travel from the elderly mans dreams, floating through a blue sea back to the real world. In a Nightmare Detective water represents the passageway to the world of dreams. As Mr Kagenuma stares into the minds of people, he sees a cesspit of brutality and ugliness that totally repulses him. ‘I hate this, I hate this’ he says cringing, his face contorted in horror.

Tokyo City at night is busy and vibrant. Traffic cars honk. Crowds of people step through the streets, the camera focuses on the high-rise apartment buildings and the faceless shadows of people stood at the windows. A girl’s voice can be heard speaking over this urban imagery; the fearful voice of a young girl who wants to end her life but is scared die alone. ‘Life is pointless’, she says, ‘I just want to disappear.’ Her lone voice symbolizes the beliefs of other despairing suicidal city dwellers.

She is talking to a stranger that she met on the Internet. A man who has promised to commit suicide at the same time as her, even though they are at different locations in the city. The man, played by Tsukamoto, stabs himself in the stomach during the phone call. She lifts out a pair of scissors to mutilate herself but is interrupted when a ferocious invisible assailant attacks her from all sides. He slashes her to death in a frenzy of violence and mutilation. The shots and jerky camerawork in this scene are classic Tsukamoto, the unseen killer races at an incredible speed up the stairways and through the apartment complex.

Detectives investigate the girl’s death. One of them is a woman called, Keiko Kirishima, who has recently transferred from the National Police Agency. This is her first crime scene. Her face is permanently solemn and she seems preoccupied with thoughts not related to the case. She stares strangely at her reflection in bathroom mirrors and pools of rain on the ground, as though her own face haunts her, as if she is looking at a stranger. At night she struggles to sleep, afraid to close her eyes and face the frequent nightmares. In her dreams she sees her doppelganger crawling helplessly on the floor in a red and black dress, hands closed around her throat. This vision of herself alludes to the helpless, suicidal and weak part of her subconscious that she carefully blocks out in everyday life.

The four central characters in Nightmare Detective are all suicidal but in very different ways. Mr Kagenuma is unable to cope with the rejection of his mother as a child. ‘I was born into this world but nobody wanted me’, he says. The female detective, Keiko, has had suicidal thoughts for years but does not know where the feelings originated or the reason for them. Her partner Wakamiya strangely does not know that he is suicidal until he comes face to face with a murderer in his dreams.

After a second suicide the detectives find a number that both suicide victims called prior to dying. The man calls himself zero. The number he uses is significant, zero represents no more options, it indicates nothing. The Indians used a place-value system and zero was used to denote an empty place. This number could also indicate the feelings of the killer, that people are nothing, that they are worthless.

They decide to ring the number and see if zero is encouraging people to kill themselves. The first detective, a man in his fifties, rings the cell number but there is no answer, this is because unknown to him, zero can tell if the person really has a suicidal wish. After hours of trying the young detective, Wakamiya, rings the number and the call is answered. At the end of the call the man says ‘zero, I can feel you’.

Calling on Mr Kagenuma for help, Keiko rushes to the side of her partner Wakamiya and stands guard while he sleeps. She fully expects him to be killed in his dreams. When the Nightmare Detective enters Wakamiya’s dream to help him he cannot save him from the killer.

Late into the evening at the police station Keiko stares at the horrifying crime scene photographs of the victims, at the lacerations in the flesh and the blood soaked bodies, although she is clearly revolted by the imagery, she is also simultaneously drawn to the photographs. Is she repulsed by her own obsession with death? It becomes obvious that Keiko transferred from her desk job so that she could be in closer contact with the dead by visiting crime scenes. She secretly wants to die; therefore she cannot help but be drawn to and fascinated by death, in all its guises and manifestations.

Keiko telephones zero, determined to have vengeance for the death of her partner and also perhaps because she is suicidal. Straight after she has makes the call she becomes terribly afraid. As death nears her terror increases.

She listens to the hypnotic voice of Zero talk to her on the phone, ‘we all die eventually, we all die and the earth will be left spinning and uninhabited, spinning and spinning very quietly. The world is nothing but a phoney void, we can slice it up with my knife.’ His words seem to strike a chord inside her; she tries to keep awake but eventually succumbs to sleep.

In her dream she becomes the frightened frail version of herself. She hides under a table shivering, her demeanour is the reverse from the woman we have seen during the day. Even though Mr Kagenuma does not want to face the killer, he feels compelled to help her.

Mr Kagenuma enters her dream and begins to talk to zero. Zero has no positive feelings about life. In one of the most poignant scenes in the film, Mr Kagenuma rushes towards the killer and opens his head staring into his brain. He sees a terrible childhood memory, one that the killer has blocked out. For the first time we begin to understand why zero was suicidal and why he is so dismissive of life and people. In the early years of his life he experienced not only the loss of a loved one but also the brutality of a human being.

Keiko loses all hope. As she approaches death she submerges into deep blue waters, she sees a light and reaches her arm towards it. The light is the sun shining brightly. A moving piano piece begins to play in what can only be described as one of the most mesmerising and memorable scenes in the film. Images of cells, the universe and space speed across the screen. She begins to see and experience joyful memories of herself as a little child with her parents; floods of healing images overwhelm her and bring back her will to live.

‘ Live with me’ she calls out to Mr Kagenuma.

In a remarkable image we see Keiko kneeling on the ground, her hands above a giant mutation of bloody twisted bodies, a light emanates from her hands towards the mutation as if she is curing the pain inside it.

As in Vital memory plays an important part of the Nightmare Detective. The power of early traumatic experiences and their ability to affect the mind of an adult, even when they are repressed is one of the subjects the film addresses and it will be familiar to many people who have watched his previous films. The destructiveness of trauma-related memories is a topic that also arises repeatedly in Tsukamoto’s stories, how trauma-related memory affects the mind of an adult and forms him, how hard it can be to adopt positive attitudes when the brain is besieged with early harmful experiences from the past. Is it possible to escape these memories or do they simply stay with us and become part of our identity?

Internet suicide stories have appeared in the media in Japan in recent years. In this film two people agree to kill themselves live on cell phones. In one conversation the killer tells Keiko that she lives in a concrete jungle. All of the suicide victims find themselves walking along a concrete highway. It is inferred that the artificial urban environment is the reason that many city people feel the urge to kill themselves that they are not living according to their primal needs.

In bed Keiko reads ‘the analysis of dreams by Medard Boss (who invented Dasien-analysis). The book gives us a clue to the dreams that appear in the film. Boss did not believe in interpreting dreams like Freud, instead he thought that dreams should reveal their own meanings to the person in question. All of the character’s dreams reveal something about their true selves, perhaps the part of their psyche that they hide in daily life. Zero sees himself as a mighty slayer in his dreams, Keiko as someone weak and frightened.

All the characters are yearning for death to an end of their pain but equally afraid of death because it is part of the unknown. No one knows what happens after death, people can only theorise. ‘It is natural to be scared of dying, even if you try and prevent death from coming you die anyway.’ Keiko says. The suicidal girl at the beginning wonders what happens at the moment of death, Zero tells her that perhaps there is a reset switch that she can press and come alive again. The frailty of our mortality is something the film illuminates.

The Nightmare Detective is the most tragic character ever created by Tsukamoto and one cannot image anyone but the actor Ryuhei Matsuda playing this part, he handles his role with great sensitivity and remarkable presence. Hitomi is equally perfect as the socially inept Keiko who finds the redemption at the end of the film. The music is perfectly in tune with the story and feelings of all the characters, due to the unique collaboration with Chu Ishikawa and Tadashi Ishikawa.