Kaoru, a wealthy woman whose youth is fading, abandons the hustle and bustle of the city to live a peaceful life in a house on the coast. There she takes care of an old deaf, dumb and blind man as if he were an insect, a child or a pet. He can’t do anything for himself, so she feeds him and accompanies him on his walks. This strong mutual dependency offers Kaoru an escape from society and allows her to free herself from restrictions imposed by common sense.
Tag: JAPAN
Ammonites were a kind of snail-like precursor to today’s mollusks, common in the seas of the Cretaceous period, many millions of years ago. They are among the most commonly found fossils, so they must have been extremely plentiful. In this meditative and largely unstructured first feature, a young geologist is traveling by train to visit his sister in the countryside after having received a disturbing and mysterious letter from her. As he travels, he remembers his childhood fixation with rocks, nurtured by his mother, and his very strong affection for his sister.
Kurosawa’s lost masterpiece has finally come to light. Filmed in 1970 and aired on Japanese television “Song of the Horse” is his visual poem for the horse, the creature that he loved the most. Told through narration by an old man speaking with his grandson while the visual mastery of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time expands before one’s eyes. Kurosawa ordinarily avoided television work and this is the only time that he had any involvement with the small screen. A rare and beautiful ode to the most gallant member of the animal kingdom!
Tony Takitani had a solitary childhood. At school he studied art, but while his sketches are accurate and detailed, they lack feeling. Used to being self-sufficient, Tony finds himself becoming more irrational and instinctive. After finding his true vocation as a technical illustrator, he becomes fascinated by Eiko, a client who in turn is fascinated by high end fashion.
When a naïve young man and his lazy best friend attempt to rob a bank, they find another robber has beaten them to the punch. After the original robber and the best friend are killed, the young man serendipitously gets the 80 million yen. But when he accidentally stabs an innocent hairdresser, a cause-and-effect situation quickly spirals out of control. Meanwhile, a trio of yakuzas mistakenly kills a powerful mob boss. As their paths continue to cross, the story displays some interesting parallels about just-out-of-reach redemption and the unlikelihood of atoning for one’s sins, all delivered in a black comedy package.
Tetsuo is a young man living in Tokyo, who falls in love with a deaf-mute factory girl. He has always felt jealous of his college- educated brother, but ultimately wins both the girl and his father’s acceptance and support in a touching and refreshing way.
A corrosive comment on romantic love by the brilliant Japanese animator Yôji Kuri; a bedraggled male is chased endlessly in alienated landscapes by a voracious female continually repeating the word ‘Ai’ (‘love’, in Japanese). Her attempts at domesticating him with a chain fail, but the chase continues, forever.
Between October 11 and November 5 of 1968, teenager Norio Nagayama murdered four people in a killing spree across Japan with a shotgun stolen from a U.S. Army base. Adachi Masao, together with cultural theorist Matsuda Masao, scriptwriter Sasaki Mamoru and other collaborators, set out to trace the young man’s footsteps with a camera in hand. The result is an experimental documentary comprised purely of landscape shots, each of which shows scenery that Nagayama may or may not have seen during his upbringing and journey. Seeking an alternative to the sensationalism found in the media’s depiction of serial killers (which continues to this day), Adachi’s sparse voice-over provides only the hard facts while the increasing number of billboards in the landscapes slowly reveal the hegemony of capitalism in contemporary Japan.