#791: Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance

(Toshiya Fujita, 1974)

The main thing I kept thinking throughout Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance was how impressive Zatoichi was. Over the course of eleven years, 25 Zatoichi films were made centered around the same character and every single one of them is better than this mess of a film. The sequel pulls double duty as a study in contrasts when considering the drop in quality from the original, which looks even more impressive after replicating its tight structure and freewheeling style proved so difficult.

The film fails on multiple fronts, but the worst crime it commits is useless voiceover. The first third or so of the movie includes this vapid narration used to explain things that we mostly already know and illustrate things that were are simultaneously watching. It's awkward, lazy, and unbefitting the original film's inspired delirium. The other flaws in the film are less fatal, but leave it wounded beyond repair: the political story is admirable and interesting, but requires too much exposition to make for a good story for this character; the fight scenes are significantly less creative here, and no one in the film is much of a match for Snowblood, leaving the outcome preordained; the attempt to expand Snowblood's character beyond her simple original plan for revenge is not earned, so we're left to just assume that she would turn to the light and use her powers for justice.

There are some redeeming qualities of Lady Snowblood 2. The music stands out most - though not as focused and perfect as the theme from the original, the score here is consistently impressive and extremely reminiscent of RZA's work in Ghost Dog. Similarly, Fujita has moments of inspiration and is constantly attempting to do something with the material. There's just not enough to carry his enthusiasm in either story or performances. These sorts of forced sequels are extremely common now, but it wasn't always that way. As a spine number, then, Lady Snowblood 2 represents an early failure in this regard, and the best that can be said about it is that they didn't take the easy way out and remake the first movie - though in this case that might have been what sunk them from the beginning.

#787: Jellyfish Eyes

(Takashi Murakami, 2014)

Jellyfish Eyes is one of the few unique films in the collection, a pop-tribute guerrilla blockbuster that hovers between so many worlds it's almost impossible to pin down. My interest in the film overshadows my affection for it, as some of the filmmaking falls very short of the excellence typically seen in a Criterion film. Still, it's a fascinating risk on the part of Janus - and therefore Criterion - and it will be interesting to see if it pays off.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's start with the basics. Jellyfish Eyes is built out of four main influences: the Japanese kaiju tradition, pop anime like Pokemon, the family friendly blockbusters of Spielberg and Hollywood, and the high-art world of director Takashi Murakami's day job. All four are almost equally present in the film, but the most obvious to any film fan that approaches the film without any information will be the kaiju grounding of the film's structure. Although it establishes the creation of the monster in a decidedly anime fashion, melding secret society visuals with pop-spiritual mumbo jumbo, and frames the story around a child, the connections to Gojira are immediately apparent, even before the lumbering giant monster appears on the scene ready to destroy the city. The Fukashima disaster stands in for the atomic bomb, while Mr. Potato Head stands in for Godzilla, and there's a palpable sense of loss in both films, not just for an individual (in this case a dead father, an approximation of the absent father in E.T.) but for a way of life.

This kaiju connection is quite easily tied to the basic framework and visual aesthetic of the Pokemon franchise (and other similar Japanese anime and video games), which is similarly easily linked to "kids with buddies" films like E.T. (and less fantastical films like Shiloh or other kid/animal movies). The idea that Jellyfish Eyes was conceived as a live-action anime is not novel, and in fact the film was originally conceived as an animated movie before Murakami shifted to live action. Indeed, the movie cribs camera angles, sound effects, and quick cutting techniques in the action sequences almost directly from the low-rent anime he is intending to mimic. These connections are almost as obvious to even a casual viewer of the genre as the clear influence of the Pokemon creatures on the F.R.I.E.N.D.s of the story. In fact they are even more specific, considering the idea that each protagonist would have a protector or kindred spirit is a timeless archetype of literature and film, from the spirit animal of Native Americans to the patronus of the Harry Potter books.

The biggest problem with the use of this style is that, from a technical and critical perspective, it isn't especially good - particularly when incorporated into a real-life (low-budget) format. A good comparison film here is the Wachowskis' hideously underrated Speed Racer, where a similar transference from cheap Japanese anime to live-action kids movie met with success purely because they were able to pour lots and lots of money into the outcome. Without this opportunity to deliver anime-perfect compositions in a real-world playground, part of the presumed ambition of the film collapses before it can even get off the ground.

Despite this fatal flaw in the film, there's a really good argument to be made that all of this was intentional - that Murakami didn't especially care that his film was not shot well and came across as a bit stilted and underbaked. This is where the director's art career comes into play and debating the merits of the film must be done on several levels. Is Murakami as conscious and in command of his style behind the camera as he is in front of the canvas? Is the low art of Jellyfish Eyes intended to match disjointedly with the sophisticated social commentary of the film's politics? If you believe Murakami that he was indeed making a kids movie, does this negate any attempt to judge the film on a deeper level - especially if that level demands a rejection of the movie's effectiveness on its most basic surface?

These issues may have all been considered when Janus purchased the North American rights to Jellyfish Eyes, but I could just as easily see someone in the company respecting the film as an oddity impossible to deconstruct. The essay Criterion includes in its package for the film spends a great deal of time talking about Murakami as an artist, and less time evaluating the film itself. This doesn't mean that Criterion doesn't value the movie on its own, but I think it's safe to say they wouldn't have given it a second thought had Murakami not been attached. Still, its mere inclusion in the Collection demands a higher level of examination than it may get otherwise, and I do think there's a good case to be made that this isn't just a genre exercise.

Along with the tsunami references, the elements that hint that Murakami might have had something deeper and more subversive in mind here primarily stem from the iPhone-like devices each child is given when they receive their F.R.I.E.N.D. and the ominous Christian cult Saki's mother belongs to. The former is perhaps more congruent with the presumed intention of producing a movie accessible to kids, but it's impossible to let the latter slip by without pointing it out. This aspect of the story will supposedly play a bigger role in the future films, which indicates its importance in the larger story, a profile that seems totally incongruous with the family movie genre. The satire of this element is at the very least a nod to the adults dragged along to the movie, but it seems much more likely that it is just the most obvious aspect of the film that keys in viewers to the larger plan, that the movie was made more for adults who like these kinds of movies than for the kids these kinds of movies are ostensibly for.

So what to make of the devices and the religious material? After a first watch, I don't know if the themes are that compelling, and like a lot of the movie, their executions feel underbaked. Like so much of Jellyfish Eyes, the conceptual underpinning is very strong, but what ends up on screen feels a bit like some smart talented kids dicking around. The devices are not developed beyond their initial introduction, and only serve to highlight the division between Masashi and the other kids. Similarly, the church seems like the most basic of contrasts with the main conflict, and any potential social satire that might come in subsequent installments would not have much to build on here.

Of course, the one immediately appealing aspect of the film is one I have yet to discuss: Murakami's creature designs. Although the film doesn't exactly impress in the effects department, the basic designs of the creatures and their personalities are highly appealing and enjoyable. Although I am partial to Saki's Ludo-like F.R.I.E.N.D., the smaller Pokemon-style majority is also a step above most of what we see in this kind of film, and it makes the movie pretty consistently fun to look at.

Still, you can't help coming away from the movie with the idea that there wasn't anyone who knew how to make a movie in a position of power. According to many stores about the movie there were massive reworkings after an initial screening for friends was deemed incomprehensible, and I dont know that they turned it around in subsequent versions. In a lot of ways, this feels very much like an experiment from a talented artist that lacks the technical know-how to implement his vision. Most movies of this nature are seen by only a handful of people, and almost never seen by the wide and discerning audience Criterion has at their disposal. But because Murakami is not the average just-starting-out filmmaker, that circle of potential viewers expanded significantly, and the movie's reputation has suffered because of it.

There are a lot of arguments for why Criterion shouldn't have released Jellyfish Eyes, and unlike Tiny Furniture I definitely don't have a spectacular reason for dismissing all of them. As I mentioned in that post, I'm not one to argue that Criterion shouldn't release a film because they could have released other better films (though recent releases slates have me concerned for lesser-known older foreign films). That's like arguing the Academy got every Best Picture wrong because the best movie of that year wasn't even nominated - there are always amazing, better movies out there to be discovered. And I don't think every movie they release needs to be a masterpiece - only about a quarter of the films I've posted about here would I consider to be five-star masterpieces, yet I could count on both hands the films I would say don't deserve to be Criterion films with room to spare.

