Reviews (1)

Best movie of 1998
A friend of Casanova once told him after reading his memoirs that one third made him laugh, one third was erotically stimulating, and one third gave him food for thought. This movie does the same- it is simultaneously funny, sexy, and inspiring without resorting to cheap sentimentality. Dr. Akagi is either a crank or a shining example for anyone who wants to be truly human. ... Read more

Reviews (17)

Flawed, but haunting
This is a film about human sexuality. It is not pleasant. Takuro Yamashita, played very effectively by Koji Yakusho, gets an anonymous letter telling him that his young, pretty wife is entertaining another man while he is out fishing at night, this after she lovingly prepares and packs his supper. He goes fishing but returns home early in time to catch them in medias res. In a cold rage he knifes his wife to death. He bicycles to the police station and turns himself in. Eight years later he gets out of prison. This is where our story begins.

Yamashita, now embittered toward others, and especially women, is on parole. He sets up a barber shop in a small town. He keeps a pet eel because he feels that the eel "listens" to him when he talks. One day he discovers a woman (Keiko Hattari, played by the beautiful Misa Shimizu) in some nearby bushes who has taken an overdose in a suicide attempt. He brings help and she is saved. She then enters his life as his assistant. Her presence challenges the emotional isolation he is seeking and forces him to face not only his future but his past.

The eel itself (a wet "snake") symbolizes sexuality. When this sexuality is confined it is under control. When it is let loose it is dark and deep and mysterious. Director Shohei Imamura's technique is plodding at times, and striking at others. His women are aggressive sexually even though, in the Japanese "princess" style, they may look younger than spring time. His men can be brutal. Their emotions, confined by society as the eel is confined by its tank, sometimes burst out violently.

For many viewers the pace of this film will be too slow, and for others the sexuality depicted will offend. For myself and others who are accustomed to seeing the faces of the players in long close ups on TV and in Western movies, Imamura's medium shots and disinclination to linger on the countenances of his actors will disappoint. Yakusho's face suggests the very depth and mystery that Imamura is aiming at, yet I don't think the camera lingers there enough. Also disappointing is how little we really see of Misa Shimizu's expressions. Chiho Terada, who plays the murdered wife, is also very pretty and completely convincing, but we see little of her. Her expression just before dying, a combination of shamelessness and resignation, funereal acceptance even, was unforgettable.

This is very much worth seeing, but expect to be irritated by the how slowly it unravels and by the central character's stubborn refusal to forgive both himself and his late wife, and his inability to embrace the life that is now his.

A film with a rare kind of integrity.
Shohei Imamura returns in fine form with "Unagi" (Japanese word for 'eel'). There are certainly noir-ish themes explored in this film. There's a protagonist in a lonely, secluded state of existence who must face life with staunch stoicism, there are shots where exaggerated emphasis on color depicts the emotional content of the scene/character, dream/surreal sequences, a crime from which everything unfurls, etc... However, to view the film only as an homage to certain noir films is a grave disservice to Imamura's originality and craftsmanship. The characters and storyline are rendered without a trace of sentimentality, which is a feat given that the familiar story matter invites kitsch: a man catches and kills his adulterous wife, receives parole and begins a new life. It just makes me shudder to think what kind of cornball Hollywood would have come up with, given the same subject matter. Koji Yakusho gives another fine performance as a confounded man who does not know the true nature of his crime, who nonetheless craves a new beginning, no matter how uncomfortable he is with all the things in the world. The male and female protagonists are fantastically flawed people, and that's the way most people (us) are, aren't we? There should be more films like this: portraying the worst and redeeming qualities of people with unflinching honesty. Imamura's honesty pays off handsomely when there seems to be a hint of redemption for these fallen people. It is genuinely moving, and the redemption is a believable one, the kind that all of us wish for ourselves when we are down on our knees. All the emotions - sexuality, voyeuristic tendencies, inferiority complex, fear, etc- are so accurately conveyed and palpably summoned up that you begin to muse about the shadows that lurk within yourself.

...
The Eel is a very enjoyable, often humorous and contemplatively paced (read:slow... but not unbearably so) movie. Apparently Imamura had misgivings about its presentation at (and subsequent winning of the palme d'or) Cannes, amongst the bigger budget fare (which the comments indicate he prefered to his own film... "They should recount the ballots."), but, the comments don't necessarily indicate he thinks it's a particularly bad movie, and it's perfectly normal that artists be dissatisfied with or dislike their own work.

