Three films about isolation: Eyes Without a Face, Onibaba, I Live in Fear

For the next film-club discussion, I am looking at a few films that are in some way or the other about isolated or cut-off people – that’s a very broad theme, of course, and can include people who are lonely because of physical distance, or a mental condition, or isolated because of a deep paranoia or personality quirk that creates a divide between them and others. 

 

One has to start somewhere, though, so I’m sharing three films that broadly touch on the theme. Two of them are among my favourite 1960s horror films (though “horror film” is a reductive description): Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face and Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba. And the third is one of the least-seen Akira Kurosawa films of its time, the 1955 I Live in Fear, with Toshiro Mifune cast against type as an old man who lives in terror of another nuclear attack.

 

Have mailed the G Drive links to my film group, but anyone else who wants them please mail me (jaiarjunATgmail.com). I’ll most likely schedule the discussion for next weekend.