I do, however, think that Jellyfish Eyes feels more like a pick made out of aspiration and association. Murakami might very well turn out to be an impressive filmmaker with a uniquely odd eye for family cinema. Similarly, this might be the best chance Criterion gets to bring anime into the family, considering how difficult it is to license the best of that genre (Akira was released on Laserdisc, but will almost certainly never see the light of day on Criterion blu). These two facets of the film certainly have the potential to improve with sequels and other projects from Murakami, which makes this a bit of a bet on future returns. That's a risky proposition, and it's likely there were some detractors within the company on this choice - the film currently sits at 18% on Rotten Tomatoes (though it has just 11 reviews) - and their concerns were certainly echoed by the vast majority of Criterion fans, making this one of the most controversial releases of last year (though for my money Mister Johnson is far more unwarranted). But I think the best reason for this movie to be included in the Collection is more simple than the tangential connection to anime or high art: there's simply nothing else like it in the Collection.

#790: Lady Snowblood

(Toshiya Fujita, 1973)

Fuck yeah, Criterion!

Obviously one thing Criterion does well is Samurai movies. But they are almost entirely high profile "fancy pants" samurai movies like Yojimbo or Harakiri. Lady Snowblood isn't technically a samurai movie, but it's set during the samurai era, and it is most definitively not fancy pants. This is a film in the tradition of the Blaxploitation films being made concurrently in the US and belongs to the pulpy masses of Japanese films I was initially exposed to by the Wu Tang Clan, though it is far superior to most of those films in technical quality. The film features plenty of spurting blood, an older master training the main character from birth, and a story of revenge that is uniquely Japanese but juicy enough to be at home in any country's genre tradition.

This made its inclusion in the Collection a bit odd to some, since this area of film history is usually covered by genre labels that do a great job with similar movies. But Criterion has never shied away from cult films, whether it's as early as Carnival of Souls or as recent as House. The quality of this film probably falls somewhere in the middle of those two movies, but while I was expecting a fun, tightly constructed thriller from this movie, I didn't expect it to be nearly as freewheeling when it came to filmmaking as it was. There are plenty of stylistic touches here that make the film that much more fun to watch - the photo montages, the freeze frames, the comic, the evocative cuts and poetic framing. The director, Toshiya Fujita, was actually best-known for his films about young people (he also made sex films at Nikkatsu), and these are the only films in this action style that he made. His style is particularly impressive given the film's low budget.

The last thing to mention about Lady Snowblood is the music. "Shura No Hana" is the theme song over the title credits (sung by Lady Snowblood herself), and it's just an incredible pop song. The music throughout the film is excellent, and it ups the film's production value considerably. I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel.

Finally, it's virtually impossible at this point to talk about Lady Snowblood and not mention Tarantino's Kill Bill, which was not so much a remake of the film as it was deeply inspired by it. Like Lady Snowblood, Uma Thurman's character is out for revenge, which is accomplished in a series of battles with the people who wronged her. Tarantino took a lot from the film's style as well, from the use of different mediums and a pop soundtrack to the cartoonish violence and chapter headings. He even overtly acknowledges his source material by including the theme song in the film. But only someone intending to dismiss Tarantino would declare Kill Bill merely a ripoff. As in Tarantino's other films (many of which have similarly borrowed concepts or plotlines), the director brings his own storytelling style and post-modern sensibility to the film. This allows anyone watching either movie to enjoy it on its own terms, and I noted the similarities between Snowblood and Kill Bill, which I saw first, only as a fun connection while watching this film, like hearing a song that RZA had sampled for a classic Wu Tang song.

#798: Death By Hanging

(Nagisa Oshima, 1968)

When it is released next year, Oshima's Death by Hanging will join an Eclipse set and three main line titles, In the Realm of the Senses, Empire of Passion, and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, in the Collection. Interestingly, the director's two most generally well-regarded films, The Ceremony and Boy, are available on Criterion's Hulu page but remain unreleased on disc. Although there is an obvious excuse for this, which is that it's likely this film was simply ready for blu-release before those two films, Death By Hanging also represents a drastic departure from his films already in the mainline collection, making it a valuable additional facet of Oshima's oeuvre.

What's most interesting about Death By Hanging is its tone, which swerves from straight-faced documentary to vicious satire to broad farce to biting social commentary, finally settling on a haunting ending that implicates the viewer in the crimes of the film. This wide range might initially feel like it's drowning the film in metastructure. It's worth noting that every review I could find on the film (including ones by Donald Richie and Vincent Canby, both of whom gave the film a slightly negative review) mentions Godard. In fact, Richie's first sentence is a direct comparison between Oshima's role in Japanese cinema and Godard's similar role in France. This connection is significantly less likely to be noticed when viewing Oshima's later films already in the collection, while the tone, overt politics, and surreal structure of Death By Hanging makes the comparison almost obligatory.

Despite its complexity as both a narrative and a political statement, the movie can be roughly divided into two sections. The first focuses on the crime and punishment expected by the title of the film. The convicted murderer, named simply R, is set to be executed, but the hanging does not go as planned and he survives. Oshima uses a documentary style as he leads up to the execution, mimicking the supposed removed and somber role the state plays in implementing the death penalty. This makes the failure of the execution stand out and gives the swing toward chaos even greater heft: when we switch from documentary to farce, it's as if the whole movie - and therefore the world it depicts - has fallen apart. The scenes where the men argue over what to do in order to avoid trouble (they seem less concerned with the right thing to do) are often laugh-out-loud funny, and this stretch of the movie plants a flag firmly in the dark comedy camp.

But once the deeper reenactments begin, as the men attempt to reconnect R with his past to get him to acknowledge his crimes, the film takes its tongue out of its cheek and begins to tear down more than just the question of whether or not the state should kill a person. Much as it would be impossible to ignore the relationship between black people and the American death penalty, Oshima confronts the larger issue of race in Japan, weaving in R's experience as a Korean raised in Japan. This second half is not as tightly plotted as the first - and it often suffers from dated intellectual signposts like Freud and Brecht, two other figures inevitably cited in reviews of the film - but it opens up Oshima's statement and in many ways makes the film harder to ignore.

There have been countless films against the death penalty over the years, just as there were countless intellectual films in the 60s that flirted with radical structure and politics. The value in Oshima's film is its willingness to go where the material takes it and avoid settling into an easy opposition to the status quo. For me, this makes Oshima less of a parallel Godard and more of a clear compatriot of Masaki Kobayashi and Kaneto Shindo, a rebel even among these iconoclastic legends. Godard's form certainly began to be tied directly to his politics, especially from Pierrot Le Fou on, but Oshima's form was from his very first film inseparable from his politics. Although he never lacked for technical skill, none of Oshima's work seems to love movies the way Godard's early films do. He is intently focused on what is on screen, using cinema as a tool rather than an art itself. Death By Hanging makes this relationship clearer than Oshima's later films, and it's what makes the movie both an admirable condemnation of state-sponsored murder and a vital addition to Oshima's Criterion films.

#679: Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman

(Various, 1962-73)

This massive set represents the single biggest viewing challenge in the Criterion Collection to date. Twenty-five feature-length films, all with the same spine number. When it was announced, I felt a wave of resigned determination come over me. After all, I had just claimed victory in my Criterion battle, and had just three yet-to-be-released movies left before I had a clean slate. But here it was, nearly 40 hours of viewing time dumped on me in one fell swoop. Fortunately, these are really fucking good. Rather than dedicate just a few paragraphs to so many movies, I've decided to review them in order, immediately after I watch each one. I began writing this in August, 2013. Hopefully, you're not reading it in 2015. [Note: just made it!] I've bolded all the films that are worth watching if you don't plan on seeing the whole series.

The Tale of Zatoichi
(Kenji Misumi, 1962)

This movie is pure fun, the kind of film you can't help but want to watch. Yojimbo had just been released the previous year, and though this is not the cinematic tour de force that one was - after all, Kurosawa was at that point an international sensation at the height of his powers - it's nearly as entertaining. Misumi has a populist way with his camera, plunging into melodrama when needed yet exhibiting a perfect amount of restraint in the climactic fight sequence. As for the character of Zatoichi, it's easy to see why a franchise was built off of him. Like Mifune's ronin in Yojimbo, he is reserved but cunning and always a pleasure to watch and see what he does next. Getting through this collection is a major project that makes Berlin Alexanderplatz look like a walk in the park, but if every film is as entertaining as this one, I'm certainly going to enjoy the ride.

