The Ten Commandments, exact and uncompromising, literally cast in stone, continues to provide a source of moral conflict in contemporary society. In the ten part epic masterpiece, Decalogue, Krzysztof Kieslowski examines the dilemma of fundamental sin in the lives of ordinary Warsaw citizens. A scientist (Henryk Baranowski) puts his faith in science and logic to […]
Blind Chance opens to a dissociated close-up shot of an anxiously screaming seated passenger named Witek (Boguslaw Linda): a jarring and ominous episode that is further reflected in a subsequent chaotic scene as bloodied casualties from an undetermined catastrophe are transported – often, haphazardly but swiftly – through the cold, antiseptic halls of a hospital […]
Narayama Bushiko opens to the obscured face of a joruri narrator against an oddly colorful curtain backdrop announcing the commencement of the play, Narayama Bushiko, based on the ancient legend of Obasute, to the distinctive sound of a shamisen from the traditional nagauta accompaniment. The curtains are pulled to the side to reveal a strangely […]
In the idyllic, rural Inland Sea island of Shodoshima in 1928, a group of children run towards a laden caravan in order to bid farewell to their kind and affable sensei (teacher) who is leaving the village to be married. A young, motivated teacher named Hisako Oishi (Hideko Takamine) has been recruited from the industrialized […]
A Japanese Tragedy opens to an urgent, chaotic montage of intercut documentary footage and newspaper articles that illustrate the austerity of life in post-occupation Japan. At a shabby, rundown inn in the tourist town of Atami, an itinerant musician (Keiji Sada) plays a melancholic serenade (aptly titled Resort Town Elegy) under an open window, and […]
Perhaps it is postwar filmmaker’s Keisuke Kinoshita’s reputation as a director of old-fashioned, “women’s pictures” coupled with his penchant for depicting simple, uncorrupted innocence that have rendered his work (particularly with the advent of the Japanese New Wave) vulnerable to criticisms of outmoded sentimentality. However, while these generalizations are rooted in the intrinsic elements of […]