Aku no Kyōten | |
---|---|
Directed by | Takashi Miike |
Produced by | Kôji Azuma Tōru Mori Misako Saka |
Written by | Takashi Miike |
Based on |
Aku no Kyōten by Yusuke Kishi |
Starring |
Hideaki Itō Takayuki Yamada Mitsuru Fukikoshi |
Music by | Koji Endo |
Cinematography | Nobuyasu Kita |
Edited by | Kenji Yamashita |
Production
company |
|
Release date
|
|
Running time
|
128 minutes |
Country | Japan |
Language | Japanese |
Aku no Kyōten (悪の教典?, literally "Lesson of Evil"), known in English as Lesson of the Evil, is a 2012 Japanese slasher film directed by Takashi Miike starring Hideaki Itō. It is an adaptation of Yusuke Kishi's 2010 novel of the same name. The film contains many references to German culture, such as to Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and in the film a vinyl record with the German song about Mack the Knife written by Bertolt Brecht is played.
An English teacher named Seiji Hasumi (Hideaki Itō) is loved by his students and respected by his peers. He graduates from Harvard University with an MBA, and works at Morgenstern, a European investment bank, for two years. Hasumi returns to Japan to pursue high school teaching. However, his outward charm masks his true nature. In reality, Hasumi is a sociopath who is unable to feel empathy for other human beings. Specifically, he has a severe antisocial personality disorder. Having killed both of his parents and his former tutor at the age of fourteen, Hasumi turns into a fiendishly clever killer. During his time in the States, Hasumi meets a partner in crime, an American named Dave, who thinks he shares the same "hobby" as Hasumi – killing people for fun. The two can be seen carrying buckets full of human blood, bones, and organs somewhere, giving off the notion that they committed numerous murders while working together. Hasumi eventually kills his partner by knocking him out and burning him alive inside a barrel, stating that while Dave enjoys killing for fun, Hasumi does not.