The Tale of Zatoichi Continues
(Kazuo Mori, 1962)

The second film in the Zatoichi series is not the first film's equal, most likely a victim of the rushed production after the original's surprise success. Obviously still indebted to the first movie but with an eye to future films in the series. Shintaro Katsu is just as charming, though, and the movie remains enjoyable throughout.

New Tale of Zatoichi
(Tokuzo Tanaka, 1963)

Number three is better than two, and features some really great moments, most notably when Ichi must roll dice to determine if he gets to keep his arm (spoiler alert: he still has two arms in the fourth movie). I don't know that I really bought that the person who taught this truly honorable dude would be such a scheming asshole, but as an installment in the series it worked pretty well. I am hoping later movies in the series have a little more style to them, as everything has been somewhat conservative up to this point, but overall I am definitely ready to keep going.

The Fugitive
(Tokuzo Tanaka, 1963)

The fourth film is the first not to have his name in the title (at least according to the subtitles) - and the first to repeat a director, as Tanaka also directed the third film. It's also probably my favorite movie in the series to date, mostly thanks to a totally kickass sword fight at the end between Zatoichi and a rival samurai. At this point, two things are clear about the series.

First, it's settled into a nice formula, which is basically that Zatoichi arrives in a new town where he quickly gets into trouble, often because his past catches up with him. What follows is Zatoichi peacefully trying to resolve that trouble before succumbing to killing everyone in sight. This naturally mucks things up with whichever woman had fallen in love with him or with which he has fallen in love, and Zatoichi is left once again to roam the countryside alone and one step ahead of trouble.

Second, though, is the series' continuity. Unlike a similarly long-running (though not as prolific) series like James Bond, Zatoichi has a continuing story that carries over from movie to movie. You can certainly watch any of them on their own at this point, but all three sequels to date have featured at least one other character from a previous film. This makes the series feel like less of a serial and more of television series, and in this context the boxset Criterion is releasing is not especially long. With most of the films coming in at less than 90 minutes, this 25 film set amounts to less than two seasons of a network drama. This is a much more comforting way to think about the road ahead, even if I'm certainly enjoying the journey.

On the Road
(Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1963)

Unless I'm forgetting someone, On the Road is the first film not to include any other characters from earlier films. It's also the most routine, though it's a fun routine, for sure. I'm definitely hoping the woman who is plotting revenge against Zatoichi is going to reappear in later films.

Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold
(Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)

The jump in filmmaking from On the Road to Chest of Gold is startling. Every film before this was directed in a serviceable manner - think of them as television episodes rather than cinema and you'll get the idea. There were a handful of flourishes here and there, but mostly the camera's job was to show you what was happening and help you understand the action. Kazuo Ikehiro's take on Zatoichi is akin to Cuaron's take on Harry Potter; he's reading between the lines and improvising in those spaces, while still retaining the basic rhythm and not straying too far from the familiar riff. This makes Chest of Gold the first truly cinematic installment. The script is less appealing than some of the earlier work, however, which keeps this from being my favorite in the series to date. But I'm interested in seeing where the series goes as it gets deeper into the 60s.

Zatoichi's Flashing Sword
(Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)

Flashing Sword is one of the more violent installments to date - but that's not saying much considering the fact that the early films didn't show blood of any kind. The movie isn't as flashy as its predecessor, but there are some great stylistic flourishes, and one of the best moments in the series involving Ichi killing a bunch of dudes under water. The climax involving dark corridors and candles is also very well-executed, and brings some fresh fighting concepts to a series that in America would be quickly turning into a routine. Although the stories in the Zatoichi films have certainly settled into a formula (as has Shintaro Katsu's performance), there remains something new to offer viewers in each entry, even if you mostly know the dance.

Fight, Zatoichi, Fight!
(Kenji Masumi, 1964)

After a few out-of-the-box installments in Ichi's series, as directed by Kazuo Ikehiro, Kenji Misumi, director of the very first installment, takes back the reins in Fight, Zatoichi, Fight. While the results remain entertaining, this installment is the first to feel extraneous. Maybe it's the absurd baby-centric premise that has been used in countless films before and after (he even pees in his face - comedy!), or maybe it's that the one original fight sequence here - in which Ichi is attacked by men with torches to block out his hearing - fails to electrify and is shot in a rather pedestrian manner. There's still plenty to like here, but I'm hoping the next movie has a little bit more energy.

The Adventures of Zatoichi
(Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1964)

We are back on track with the ninth feature. Interesting backstory for Zatoichi with a potential reunion with his father combines with a standard but well-executed version of the typical Zatoichi-against-the-machine conflict, but the stand out here is the impeccably shot and totally fucking awesome sword fight in the climax. This is the second kick-ass faceoff in the series to rival anything I've seen in more "artistic" Japanese samurai films, and it's a real pleasure to see such great work in a simple studio product. Another note here: aside from the occasional honorable samurai (which Ichi inevitably has to kill) pretty much every guy in these movies other than Ichi himself is a real jerk. Weren't there any decent men in feudal Japan?

Zatoichi's Revenge
(Akira Inoue, 1965)

Another routine outing, though Akira Inoue does bring some interesting flashback/montage techniques into the mix. Shintaro Katsu gives a very strong performance in this entry, but the fight scenes are standard and the villains are so weak that there's hardly any suspense. A redeemable non-samurai man does finally show up, but he starts out trying to betray Zatoichi and only turns toward the light after being confronted by the swordsman. The entertainment is not as constant, but the spark is still there long enough to carry us through to the next installment.

Zatoichi and the Doomed Man
(Akira Inoue, 1965)

I took a long break from Zatoichi in between the last installment and this one, for no real reason other than life is busy. Coming back to it I am reminded how impressive the series is. This is the second movie in 1965 to feature the character, and yet they managed to deliver a fresh concept that makes this movie stand out from all before it. Here, what felt new was the character who decides to impersonate Zatoichi, a clever plot that builds on the challenges of the earlier movie but also serves as a shrewd reminder of how honorably the blind swordsman uses his powers. I'm not sure if the break renewed my vigor for the concept, but Zatoichi and the Doomed Man was one of the most fun offerings yet.

Zatoichi and the Chess Expert
(Kenji Misumi, 1965)

Despite an interesting premise, this was an average installment in the series that lacked any really compelling moments. I did enjoy Zatoichi's relationship with the chess player in the film, but it never really felt like anything beyond the typical Zatoichi movie.

Zatoichi's Vengeance
(Tokuzo Tanaka, 1966)

Tokuzo Tanaka directed one of my previous favorite movies in the series, The Fugitive, but Zatoichi's Vengeance felt much more routine. The key differentiating feature here was the blind monk that Zatoichi meets, who convinces him that he should not be corrupting the young boy Zatoichi must protect. This is a clever enough take on the series, but it doesn't go very far beyond that. Another good movie - and I probably liked this one slightly more than the last one - but nothing special.

Zatoichi's Pilgrimage
(Kazuo Ikehiro, 1966)

Zatoichi's Pilgrimage is the first movie in the Zatoichi series that I feel genuinely reaches classic status. This is a perfect execution of the concept and a stunningly beautiful movie, both emotionally and technically. The movie makes a statement early on with an opening sequence that ups the ante in terms of gore in the series when a thief gets his hand cut off, but the rest of the movie doesn't maintain this shock value, and instead turns into a confident retelling of the Zatoichi template. Zatoichi's Pilgramage often reminded me of the strongest episodes of my favorite television shows - not the ones where the most significant things happened (although those can often be great, too) but the ones where it feels like everyone associated with the series is firing on all cylinders and the director really gets what's at the core of the series thematically. Tanaka's beautiful cinematography and straight-faced delivery of the story is a reminder what can happen when craftsmen refuse to settle and instead elevate their popular art to graceful levels. If I had hated all of the films up to this point (and I liked all of them) it would have all been worth it for this one.

Zatoichi's Cane Sword
(Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1967)

How are these still this good? I mean, I know TV shows can be good or even getting better 15 episodes in, but these are 90 minutes and they release two or three every year. Movie sequels get made every few years and are always terrible. Anyway, Zatoichi's Cane Sword doesn't reach the cinematic heights of its immediate predecessor, but it's just as compelling as a narrative. This time, the series focuses on Zatoichi's underrated supporting character, his sword. There's a twist here that matches any plot development that's come before, and the movie as a whole has some great character swings for Ichi. These are all a real pleasure, but they seem to be only warming up 15 in.

