The main genius of Shindo's Black Cat, a film SIFF begins screening tomorrow, is the way it complicates revenge. The plays of the ancient Greeks had a similar complication, but often with a bright and clear way out of the maze—revenge should be removed from the laws of the family and firmly placed in the laws of the state (Aeschylus' The Oresteia has no other message than this). In Black Cat, which was made in the late 60s but draws on Japanese folklore, particularly the old stories about Onryo (a spirit that returns to "the physical world in order to seek vengeance"), there is no solution: no state, no hero, no police, no nothing. The justified revenge for the rape and murder of the women only generates more complications, suffering, and destruction. Though in the form of a fantastic ghost story (flying demons, magic sake), this view of revenge is much swollen with the bitter truth of reality...