While Imamura's comments aren't entirely baseless, (especially if you're competing with something like The Sweet Hereafter) The Eel still has merits. The acting is well done, the characters are interesting if not particularly sympathetic, and, for the most part, uniquely identifiable (never unbearably 'quirky')... The cinematography is a bit murky (although it may be the transfer) but for the most part the shots are well staged. The soundtrack is effective, but not worthy of special attention. Although, like other reviewers, I found the supposed "themes" especially vague other than what is openly stated in the movie, the vagaries don't really affect the movie, other than some confusion created by the title (really... just because a film seemingly has the pretense of meaning or fails to elucidate it, doesn't set in stone its meaninglessness or meaningfulness nor make it "good" or "bad").

(On another note, although there is some sex in the film, I didn't find it to be an especially "erotic" movie... the packaging seems to be another one of those instances where zealous marketing wizards and mistaken reviewers (both of whom probably walked out after first twenty minutes) collide.)

My experience watching film has taught me that a flawed movie shoudln't be equated with a bad one, indeed, are often more enjoyable than "perfect" movies. While I'm not prepared to deem it a masterpiece (although I doubt I'd be audacious enough to declare any movie such), it is one of the most enjoyable I've seen recently (was a nice counterpoint to lovable excess of Pirates of the Carribean, and good companion to Boilng Point).

Decent Film version of a chilling book
It's probably germane to note that "The Eel" is a film adaptation of a novel called On Parole, written by Akira Yoshimura. It's a pretty free adaptation; for instance, there's no eel in the book. The film loses some of the richness of the book, and it develops very slowly, and its central metaphors are tentative and underdone, but it's still a very interesting movie with some comic moments and some very touching scenes as well. I thought the cinematography was spectacular, really capturing the sadness and heat of semi-rural Japan.

Nice concept, so-so execution...
This film could've been so much better: the central metaphor of the title is never fully fleshed out, the characters are always kept at such a distance that it's difficult for the viewer to really develop much of a connection or feeling for them, and the pace is plodding at best.

The supposedly climactic group-brawl near the end is so amateurish that it's unintentionally funny.

WANTED: different director, with better film editing and camera work, maybe a script editor too.

2 1/2 stars. ... Read more

Description

Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family.From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead husband, reincarnated as a carp, disapproves. Director Shohei Imamura has always delighted in the kinky exploits of lowlifes, and in this 1966 classic, he finds subversive humor in the bizarre dynamics of Haru, her Oedipal son, and her daughter, the true object of her pornographer-boyfriend's obsession. Imamura's comic treatment of such taboos as voyeurism and incest sparked controversy when the film was released, but The Pornographers has outlasted its critics, and now seems frankly ahead of its time. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

a very young work
This is a film that shows the potential of Shohei Imamura, but im afraid it does not fulfill it. The film trys to hard to be arty:the jump cuts and "creative" camera movement serve only to confuse and alienate the viewer.

Imamura is a master film maker, and this isnt a horrible film, but if you want to see his best, get "the Eel" or "warm water under a red bridge"

Quaint and Silly.
There is a case for decrepit cinematic 'crud' being universal. This is it. Get Ozu's "Tokyo Story" instead (out on Criterion). That is a piece of timeless lyrical cinema. This film merely confirms that risque cinema quickly loses its potency (losing it in favour of a ephemeral revolutionary stance). A Waste.

More fun than I ever expected...
The Pornographers explores fetishism and unusual sexual arrangements with the bravado of a contemporary film designed to titillate the jaded bourgeoisie at Cannes, albeit with significantly less nudity. It's real, quirky, humorous, and it has a heart - in addition to dealing thoughtfully with the racy topics at hand. Even the choppily edited dream sequences seem to add to rather than detract from the overall experience.

An artful and engaging piece of cinema far ahead of its time.

NO SKIN FLICK
Love'em or hate 'em, idiosyncratic films that dabble with subversive notions and stories of fringe people make some viewers uncomfortable. You either get it or not. For those who do, there are rewards.

Shohei Imamura's THE PORNOGRAPHERS (Home Vision Entertainment) is about "public service" amateur porn filmmaker Subu. He supports and sleeps with landlady Haru, who thinks her disapproving dead husband has returned as a carp. But really, Sabu lusts after Haru's daughter. Voyeurism and incest is kinky comic fodder for Imamura, who said he's interested in "lower human society and the lower parts of the human body." Not for every taste, but way ahead of it's time. If you liked this one, see if you can find "Down and Dirty."