Zatoichi the Outlaw
(Satsuo Yamamoto, 1967)

This one was a bit routine, with the only interesting moments coming from a boss who manages to deceive Zatoichi's usually impeccable sense of character and a brief musical montage that feels very much of its time in the best way. The plot is overloaded with characters, perhaps a recognition that the core story is not especially interesting or special within the series, so we get just about every archetype we've seen to date: the evil corrupt bosses, the star-crossed lovers Zatoichi attempts to shepherd, the reformed ronin, etc. Still not a bad movie, but I'd put this near the bottom of the pack.

Zatoichi Challenged
(Kenji Misumi, 1967)

A perfectly serviceable entry in the series, Zatoichi Challenged was neither especially noteworthy nor memorably off. Again Zatoichi is tasked with transporting a child, though thankfully we are saved most of the dumb humor of Zatoichi and a Baby!!! The final fight sequence is especially beautiful and the samurai's change of heart was pulled off rather well, I thought. But there's nothing here to remember or that makes it different from the rest of the series - which, in a way, makes it different from the rest of the series. Zatoichi Challenged is as formulaic as the series gets, which is a pretty good thing.

Zatoichi and the Fugitives
(Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1968)

Another generic entry, with only a few saving graces: the fight scenes were particularly bloody and the death faces were incredible. Do they have a school for those people? There should be an Academy Award for best death face. Although Zatoichi Challenged was actually pretty good, the last three in the series have taken a notable step down - though I wouldn't put any of them at the very bottom and they are all still pretty entertaining as far as samurai movies go.

Samaritan Zatoichi
(Kenji Misumi, 1968)

And we're back! Samaritan Zatoichi doesn't reach classic status but it is one of the must-see films of the series. Misumi delivers just enough cinematic style and variation in formula to make this installment the best since Zatoichi's Pilgrimage. The best part, though, is how focused the plot is, with minimal side stories and a contained universe of characters, all swirling around Zatoichi in an elaborate dance of corruption and honor that defines the series. This one was a real pleasure.

Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo
(Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)

Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo is a significant departure for the series. First, there are all the superficial differences; it took nearly two years for the film to be released after the previous installment, when previously there had often been two films in one year; the film runs nearly two hours, while most of the series' films clock in at under 90 minutes; and finally the film features another towering figure in samurai cinema: Toshiro Mifune's Yojimbo. Yet the film also feels different. While the basic template of the series remains - in this case, Zatoichi returns to a town he loves only to discover that it has been taken over by evil yakuza - the story is more sprawling, the characters more complex, and the pacing more cinematic and less episodic. Although Zatoichi is certainly still the protagonist, he spends most of the film sharing screen time with Yojimbo, who drives as much of the story as anyone. Obviously, it's a real pleasure to see both of these characters onscreen at once. We don't get to see a true battle between the two (since neither could possibly kill the other) we do get a few great exchanges and some brilliant dialog. The plot might be a little overly complex, and there are a few scenes that probably could have been excised. But overall this film lives up to its promise and kicks the cinematic ambition of the series up a notch, refreshed after its longest break and ready for the homestretch.

Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival
(Kenji Misumi, 1970)

BADASS. After a two-year hiatus, the Zatoichi series had a one-two punch in 1970 of a strong crossover with an iconic character and then this, certainly one of the best films in the series and arguably the best overall after Zatoichi's Pilgrimage. This one has everything we expect of a great Zatoichi movie: sullen women pining after Ichi's honor, prideful and petty villains who wield power over towns of peasants, naive men and/or boys who mistakenly choose the path of the yakuza, and Ichi himself, alternately humorous and powerful. But it also does everything the previous installments did so exceptionally well that it seems to be on another level. Ironically, as the series gets closer and closer to its move to TV the films are becoming more and more cinematic. Check the epic bath house fight - a clear influence on Cronenberg's Eastern Promises and every bit as gripping and memorable. Or the climactic sequence, an incredible mix of impressive suspense (the dice without marks) and stunning visuals (Ichi in the fire). The villain, too, rivals any of the previous heavies for a place as the greatest in the series, a blind man who has consolidated power and fears Ichi's similar drive. If all of this wasn't enough, we get Tatsuya Nakadai, one of Japanese cinema greatest stars, as a ronin desperate to avenge his wife and convince Ichi was her undoing. If I had to recommend only one Zatoichi film to someone who had never seen one, it would be this. It's just that good.

Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Man
(Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1971)

This installment was one of the most fun from a stylistic perspective. A guest appearance by Hong Kong kung-fu star Jimmy Wang Yu not only gives the series a bit of hand-to-hand combat to mix in with traditional samurai action - it allows the filmmakers to have some fun with the usual flourishes found in that region's cinematic grammar. This means awesome rack zooms, quick cuts matched with impossible stunts, and sparse, even abstract set design. The story itself is passable but certainly beside the point, as everything leads up to the big showdown between Zatoichi and the one-armed swordsman. All in all another fine 1970s entry that distinguishes itself from anything else in the series.

Zatoichi at Large
(Kazuo Mori, 1972)

Oh dear, another baby. Although it is definitely handled better than it has been in previous films, this has become such a contrived driver of conflict in these movies that it was disappointing to see it in the later editions. All of the previous films of the 70s have been so different from what came before, so this routine entry was a bit of a letdown. Still, there were components here that weren't strictly routine, the most amusing of which was the final, last-second fight - fit in as if the movie was ending and the filmmakers thought "oh no, we forgot to close that plot thread!" The least impressive film since Zatoichi and the Fugitives four years earlier.

Zatoichi In Desperation
(Shintaro Katsu, 1972)

This is the first film in the series to be directed by star Shintaro Katsu and the actor's enthusiasm and inexperience both shine through. The film is visually busy, making for a constantly engaging installment but without any real heft behind it. He certainly has some great moments behind the camera, but they rarely serve the story, which has another fairly routine central conflict (Zatoichi accidentally causes a woman's death, leading him to make amends by freeing her daughter from prostitution). The difference here - and the thing that allows the movie to join most of its 70s associates as a singular entry in the series - is that the film is almost oppressively dark. Just the fact that the woman isn't especially interested in leaving the oldest profession is something that would not have happened in early Zatoichi films, where just about everyone who isn't yakuza or government is pure of heart. What Zatoichi is up against here is notably more complex than what we've seen in earlier films, and so too is the challenge bigger at the end when his hands are pierced, the kind of injury we've never seen from the seemingly invincible hero. Add in a dead kid as a sideplot and you've got a pretty depressing popcorn movie. But after 24 of these movies, seeing something different can be just as enjoyable as seeing the same routine executed more efficiently.

Zatoichi's Conspiracy
(Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1973)

A fine ending to the series. Although the film is rather typical, the central conflict carries an emotional heft that earlier films lacked, and Zatoichi's journey - while unfinished - feels like it has come to a resting place. There are a few really great fight scenes here, and the candle sword trick is pretty cool. Overall, the films in the 70s showed a huge maturation from the earlier phase. Certainly these movies were more explicitly sexual and violent (blood spurts everywhere in the last few movies), but they also featured more nuanced characters (relatively speaking) and bigger threats. While the earlier films had settled into an episodic rhythm, where each movie could be subbed out for any other, these last six films each felt like they were trying to separate themselves from the pack, so it seems surprising that this was the last stretch before the series made the jump to TV.

Thoughts on the series:

Zatoichi is wholly deserving of its place in the Collection. These movies represent not just a significant chapter in Japanese film history, but one of the most impressive runs of any serial. Although there are certainly some mediocre entries in the series, none of them are truly bad and all of them would make perfectly decent standalone films. And then there are the must-sees: the first film, Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold, Zatoichi's Pilgrimage, Samaritan Zatoichi, Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, and Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival are the movies every film lover, and especially every lover of samurai movies, should not miss. This was a massive undertaking, but it was also never a chore and I could certainly see myself going back to these at some point in the future (especially with all of them up on Hulu). This is the sort of set Criterion does best, and I'm glad they are still doing it.

#708: Like Someone in Love

(Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)

Certified Copy is possibly my favorite movie of the last ten years, so Like Someone in Love was a highly anticipated viewing despite the conventional wisdom that seemed to place it a step down from Kiarostami's last film. Even though I would agree that the movie doesn't quite live up to its predecessor, Like Someone in Love is a perfect companion piece to that film, and a rewarding and engaging cinematic mystery.

