Rating of
3.5/4
A More Formal "Eraserhead"
sidehacker - wrote on 09/18/07
I really could have given this anywhere from a 7.5 to a 9.5 but looking back on it, there's really a lot of great stuff. It's just that the film begins to drag and I mean really fucking drag at some points. There's certain movies where half way through, despite loving it you get the feeling there's nothing much more film can offer. This is sort of how I felt. I mean, I did enjoy the rest of the film but not nearly on the same level. It gets sort of tedious after awhile, I suppose. The ending is really bad too. Teshigara's decision to show the main character's "missing persons" report is something you'd probably see in a Twilight Zone episode. It's almost like he's saying, "hey you know a missing person? Well, maybe they're enduring something like this?!" - just feels kinda gimmicky. Everything else though, I completely love. The Eraserhead-esque visual style, the perfectly framed shots and the (surprisingly) great acting. I'm beginning to think of Teshigara as the middle ground between the Japanese New Wave and the more ahem "classical" Japanese directors of the same time. (such as Naruse, Ozu, Mizoguchi, etc.) He does use a lot of handheld takes and jump cuts and whatnot but he also has his share of rather long take which leads me to the amazing cinematography. I was quite surprised to see how well the academy ratio worked in a film that I THOUGHT was going to be filled with landscapes. Instead, it's a much more claustrophobic piece.
