The idiosyncratic color shift of the title sequence in Nagisa Oshima’s trenchant and acerbic coming-of-age tale, Boy provides an incisive metaphor for the imbalanced natural order that lies beneath the veneer of the modernized, national recovery of post-occupation Japanese society, as a seemingly de-saturated, black and white Japanese flag prominently placed in the center of […]
A clinically presented series of stark white, unembellished placards illustrates the sobering statistical data for the overwhelming public sentiment against the abolition of the death penalty as an off-screen narrator (Nagisa Oshima) provides a snide, but impassioned rebuttal to popular opinion by presenting a objective documentary of the austere and impersonal milieu associated with the […]
Named after Alain Resnais’ essay film on the abandoned landscapes of postwar Auschwitz that bear silent witness to the tragedy of the Holocaust, Night and Fog in Japan, Nagisa Oshima’s fictional deconstruction of the left movement in the aftermath of the ratification of the second U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) in 1960 is also a caustic […]
A haggard, expressionless drifter named Eisuke (Kei Sato) encounters the object of his obsession working as a maid at a private residence. Her name is Shino (Saeda Kawaguchi), a former coworker from a failed collective farm in the province whose life he once saved. As Eisuke proceeds to terrorize Shino to the point of unconsciousness, […]
In the slums of postwar Osaka, the prospects for economic revitalization prove bleak, and the disenfranchised find themselves eking out an existence through any available means. A band of delinquents led by a resourceful prostitute named Hanako (Kayoko Honoo) approaches desperate shipyard workers eager to earn extra income by selling blood once a week to […]
In the film’s chaotically fragmented and disorienting opening sequence, an over-animated, carefree adolescent student named Makoto (Kuwano Miyuki) recklessly runs up alongside a series of randomly selected vehicles caught in traffic and uses her disarming joviality to engage the unsuspecting driver into a polite, subtly flirtatious conversation before to attempting to ingratiate herself into obtaining […]