I did not get it
I had to watch this in a class. I thought this was one of the worst movies ever. The movie was over long. I guess i'm just a dumb college student but i did not get this movie at all. The weird camera work made the movie even more confuseing. Like the shot looking though a fish bowl. The move seems to be about and old pervert that likes to make porn and try to sleep with his girlfriends daughter. Then he becomes frustrated with women and trys to desgin the perfect doll, i got this part of the movie and it was down right discusting and i'm not a partically moral person. I hated every minute of this movie, don't waste your time or money its long borring and discusting. sorry for the misspellings and bad grammar ... Read more

Description

From legendary filmmaker Shohei Imamura comes this comic fable foradults.A frustrated unemployed architect learns of a treasure hidden inside an old housenear a red bridge in a remote fishing village.Upon arriving he encounters a beautifulyoung woman with an unusual condition who lives with her grandmother in the oldhouse.The relationship that builds between them becomes both vital and volatile. InJapanese with English subtitles ... Read more

Reviews (3)

An uneven movie with an interesting story
Not having any luck finding a job in Tokyo, an unemployed salesman named Yosuke promises an old, dying friend that he will claim a hidden treasure for him; a golden statue of Buddha. Yosuke travels to a small, seaside town and finds a house where the statue is supposedly hidden. Before he can step inside, he spies a young woman hurrying from the house located beside a red bridge and for some reason, follows her to the market. There, he watches her shoplift some cheese while she stands in a puddle of water.

When the two eventually meet, he learns of her secret affliction: that she fills with water. The only way to release the water is through sexual release. Soon, Yosuke abandons his treasure hunt, finds a job as a fisherman and sees more and more of the young woman.

I admit that I thought this an intriging story. A woman who fills with water and can only release it through sex. A great idea. But, this movie confused me. I didn't know if I were watching a comedy or a drama. It starts of very heavy, with the state of unemployment, Yosuke's wife who nags and demeans, the death of Yosuke's friend. but when Yosuke and the young woman have sex for the first time and the water bursts out, this funky Japanese music starts playing, giving the impression of a bad 1970s soft-core movie. I started laughing, though a bit self-consciously.

What I really disliked about this movie is that the relationship between Yosuke and the young woman is unbelievable. I felt no chemistry between them. Only later -- much later -- did I discover a real connection with her immediate taking to Yosuke, but it felt like a copout.

While the story has potential and Koji Yakusho gives a fine performance as Yosuke, I can't help but be a little disappointed with the results.

WATER SPORTS?
WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE (Home Vision Entertainment) is a comic fable about an unemployed architect who seeks treasure in a house near a red bridge. In the house, he encounters a woman with a most peculiar condition: she releases torrents of water when she has an orgasm. And much depends on this wellspring. The relationship becomes essential and explosive. Shobei Imamura's mature tale is seductive and confounding. In Japanese with English subtitles.

The most unexpected and glorious comedy in ages.
A sublimely skewered shaggy-dog sex comedy from Shohei Imamura that takes up where Edward Yang's sober 'Yi-Yi' left off, and pulls it into a completely unexpected direction. Like Yang's film, Imamura's protagonist, Yosuke Sasano, is a computer programmer in crisis (in this case his business has gone under); he now spends his time being insulted by his horrid, hectoring wife on the phone, and living with river-side tramps. Like Yang's film, Imamura diagnoses the spiritual void at the heart of Far Eastern super-corporate economic success - one very Yang-like shot views Yosuke attending an interview from behind a chillingly impersonal window; the distance between viewer and protagonist makes his desperate grovelling to the Kafkaesque manager all the more pathetic - but his prescription couldn't be more different.

Initially, the film seems as methodical and meticulous in composition and tone as we would expect from a severe Oriental master, with complicated, multi-level, multi-frame compositions (the geometry of character groupings imposed on the geometry of place - see the triangle of friends overlooking the corpse in his tent in the opening sequence) staged thoughtfully for a static camera that picks out only the essential elements of each image. This staticness doensn't mean each shot is devoid of internal tension - for instance, the opening tracking long-shot that follows the policemen in the direction of the hut, works against the movement of the river, and is a brilliant, if wrong-footing visual introduction of the film's themes (the disjunction and perversion of the natural in modern life etc.). But even startling comic upsets - such as the collapse of the makeshift roof under which his friends toast the dead man when one of them drunkenly knocks over a beam - doesn't prepare us for the bizarre sidetracks the plot will soon take.

The dead man, Taho, was an ex-con who spent decades in his river hut reading the world's classics; Yosuke shared many hours with him when he was supposed to be looking for jobs, with Taro encouraging him to ditch his cripplingly submissive conformity and search for true love. Just before he died, he told him that he had left a stolen treasure in the house of a former lover in a far-flung seaside town, which he was welcome to take if he could find it. Broke and unemployed, Yosuke sets off, and follows the lady of the house, Saeko, to a local supermarket, where she breaks water and shoplifts. It emerges she has a 'problem' with welling internal water that can only be vented by kleptomania or lovemaking. Yosuke takes a job with the local fisherman's son, and is on call for whenever Saeko needs him. But when he falls for her, is it for herself or the life-giving water which gushes into the adjacent river, attracting all the fish?