Like Certified Copy, the movie deals in vague plot details matched with vivid characters. The three main players here, like the two in Certified Copy, feel just as real and relatable as the protagonists of any movie, and yet we know so little about their backgrounds as to feel we are getting only an abstract portrait of their inner lives. Unlike Certified Copy, however, the film revolves around one character that holds the key to understanding - Takashi, the older man, who knows the truth about his relationship with Akiko but declines to reveal it. This makes the film much less of an intellectual exercise than Certified Copy, where both main characters seem to be toying with the viewer in a surrealist and removed way, but it also makes it a tad more infuriating, since it seems like the whole matter could be easily cleared up in a confessional scene.

Kiarostami is, of course, totally unconcerned with such matters, and remains much more engaged with the ways in which people relate to both each other and the outside world. As in his previous films, the post-modern flair, obtuse thematic structure, and car driving/riding sequences define the director's aesthetic. But Someone in Love firmly resides in Kiarostami's second career, that of an exiled artist obsessed with his national crisis. It's no surprise that Kiarostami's two films outside of Iran, Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love, immediately imply removal from a subject - for Kiarostami, every film he makes outside of Iran is removed from its true intentions, a simulacrum of the film he really wanted to make. The final moments of both films are revelation interrupted, a moment of foreplay or violence that speaks to the greater truth of the respective film, and the ultimate metaphor for Kiarostami's identity unrealized by his exile.

It might be a crude comparison, but this era of Kiarostami's work reminds me of Caetano Veloso's exile from his home country of Brazil. Both artists fuse modern global aesthetics with personal and national styles which are distinct to their respective countries, and Veloso's 1971 self-titled album feels unsettling and mysterious. Like Kiarostami, Veloso chose to work in a language that was not his own, but that of the country in which he was creating art. If the metaphor is to hold, the Iranian filmmaker has much more experimental and arguably difficult land to traverse. But the journey will never be anything less than invigorating and impressive. Kiarostami is certainly one of the great living filmmakers - that he hails from one of the world's most notorious and complex countries only makes his emergence that much more powerful.
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On a personal note, this is my 500th post on a Criterion movie on this blog. I honestly never thought I'd get this far, but it's been a thoroughly rewarding journey, one I wouldn't trade for any other artistic endeavor I've made. I've obviously slowed down a great deal since I "caught up" with the collection - which has made me slip a bit in terms of keeping up. But as long as Criterion continues to put out movies, I'll continue to watch them and post here. Even as they encounter more financial issues and turn to ever bigger releases to maintain their place  in the market, I believe in what Criterion is doing and continue to have faith that they will be around for spine number 1000 and beyond. Here's hoping we are all there to see it happen.

#653: Gate of Hell

(Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)

Gate of Hell is most noteworthy for its visuals. As one of the first color films to be exported from Japan, the movie takes full advantage of its format by presenting costumes and sets that positively glow in vivid HD. The impact of these visuals has not been lessened by countless followers: the film's design aesthetic is even more impressive than the recent Criterion release The Ballad of Narayama, and ranks with Kwaidan as one of the most impressive uses of color I've seen out of Japan. I watched the film on Hulu, but I'm sure it looks even more spectacular on blu-ray.

Despite being overshadowed by the imagery, the film's story happens to be pretty intense and engaging. The combination of a truly fascinating political feud which emerges from the scandal and the descent into madness of the protagonist, who had previously seemed so selfless and rational, makes the movie gripping and almost archetypal in its depiction of the samurai mindset.

One interesting question is how much Morito's actions in the last act of the film are actually the result of his descent into obsessive love as opposed to insecurity at his embarrassment. The emperor and his court spend a lot of time ridiculing Morito and trivializing the predicament instead of cutting it off before it has time to fester. The fact that Morito didn't know the woman was married makes his initial intentions more pure and his later actions (after he has already been laughed at) less clear.

In some ways, Gate of Hell reminded me of Dangerous Liasons. There is a cynicism pervasive in the high classes here that dehumanizes the three people who are actually forced to deal with the love triangle at the center of their entertainment, and while Morito certainly symbolizes the potential for evil within the masculine and militaristic tendencies of the samurai (which per usual is a stand-in for Japanese culture as a whole), the men who surround the core characters seem to be portrayed in a light that is even more damning. This exploration of what is essentially male gossip might not help Gate of Hell achieve with its story what Kinugasa achieved visually, but it makes Gate of Hell a great watch, and more than just a pretty face.

#664: The Life of Oharu

(Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952)

Most tragedies follow a basic template. A protagonist begins in a certain place - whether it's a normal steady place or immediately after something difficult has happened to them - and they encounter some sort of disaster that throws their world into chaos. The rest of the movie is spent dealing with that chaos, and the protagonist eventually either recovers or succumbs to their challenges in some way. A good recent example of a typical tragedy in the Collection is Secret Sunshine. A woman moves to her deceased husband's hometown to raise their child there when something horrible happens that propels her forward through a spiritual and existential journey. There are multiple heartrending moments in the film, but - like the majority of similar movies and stories of any kind - it's the one central tragedy around which the film revolves.

The Life of Oharu has perhaps ten, maybe even fifteen moments like this. Oharu is betrayed, misled, punished, humiliated, and victimized by random fate so frequently in the film that Mizoguchi's portrait nearly collapses under the weight of absurdity. Mizoguchi's steady hand and the main performance of Kinuyo Tanaka, who worked frequently with the director (she's in all of his films in the Collection), ultimately save the film from the type of sensationalism reserved for similar exploitation movies disguised as social commentary (see: Precious), but the comparisons are still evident. While Mizoguchi has honorable intentions, his portrayal of the plight of women in Japan has little of the complexity and sharp bite of Imamura or Oshima. This is mainly because the film is so melodramatic that it doesn't feel real, the message so obvious that it's hard to take away any applicable lesson.

By the way, this movie is really, really good. I know it doesn't sound like I think that, but it's beautiful and humanistic and it's impossible not to feel a strong attachment to Oharu. Each story within her journey ranges from moderately interesting to stirring enough to be the basis for its own film. And like Mizoguchi's poetic masterpiece Sansho the Bailiff, the film's imagery is lyrical and indicative of Japan's beautiful visual iconography. It's just that when you're finished, you're going to need a long bath.

#645: The Ballad of Narayama

(Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958)

Note to Congress, I've got the perfect idea for keeping Social Security and Medicare spending down. You see, in The Ballad of Narayama, when people turn 70 they go up a mountain and die. And when I say "up a mountain," I literally mean they walk up a mountain. This would solve all of our problems! (I should probably point out here, I will not be going up a mountain. Just other non-me old people.)

I don't think this is the point of this story, but it makes for an interesting enough concept behind a 90-minute kabuki-style movie. Kinoshita's sets are unquestionably the star of the film; he uses bright colors, huge painted backdrops, obvious sets that get rolled out and sequestered, and so many diferent fields of view that it can difficult to tell what is 2D and what is 3D in the background. This obvious artifice takes nothing away from the human story being presented, and even though none of these characters are especially memorable, the old woman is kind enough that her journey means something by the end of the film.

The Ballad of Narayama is a pretty film and an interesting one from this aesthetic perspective. But it's not at all comparable to Kinoshita's other Criterion entry, Twenty-Four Eyes, and I'd probably have more interest in Shohei Imamura's version of this story, made nearly three decades later.The melodrama shines through often, and I don't know how thought-provoking the film is. I still enjoyed it, I just don't think its reputation will keep it in the minds of Criterion watchers for very long after its release.

#155: Tokyo Olympiad

(Kon Ichikawa, 1965)

Tokyo Olympiad has been out of print for five years and typically runs you about $200 for a used copy. Even worse, there has been no new release on DVD for western audiences, making this the new Salo (pre-re-release of course) in terms of being nearly impossible to see through any legal means in the US. This is a shame, as it's one of the best sports journalism documentaries I've ever seen.

Choosing Ichikawa to film your Olympics - ostensibly to glorify Japan and its hosting at long last of the grand world games - was certainly an odd choice. It's very nearly like America hiring David Lynch to film the '96 games. Unsurprisingly, the Olympic committee got what they really should have expected, and heavily edited this nearly 3 hour epic to give it a more conventional feel. Criterion's restoration of the original work reveals just what you might expect from Ichikawa: a film much more concerned with the process - the pushing of the human body and mind to excel and how will interacts with physicality - than the outcome of any one sport.

