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Reviews
Himizu (2011)
Mismanaged plot. *** Spoilers explaining the violence to women ***
While not a terrible movie, Sumida & Keiko's dystopia where- in after killing his father who beats him up in drunken rages, Sumida embarks on a campaign of violence against evil-doers demonstrates a mismanagement of the time spent on different aspects of the plot.
What really occurs, is that the violence between father and son is a surrogate for violence against women done by what are essentially psychotic individuals. This is easily seen in the completely superfluous knife fight over a transit-seat being offered to a pregnant woman. Although the unthinkable does not happen, the tension is sufficient to recognize that the director is "hung-up" on portraying unspeakable violence against the women of the movie.
Nonetheless, it is not an overly bloody movie, but the subtitles are not sufficient to provide a proper understanding of the scene where the partially-clad woman with Japanese insults written on her body (in Japanese) -- hings such as "pig" and "bitch", who says "I do this by choice". In other words, she invites being called a "pig" as part of being the female in her relationship, where she literally walks around with a chain on her ankle.
I would not go so far as to call the movie unwatchable in its treatment of women, although there were some loud "boos" at the screening I went to, eventually there was some applause at the end. To appreciate the movie, one must come to the understanding that each and every character in the movie is not just involved in a movie about angst, but is quite literally insane, or in the language of psychiatrists, "in a deep psychosis".
I would not go so far as to call the director psychotic, but rather, lacking the plot time-management skill to convince us otherwise.
Unless you're a psychiatrist in a super-max prison, this movie is not escapism, and the assertion that people in Japan need a cynical criticism of the "Let's go Japan!" rebuilding mantra in their media, that the director presents, can quite safely be tossed in the trash.
My advice to the director: Move to Osaka.
Innocence (2004)
Test your innocence
This movie is bound to go over your head and when I saw it in Toronto in 2004, there were indeed 5 people who walked out, no doubt confused. Most people in the audience watched intently, but treated it with little emotion. The movie was a little slow-paced, presumably deliberately so. It was nonetheless a fascinating examination of the movie's title on several levels: yours, evolution, education as well as a brief philosophical examination of life & death. You need a lot of (socio-political) experience in life to understand the movie.
*** Spoiler follows ***
Added comment, April 2, 2006: It's been 2 years since I saw it in the theatre and I rented it on DVD just now. They have edited one little scene to make the movie less risqué/uncomfortable so that the movie now can be seen as sticking completely to its symbolic theme, best typified by the girls' butterfly dance routine juxtaposed with the study of evolution and butterflies. This theme, basically of the selection of the best dancer of the girls by the lady who runs the school, is part of a deliberately long scene where the girls are tastefully judged. Not quite like Olympic gymnastics, but close enough.
There are many other important and symbolic pieces of the movie, but I take this one scene to be saying that despite their innocence to the processes of natural selection, an external force is acting on them to nonetheless select them for their skills. In the theatre where they dance, I believe the accidental falling, as exaggerated as it is, is symbolic of stronger selective forces of more primitive creatures (e.g. butterflies).
Not to argue with myself, but while the dance and training takes place there is the feeling that there is no escaping this place, and I leave it to other commentators to expand on the symbolism of that part of the movie.
7/10