Yosuke's journey from the rather glum order of Tokyo to the weird logic of the seaside town is like the move from the Victorian age to Wonderland in Lewis Carroll's famous book. Yosuke wanders the town, populated by eccentrics whose actions seem more determined by whim and desire than the fixed expectations he's used to, like a bemused Alice, in his case being slowly sucked in by the town's seductive call, and suffering some very odd dream sequences. Imamura's tone changes completely - the music becomes circus-like playful, the staging of scenes, the clash between rigorous framing and nutty events, increasingly absurd (see the wonderfully coy **lla**o sequence). This mode undercuts what seems to be a very middle-aged male fantasy - the spiritual regenration through sex of a hen-pecked husband. And when you think about it, the town isn't that much of a haven - racist, riven with small-scale organised crime and the legacy of industrial pollution, and full of visual evidence of economic delapidation. But Imamura's eye for the meaningful image of location with which to frame his dense, ambivalent compositions never wavers, and his sensitivity to labyrinthine interiors, natural light or water (the deflection of dissolving light from the river onto buildings is particularly beautiful) or delicious colour-coding (those reds!) is as true as ever. ... Read more

Description

A Cannes Film Festival award winner, "Black Rain" is an unforgettable movie about humanity and survival after the 1945 atomic catastrophe that changed the world forever. Stunning photography vividly details the horror of ravaged Hiroshima, while its shocked survivors struggle with radiation sickness as they rebuild their shattered lives. ... Read more

Reviews (11)

"American heroes"?!?
A very "heroic" moment in American, or for that matter, world, history--dropping an atomic bomb on a city of 350,000 men, women and children (then, again, 3 days later over a church in Nagsaki)! All of this talk of "heroes" is ridiculous. There are no heroes in war. There is just death. Anyone who has been in war or seen it firsthand will tell you that. Watch this film, read the book (which is quite different from Imamura's breathtaking film), and contemplate what the US has unleashed in the world: the possibility of nuclear destruction of not one city or country, but the entire planet. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are America's guilty conscience. It is well past time for its citizens to take a look at the costs of warfare and imperialism in the Nuclear Age; not to look away, cowardly, or spout some nonsense about "heroes". This film, and the book upon which it is based, is NOT a re-writing of "history". It IS history. A history that Americans are NOT taught. A history that we are too brainwashed to even give a fair hearing. Lopez, Mariposa, etc., you make me ashamed to be an American.

A moving tragedy about a young girl's life affected by war.
This film is the first one that I know of that deals with other lesser known aspects of the atomic explosion of Hiroshima. The storey is about a young Japanese girl who was on the outskirts of the city when it was destroyed by an atomic bomb.She witnesses the horror and devastation as she and her family try to reach there Father's factory that is on the other side of town.She takes a boat ride across the bay when it starts raining black ash.That is just the begining of the film and the rest chronicles her life as she struggles to find a husband while under the suspicion that she was contaminated by the blast. When I think of the tragedy of Hiroshima I've always thought of its victims as being instantly vaporized at the moment of explosion.What this film tries to show is that for some victims there pain and suffering would last an entire lifetime. This film is a sublime masterpiece.

Mariposa, et al, is a MORON!
Mariposa, you are a moron, plain and simple. You are not a "patriot", but a fascist pig. The US dropped atomic bombs on two civilian targets, during rush hour in Hiroshima's case, no where near a military target (but in the center of the city) and hundreds of thousands (contemplate this for a moment, if you can) of lives were lost--murder of genocidal proportions. Hundreds of thousands (again, can you imagine a number that high, you fascist?) of innocent lives were ruined forever... left to die painful deaths from radiation sickness. The Imperial Japanese Army, etc., committed countless atrocities and that is not to be deined--however, to take the easy way out, as Mariposa and her ilk have since 1945, and avoid thinking about the REALITY of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or to conflate the crimes of one military machine with another ("they started the war" so "we" were "justified" in "ending it" by nuclear genocide) is simply unacceptable. Mariposa and other Floridian inbreds, why don't you work on fixing your electoral system so we don't have another right wing coup d'etat this November, instead of writing idiotic "reviews" of literature or film? You and your kind are such wonderful "patriots", as you put it--why don't you volunteer and head to Iraq to fight Bush's OIL WAR? You moron! Wake up, America, and take a look at the human cost of EMPIRE! (before it is too late...)

I agree with Margo
All of us real patriots know who the villians in World War II were. The Japanese started the second world war on December 7th, and we ended it. Any patriot will attest to the fact that our victory was one of our finest moments and still is.

Black Rain
Any attack on civillians during war is intolerable. This movie teaches that we should have empathy for those civillians - empathy being Anti-American apparently. ... Read more