The closest any segments get to a conventional depiction of the competition are the suspenseful pole vault duel that lasts into the night and the much duller women's volleyball face-off in which Japan wins the gold. The latter almost feels like Ichikawa forced it into the film to placate the homers that were looking for a rah-rah moment. The film shines much brighter when zeroing in on a runner's body, shown from the waist up gliding through mid-air, or a rifleman indenting his cheek as he leans over his weapon. These moments attain a sort of elementary beauty that is devoid of the marketing, mythmaking, and over-importance of the typical sports document. Tokyo Olympiad becomes entirely separated from the event it is supposedly depicting - even as the world of 1964 looms large. This is an observation of the diversity of Earth, the breadth of skill and talent we have accumulated, and the remarkable adaptability of the human form. Of the four Ichikawa films in the Collection, I think it's undoubtedly the best, and it's worth seeking out in whatever form you can find it.

#594: Godzilla

(Ishiro Honda, 1954)

Godzilla might be the most famous movie that most people who have heard of it have never seen. This is because the character of Godzilla has become ubiquitous, and is undoubtedly one of the most successful movie creatures in history. There have been countless sequels and relaunches of the franchise both in Japan and here, while Godzilla itself ranks alongside icons like Dracula and King Kong as characters that transcend their medium and have long ago seeped into the culture. In fact, another Godzilla film is going into production in Hollywood as I write this, and Godzilla will continue to be remade and sequelized as long as movies are being made.

This all made the announcement that Godzilla was coming to the Criterion Collection a pretty big deal, despite the fact that the movie itself is only so so. In most regards, the film would sit very comfortably next to the films in the Monsters and Madmen boxset - though the scale of the effects here leaves that of those much lower budget films in the dust. The human-level story is typical melodrama for the era with a half-baked love story and some various professional quandaries made a bit more compelling by the presence of Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura. Meanwhile, the music is pretty damn cool, and it's always a pleasure to watch effects that required a lot more ingenuity than a simple point and click.

But the real thing that sets Godzilla apart from similar monster movies is the clear and inescapable nuclear metaphor of the film. This is tightly woven into the main plot of the movie (most obviously by Godzilla's origin and the technique that destroys him) but it is most interesting in two smaller moments. The first happens in the early acts of the film, as a group of people ride into the city on a train. One woman declares that she barely survived the bombing in Nagasaki, and now there's this... The second is even more intense, and comes during the core rampage of the monster. As Godzilla stomps on buildings and sets Tokyo aflame, a woman cowers with her children and tells them they are all going where Daddy is. This latter scene is a real "holy shit, this country is only nine years on from the most significant and indescribable series of destructive attacks the world has ever seen" moment (don't forget, along with the military deaths from the war, bombings on Japanese cities were not limited to Hiroshima and Nagasaki - traditional weapons were used on more than 50 other population centers). It makes the rest of the film take on a much greater significance than the typical monster or disaster movie ever could.

Godzilla, then, is more than anything a movie about loss - crippling loss that sets back humanity in both intellectual and moral ways. Perhaps the film ignores for a moment Japan's own role in its fate, but I would argue that the film is an emotional metaphor for the country that doesn't shy away from its own potential for destruction, even as it attempts to come to grips with its own victimhood. All of this feels like an intellectual exercise from the comfort of 21st century America, so it's hard to imagine what it must have felt like to see this movie in theaters in Japan in the mid 50s. Its wild success speaks to cinema's - and horror/thriller films' in particular - ability to transfer complex dark feelings into symbols of a cultural sickness and exorcise them collectively. That such a powerful representation of a global tragedy has long since been divorced from its true meaning is a reminder of both film's superhuman reach and the limitations of that reach, the moment when fact becomes legend.

#159: Red Beard

(Akira Kurosawa, 1965)

Red Beard is a hulking beast of a film dressed up as a small, almost old-fashioned-British style clash of the generations. At over three hours long, the movie's reputation might imply an epic samurai tale of war and empires. Instead, it's a moving socially minded presentation of an exceptional doctor up against the timeless challenges of poverty and disease - it's kind of like Doctors Without Borders set in feudal Japan.

But don't let that fool you - this might be Kurosawa's most massive production, certainly up to this point in his career. The director built an entire city, spent years developing the props and various costumes, and destroyed many of them for momentary glimpses of an earthquake that is only tangentially related to the main plot of the film.

But does this movie need to be three hours long? Red Beard - perhaps more than any other Kurosawa epic - inadvertently delivers persuasive arguments for either side. Certainly the emotional journey of the protagonist of the film can only be as satisfying when we have seen his entire journey, and there aren't many places in which the film lags - in fact, Red Beard was a massive success when it was released in Japan. And yet, the serial nature of so much of the story (particularly before the girl shows up after the intermission) and the limitation of any truly transformative plot developments means that the movie could easily be cut by 30 or 60 minutes and not many people would notice. At two hours, I would certainly be more likely to want to dive back into the film and revisit these extremely likable characters. Roger Ebert once said that no good film is too long, while no bad film is too short. While I often agree with the sentiment here, I do think there is something to be said for creative constraint, and just as my writing has often needed a trim or two to improve the overall impact of the message, so too would many movies benefit from a tightening. I'm not necessarily saying Red Beard is that movie - I couldn't know without having seen a shorter cut - but I do think it's a point worth considering, especially in the current director-centered climate where The Dark Knight Rises runs a full 8 hours and 23 minutes.

#446: An Autumn Afternoon

(Yasujiro Ozu, 1962)

So, can I just watch An Autumn Afternoon every day for the rest of my life. Actually, can I just be inserted into An Autumn Afternoon so I can live inside of it?

This movie is SO GREAT. I love pretty much everything about it. The performances are beautiful and moving. The cinematography is impeccable. The story is both sociologically fascinating and emotionally engaging. The music is great, it's funny - I could go on. But what I love the most about the film is how much it feels like an Ozu film, yet how subtly but profoundly Ozu was able to ease himself into the modern era. An Autumn Afternoon still has the visual iconography of Ozu's prime, but it also has his most overtly sexual humor, his most complex exploration of the Japanese family culture, and a truly profound thread of reflection about Japan's modern transition from imperial aggressor (and defeated empire) to modern economic powerhouse. Along the way, Ozu covers nearly all of the themes he explored in his best movies - the generation gap, the parent-child relationship, the evolving modernity of Japan, the shifting capitalistic attitudes, the passage of time, the balance of technology and industry with nature and humanity.

As noted in Criterion's essay, Ozu didn't intend for An Autumn Afternoon to be his last film. But it's hard to think of a better final film from any master. Unquestionably a masterpiece, An Autumn Afternoon might even rival Ozu's better-known classics for me as the pinnacle of his career. Essential viewing.

#465: Dodes'ka-den

(Akira Kurosawa, 1970)

Although it has a large number of vocal supporters, Dodes'ka-den is best known for being the biggest disaster in Akira Kurosawa's half-century career. The film killed the potential of the production company, The Club of Four Knights, that Kurosawa had formed with three other Japanese masters, Masaki Kobayashi, Kon Ichikawa, and Keisuke Kinoshita, a sort of United Artists for the struggling Japanese film industry of the late 1960s. Its commercial failure ensured they would never produce another film. It also drove Kurosawa into a depression, and the director - convinced he would never make a film again - attempted suicide the following year. As Roger Ebert's mildly positive review of the film indicates, the film was not even released in the US until 1975.

All of these are pretty hard to imagine considering the success Kurosawa's work had seen both in Japan and the US. Kurosawa almost single-handedly popularized samurai films in America, and along with Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini led the charge of Foreign films into domestic theaters. In Japan, his work had long ago entered the canon next to films by the likes of Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. So the idea that a director of this calibre could not get work seems like one of the great crimes in cinema, while the notion that someone as universally loved and singularly successful as Kurosawa could sink so low as to want to commit suicide certainly provides a sobering perspective on professional accomplishments. Taken together, these unique events make Dodes'ka-den a vital piece of the director's career completely apart from the film's actual content.

