The story of The Eel and one man's impossible return
The Eel opens on a moment of violence — a businessman discovers his wife's infidelity and commits an act he can't take back. Prison follows. Years pass. When he's finally released, he doesn't know how to exist in the world anymore. He opens a small barbershop in a quiet neighborhood and tries, in his own way, to live. But he barely speaks to anyone. His real relationship — his only genuine connection — is with an eel he brought from prison, a creature he talks to more freely than he ever could with another human being. It's a premise that could tip into melodrama or absurdism in less careful hands, but Imamura treats it with complete seriousness, finding something almost tender in the strangeness.
What's striking about the setup is how it refuses easy answers. This isn't a redemption arc where the protagonist learns to love again and rejoin society. Instead, it's about a man learning to exist in the margins, using silence and routine as both shield and punishment. The barbershop becomes his monastery. The eel becomes his confessor.
Behind the making of The Eel: Awards, cast, and Imamura's vision
Director Shōhei Imamura drew inspiration from Akira Yoshimura's novel On Parole, though he wove in thematic elements from his own 1966 film The Pornographers, creating something that felt both rooted in literary adaptation and deeply personal to his own obsessions with human behavior and social transgression. The film premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, where it shared the Palme d'Or—cinema's highest honor—with Taste of Cherry, Abbas Kiarostami's Iranian meditation on mortality. That tie alone signals the film's weight in the global cinema conversation.
Kōji Yakusho carries the film with a performance of remarkable restraint, his face often a mask of emotional exhaustion, his silences more eloquent than speech. Misa Shimizu, Mitsuko Baisho, and Akira Emoto round out a cast that understands Imamura's rhythms—they don't perform for the camera; they live in the spaces between scenes. The production came from Eisei Gekijo, Groove Corporation, Imamura Productions, and Shochiku, a consortium of Japanese studios backing a director whose reputation preceded him.
The film's critical reception was immediate and sustained. It won the 1998 Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year, Japan's most prestigious film prize, cementing its status as not just a Cannes curiosity but a work that resonated deeply within Japanese cinema itself. At 117 minutes, it never feels long—Imamura's editing is precise, his scenes allowed to breathe without becoming self-indulgent. Movie OTT tracks where films like this are currently streaming, making it easier to find works that might otherwise slip past casual viewers.
What makes The Eel stand out in Imamura's body of work
Imamura was never a director interested in flattery or comfort. His films examine desire, transgression, and the ways society's rules both protect and suffocate us. The Eel fits that pattern perfectly, but it's gentler than some of his earlier work—more philosophical, less provocative for provocation's sake. What makes it work is that Yakusho's character isn't presented as a victim or a villain. He's a man who did something terrible and is now living with the consequences in a way that feels almost monastic. He doesn't deserve forgiveness, and the film doesn't offer it to him. What it offers is something stranger: the possibility of a life lived in quiet acknowledgment of what he's done.
The eel itself becomes a perfect metaphor—not because it's subtle (it isn't), but because it's honest. This creature, which he rescued from prison, exists outside normal social structures. It can't judge him, can't leave him, can't demand explanation. In talking to it, he's really talking to himself, processing a guilt that has no outlet in human conversation. The thing nobody mentions is how funny some moments are—not laugh-out-loud funny, but darkly comic in the way life actually is when you're paying attention. A man arguing with his barber chair. A customer asking for a haircut and getting a sermon instead. These moments ground the film in reality rather than letting it float into pure allegory.
Yakusho's performance is the engine here. He's not asked to cry or rage or show his inner turmoil through conventional acting choices. Instead, he shows us a man who's learned to disappear, whose emotional life has contracted so severely that a conversation with a fish feels more natural than one with another person. By the film's end, when small cracks appear in that armor, they land with real weight.
Where to stream The Eel online
The Eel is available across major OTT services, and you can check the Where to Watch widget at the top of this page to see which platforms currently have it in your region. Streaming availability shifts frequently, so it's worth checking Movie OTT's real-time database before you settle in to watch—nothing's worse than queuing up a film only to discover it's been rotated off your preferred service. Given the film's length and contemplative pace, you'll want to find a platform where you can watch uninterrupted; it's not a film that rewards distraction or half-attention. The 117-minute runtime gives you just under two hours to sit with Imamura's vision, which feels exactly right.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who directed The Eel?
Shōhei Imamura, one of Japan's most important postwar filmmakers, directed The Eel. The film draws on his lifelong interest in transgression, desire, and the spaces between social convention and human behavior.
Q: Is The Eel based on a true story?
No, but it's based on Akira Yoshimura's novel On Parole, combined with thematic elements from Imamura's own 1966 film The Pornographers. It's a literary adaptation rather than a true-crime retelling.
Q: Did The Eel win any major awards?
Yes. It shared the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival and won the 1998 Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year, Japan's most prestigious film prize.
Q: How long is The Eel?
The film runs 117 minutes (just under two hours), giving you plenty of time to settle into its meditative, slow-burn storytelling.
Q: What's the deal with the eel?
The protagonist brings an eel with him from prison and treats it as his primary confidant. It becomes a metaphor for his isolation—a creature that exists outside normal social rules and can't judge or abandon him, unlike human relationships.
Final thoughts on The Eel
The Eel isn't a film that offers easy comfort or neat resolution. It's a work about the weight of what we've done and how we carry it forward, about the possibility of a life lived quietly in acknowledgment of our own failures. Yakusho's performance, the precision of Imamura's direction, and the film's willingness to sit with silence and strangeness make it essential viewing for anyone interested in cinema that trusts its audience. It won't appeal to everyone—it's deliberately paced, emotionally austere, and skeptical of redemption narratives. But if you're looking for something that lingers, that makes you think about guilt and isolation and the strange comfort of talking to a fish, The Eel is waiting for you.