This might make the actual movie seem slight when you actually get around to watching it. Although it marks the first time Kurosawa used color and represents a break from the more structurally conventional films of his past, Dodes'ka-den doesn't present any significant new themes for the director's career. Yes, these are different characters and a different tone from his adaptation of The Lower Depths, but Kurosawa had visited the bottom economic rung of society before. And while the compilation of vignettes is unusual, it's been done enough times to require more than novelty to maintain interest. Dodes'ka-den wasn't able to succeed in this regard - while there were plenty of pleasing and/or moving moments in the film, the overall production seems less than the sum of its parts. While it's not enough to explain the film's failure, it makes it possibly my least favorite Kurosawa film in the Collection.

#433: Patriotism

(Yukio Mishima and Domoto Masaki, 1966)

Yukio Mishima is not especially well known in the West, and Paul Schrader's biographical film Mishima has a much higher profile within the Criterion Collection. So Patriotism might seem like a companion piece to that film, an oddity that would feel more at home as a supplement on that DVD. I'm not sure I would have disagreed with that choice, but I also see where Criterion was coming from with a full release. Patriotism is a provocative and beautiful film, made with a stylistic eye and a conservative radicalism that must have seemed ever more outrageous in the Japan of the 1960s.

The story of the film couldn't be more basic. In fact, the complexities of the plot take place off screen and are described in scrolls handwritten by Mishima at the beginning of the film. By summarizing what might be the bulk of a more conventional film, Mishima downplays the specifics of his protagonists' deaths and places all of his focus on their final acts. This is further emphasized by his choice to place all of the action of the film on the Noh stage, eliminating most sets and further detaching the events of the film from the world around it (while simultaneously underscoring the unity of the suicides with the core of Japanese culture). It does not matter why the friends of Mishima's character chose to murder high ranking members of the cabinet, only that they did so with the Emperor's best interests at heart and that now Mishima's only honorable choice is seppuku. It does not matter where he and his wife live, what their relatives or friends or acquaintances think of their decision. It does not matter who they were or who they will be. Do they have children? Do they have plans for the future? Mishima is not interested in tying these characters to relatable responsibilities or dreams. They have chosen to die, and this provides them with the greatest love of all.

Despite the graphic depiction of disembowelment in the film, the most controversial element is undoubtedly the parallel drawn by Mishima between true love and ritual suicide. Love in this case is meant in both senses of the word, both emotional and erotic. The lieutenant's wife Reiko is enthusiastic about killing herself along with her husband because she loves him as much as he loves the Emperor and Japan (the equivocation of the relationships between husband and wife and country and man is predictably patriarchal). But even more chillingly, when they have finally decided to stab themselves to death, the film becomes an erotic depiction of their sexual freedom, brought on by the liberating realization that their bodies will no longer be their own. (It's important to note that Mishima's scroll only speaks to Reiko's liberation from shyness, not the lieutenant's; it seems that men do not need to devote themselves to self-mutilation to have great sex - though ostensibly it doesn't hurt.) That Mishima films their suicides as lovingly and sensually as he does their sex scene is no surprise, then. Sex is death, but more importantly death is sex.

Patriotism is a loving and obsessive ode to a morally corrupt and destructive ideology. In this way, it's similar to one of the greatest and most morally repugnant documentaries of all time, Leni Riefenstahl's The Triumph of the Will. However, while both films speak to the respective cultures that created them, where Hitler's self-aggrandizing propaganda was a message about humanity as a whole, Mishima's Patriotism is more personal. Of course the comparisons break down rather quickly and start to seem absurd - Mishima is no Hitler. And really, if it wasn't for the simple fact that the author-turned-director ended up committing seppuku himself less than five years later, it might be easy to dismiss this film as a simple provocation. But he did, so here we are, presented with a chilling paean to killing yourself in the name of honor. It's a psychotic and terrifying thesis, one that places the turmoil of Japanese culture front and center in all its ugly beauty.

#567: The Makioka Sisters

(Kon Ichikawa, 1983)

OK, here's my theory on why every movie made in the 80s is so obviously made it in the 80s - even movies like The Makioka Sisters (and the last film I watched, Danton) that are set in the past. 80s trends were almost entirely focused on the end of history and the beginning of the future. The decade in fashion, design, music, and visual arts was essentially a ten-year-long infomercial for the coming digital revolution. There's nothing that's so dated as commercials, because commercials are written in the future tense - you are watching what your life will be like when you have whatever is being advertised, not what it is like. The 80s were like that, too. We were supposed to be partying like it's 1999, going Back to the Future, and smashing the vision of 1984 with your new Apple computer. When the 80s stopped being the present and started being the past, nothing stood out like the outdated image of a future that never came to pass.

Depending on your viewpoint, The Makioka Sisters is either hobbled or irredeemably crippled by its decade. Kon Ichikawa wouldn't be the first director you would imagine being taken in by contemporary trends considering his rich history and his obvious affection for the source material of the film. But his musical choices, dominated by synths, and his lighting and cinematography decisions are questionable to even the viewer who is able to appreciate them for what they must have seemed at the time. Because it seems so out of place here, the film's potential as a true classic is somewhat lessened.

Beyond these elements, however, The Makioka Sisters is a beautiful and surprisingly engaging epic of Japanese domesticity. The way Ichikawa films his characters and their spaces is unique and decidedly non-Ozu, making for a fascinating visual experience when he doesn't slide into neon mode. The performances are reserved but extremely moving - I really love the way the relationships between the sisters are depicted. Japan, too, looks beautiful here, most obviously as the cherry blossoms bloom in Osaka. The combination of vivid characters and visuals makes the nearly two-and-half-hour running time fly by, an especially impressive feat considering the fact that nothing stereotypically thought of as conflict in cinema happens.

This is what might be most impressive about the film. Despite taking place just before the Second World War, The Makioka Sisters is a gentle film about the final moments of a lost time in Japanese history. There are only mild challenges for the sisters - one must relocate because of a husband's job, one's poor choice of lover leads to a casual payoff. Even the core conflict of the film centers around a simple challenge: the third sister must be married off before the fourth can do the same, but she is shy and picky, leading to difficulties for the family. This sounds decidedly uneventful, but the small moments in these women's lives become extremely engaging in Ichikawa's hands, and the connection to history manages to shine through without being forced. It's really a beautiful movie that, despite some time-related missteps, deserves the higher profile this release has given it.

#384: Vengeance Is Mine

(Shohei Imamura, 1979)

Vengeance Is Mine is a messy beast of a film, a sprawling neo-noir with a cold tone and a defiant narrative structure. Knowing only Imamura's other films in the collection - the triptych of Pigs, Pimps, & Prostitutes and The Pornographers - I was curious to see how Vengeance Is Mine - made a decade after those films and clearly focused on a male protagonist in a neo-noir context - would fit into his style. No surprise: there's plenty of gender and sexual politics here, from the killer's deserted wife desperate for her father-in-law's embrace to the lonely and abused innkeeper he slowly cons into his life before coldly strangling her to death in one of the most harrowing moments in the Collection. Imamura's eye towards the downtrodden and the overlooked remains ever-loyal, and consequently Vengeance Is Mine serves less as the crime docudrama it pretends to be and more as the confirmation of everything Imamura fears and loves about Japan, depicting the forgotten and the damned with equal objectivity.

I really loved the comparison of Imamura to Sam Fuller in the accompanying essay. Both directors produced work that walks the line between subversive and exploitative, and while Fuller could occasionally lapse into Freudian psychobabble, both directors were much more interested in shining a light on the overlooked questions of their respective societies than in answering them. Here, Imamura has taken a Fulleresque true crime story and made it his own - somewhat similar to what fellow new-wave Japanese director Nagisa Oshima did with the equally (if not exceedingly) disturbing In the Realm of the Senses just a few years previous.

Unlike Oshima, however, Imamura chooses to present his film as an unfocused (yet roughly linear) journey. Iwao is certainly the protagonist, but he's hardly the end goal. The finished product then is both confidently steered by a master at the top of his game and deceptively rudderless. This primarily stems from Imamura's refusal to take a stand against his protagonist or explain his motives with anything more than half-hearted flashbacks to travesties past. Throughout his other films in the collection, Imamura has shown no sympathy for Japanese men, and not much has changed here - no surprise when the film is about a charming lady killer that fascinated his nation. It makes for a dark epic that could easily seem unworthy of the journey required to digest it, but skates by on Imamura's supreme talent and irrepressibly twisted wit.

#207: The Pornographers

(Shohei Imamura, 1966)

There's one pretty major problem with this project that I haven't really addressed on this blog. Watching every Criterion movie is largely viewed as a "completist" mission, and obviously in one way it certainly is. But because Criterion only picks (for the most part) individual films, many of these "important" releases are unmoored from their context. This is less of a concern with filmmakers who are well represented in the Collection like Kurosawa, Godard, or Bergman. Even Ophüls or Melville - who have large swaths of their careers unavailable even on non-Criterion DVD - at least have their most fruitful creative periods represented to a significant enough degree that each film's place within a body of work can be largely understood. But with lesser-known filmmakers and/or more seemingly standalone films, this process means missing some of the understanding that comes with viewing a piece of art with a firm understanding of an artist's themes, career-trajectory, and historical context. (In case anyone doesn't know, one completist, Dave Blakeslee, is doing a pretty good job of avoiding this pitfall over at Criterion Reflections.)

This is where Shohei Imamura's The Pornographers sat until recently. The film was released by Criterion years before they packaged Imamura's previous three films as a boxset. This is not especially surprising as it is certainly his best-known film in the US. But I think watching the film out of the context of Imamura's body of work would lead to a huge misunderstanding of its point of view and (no pun intended) intentions. Knowing Imamura's fascination with the lower depths (both socially and physically) and his persistant focus on both women and the overlooked protagonist makes the film's dark humor and ironically casual attitude toward serious issues like rape, prostitution, and incest feel much less irresponsibly provocative and instead thoughtfully satiric.

All that being said, I didn't love The Pornographers. The film's characters all have such twisted motivations and backwards world views that it becomes difficult to sympathize with anyone - which can be difficult in a film world that lacks any similarity to my recognizable reality. And this movie is dark - like Fat Girl dark, only with a sly tone that persists even when the protagonist unknowingly attempts to shoot a smut film between a mentally challenged girl and her father - so there isn't a lot of room for sympathy to sneak in. There's still one more Imamura film I've yet to see and I'm hoping I enjoy it more. Even so, the 60s-era Imamura selections in the Collection make up a challenging but rewarding set of works.

#471: Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura

(Shohei Imamura, 1961-1964)

As you may have guessed, Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes is all about one movie for me, Intentions of Murder. What's so rewarding about stumbling upon this film from a personal perspective is the unlikelihood of finding it without first taking on this seemingly unending task of watching every movie in the collection. Even assuming I would have heard about the film or its director is a stretch considering Imamura's relatively low profile in the US. But  Intentions of Murder is also the third film in a boxset that consists of two other films I respected a great deal but didn't especially like, so the chance of actually sticking with the set all the way through so I could watch a two-and-a-half hour movie about woman who is sexually assaulted is even less likely.

In general, it's not especially surprising that this is one of the more overlooked boxsets in the collection. Imamura's work is not as obviously allegorical or universal as that of Hiroshi Teshigahara, and his emphasis on female protagonists certainly hurts his accessibility in a male-centric film community. But Criterion's work here - both aesthetically and technically - is no less impressive than in their Teshigahara set, and it's a reminder that they insist on a high level of quality across their catalog regardless of the core feature's profile. The fact that I enjoyed Intentions of Murder as much as I did makes me only that much more excited at the prospect of more undiscovered gems to come.

Individual reviews:
Pigs and Battleships
The Insect Woman
Intentions of Murder

#474: Intentions of Murder

(Shohei Imamura, 1964)

Buried in a lesser-known boxset as the third entry in a stretch of female-centric work from Shohei Imamura is one of my favorite films in the Criterion Collection. Intentions of Murder is completely riveting, pitch-black intense, and - yes, I know this is a cliché but I was literally on the edge of my seat - edge-of-your-seat filmmaking. Two separate times during the movie I had to remember to breathe. Another time I thought to myself, "Is this the best movie I've ever seen?"

OK, I wouldn't go that far. Certainly Intentions of Murder is not for everyone, and I'm sure a lot of people will watch this movie and wonder what all the fuss is about. I'll try my best to convey my thoughts on why this movie deserves a bigger following than it currently has, but this is a richly complex film that doesn't settle into any easy answers. The plot and grammar Imamura constructs for the film are uniquely cinematic, allowing for an experience that loses a lot in translation; this is a movie that demands the medium, it needs to be seen to be fully understood.

There are a few basic truths about the movie I should get out of the way first. Undeniably the cinematography is not just gorgeous but nearly flawless. The motif of the train as both a literal and metaphoric giant in the protagonist's life is most obviously evocative of Hitchcock (The Lady Vanishes, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest), but its use here surpasses its purpose in any of those films, serving as Sadako's potential tool of suicide, freedom, and - in one of the most suspenseful sequences where she wrestles with her attacker on the end of a train car - ultimate tragic fate. Imamura films the iron giants with both reverence and dread, and the shot in which Sadako nearly leaps in front of one in slow motion is both visually striking and deeply unsettling. The climactic sequence in an abandoned tunnel evokes Orson Welles's final chase sequence in another suspense masterpiece, Carol Reed's The Third Man, but again the move is not so much referential as it is parallel, a coincidence signaling another descent into the depths of society.

Then there's Masumi Harakawa's performance as Sadako. Although Harakawa had been in a number of films before (including Insect Woman), this was her first lead performance. She's in nearly every scene, with just a handful of moments with her attacker and a few scenes with her husband and his mistress serving as the narrative breaks from her character. Her performance appears effortless, and might go unnoticed without the proper reflection on just how much she has to do here as a wife, a mother, a victim, a desperate, lonely person, and simply a deeply troubled woman. Both of the central women in the other films in this set are complex characters portrayed memorably by the respective actresses, but Harakawa provides the humanity and grit her character desperately needs. It quietly sets her performance apart from the others.

Beyond these core technical accomplishments, however, Intentions of Murder confirms its director's assertion that he makes "messy films." The story strains credulity on more than one occasion. Would Sadako's husband's mistress really go to such extremes to gather evidence on her rival? How likely is it that she would wander into the street, regardless of how wrapped up in her mission she is? Most importantly, would Sadako really succumb to such an emotional torrent at the provocation of a rapist and a thief? It would be very easy for this last irrationality to sink the film in different hands. At the very least, the controversy of such a relationship threatens to overwhelm any semblance of reality in the characters' situations, and the movie would turn into an intellectual exercise designed to provoke the viewer (see: Irreversible).

I fully expected to dislike the film based on this central story of a woman who must plot her escape from/revenge on a man who breaks into her house and rapes her. This would seem like a particularly difficult story to tell in Japan, where the traditional attitude towards rape is essentially barbaric if not actively evil (i.e. the victim's shame transcends her attacker's horrible deed, and she must commit suicide in order to restore her family's name). Thankfully, Imamura's respect for his characters - particularly Sadako - prevents the film from being reduced to a tiresome and potentially grotesque commentary on rape like so many films about the topic are, whether they come from the East or the West. Because Imamura believes in the humanity of his characters and is fully committed to showing their truths, it's much more difficult to generalize about her rapist's actions, much less those of Sadako. It's not that Imamura gives her attacker equal redemption, or even sympathy, but that Sadako's reality is not shied away from and is instead given the honest, deeply emotional portrayal it deserves. It saves the movie from its excesses, but it also seems especially refreshing in modern America where the topic of rape has been reduced to the recurring subject matter of a weekly entertainment television series.

From an historical perspective, Intentions of Murder is a reminder that foreign films were not always the realm of cinema buffs and audiences who are often dismissed as pretentious or overly concerned with multi-culturalism. The winner of the Oscar for Best Picture the year Intentions of Murder was released was My Fair Lady - there just simply weren't intelligent, emotionally complex films that addressed adult themes being made in 1964 in America. (Yesyes, I know, there still aren't, but remember that's just Hollywood, we still have a huge independent film industry producing movies that aren't based on board games - something that came out of the loosening of censorship demanded by the American film industry when they realized they could no longer compete artistically with other countries if they couldn't address adult issues. Also, I realize Dr. Strangelove was made in 1964, but that was still essentially PG - if genius - work.) When viewers went to see a foreign film, they knew they would often be getting an exploration of a theme or subject matter that couldn't be depicted or often even discussed elsewhere.

This movie provides an outlet for adult themes, and it's an explicit and disturbing look at one woman's place in her society. But it couldn't be less interested in sensationalizing her or her experience. This isn't a movie about rape - the psychology of its victims, the impact of its violence - it's a movie about a person. Even if the structure of the story is ambitious, this simple focus keeps it grounded in a complex reality and emotional maturity. Its messiness only confirms its authenticity.