shiryuo

First of all I have to say that this film is really tough.

It's a bit like Rashômon. A widow wants to find out the truth about her husband being apparent executed in the Second World War by Japanese soldiers.

But the administration isn't ready to hand out the documents about his dead. So the woman (Hidari Sachiko) tries alone to find out what really happened, by questioning four survivors who knew her husband. And everybody tells a different story (that's why I compare it with Rashômon, although they are set in different sceneries) and they have different opinions about the dead husband. The end turns out to be more horrible than any of you hard-boiled-audition-viewers might expect. Sorry, just kidding. Kinji Fukasaku does its best to disturb the audience. Compared with Battle Royale, Gunki hatameku motoni is much more real and in its way not entertaining at all, what Battle Royale certainly was.

Now here its different. You see real WW2-documental shots mixed with directed scenes. So you never forget what the film is about: Reality. He uses the story of the woman to bring the horror of war to the audience in a rather psychological way. With wanting Hidari Sachiko to know what really happened to her husband, the audience learns a lot more about the terror which reigned the battlefields of New-Guinea. Burned-out, hungry troops, sadistic generals blinded by ultra-nationalism, massacre, torture and finally cannibalism, there's nothing better to expect. There isn't for the audience either.

The movie has no happy end. Its one of the most disturbing and pessimistic films ever made. Mixed with the documentary and the sad fate of the woman, this film is also a fable for the consequences of a war not so long ago. Which is not common in Japan, where it still remains a taboo. So the audience has learned something when the film ends. However, this is how I consider this film. It might be different for other people. My brother watching it with me, was stunned. But some people left the theater as well. I only recommend it to anybody who liked both "Paths of Glory" and "Bullet in the Head" or who is interested in Japanese History and its problems anyway.

okay, i've seen this film only on video, so i don't know how/if it works on a big screen. anyway, shabondama elegy is something really unique, a crazy mixture of yakuza and romance filled with strange colours, cutting techniques and inventive camera angles; like Ian Kerkhof is as usual. the story is really hard to follow, it took me 5 times watching it and i'm still not sure if i understood everything. the film's beginning is quite normal though. tom hoffmann is arrested by the cops in tokyo (probably because of drugs) and by a chance he manages to escape. after picking up a girl (mai hoshino)in a nightclub in shinjuku, he stays at her place because the cops and the yakuza are both after him. at this point, the film gets really hard to watch, ian kerkhof does his best to deconstruct the storyline and alienates the images in any possible way. in the end, jack gets shot. sounds a bit spoiling now but it's not really because you see the showdown already in the first 10 minutes, so you know the end in advance even before you've seen the whole. sometimes you see keiko (mai hoshino)telling her story as if it was a flashback, the film ends with the opening sequence. it's like david lynch with a videocam dropping acid in tokyo, the film is free of any clichés and conventions, it should be considered like abstract video art. you just can't put it in any category, and i think this is what ian kerkhof intended. already because of this, the film gets 10 to 10, it is something i haven't seen before. and i've seen lots of betacam-trash films. o.k. the sound recording isn't the best and the dialogues are senseless, but there is still ian kerkhof's brillant camera work and a very well told, lyrical story. i liked it specially because of its ambition to create something new. i think it must be considered from this point of view. so i suggest to watch it for a second time and again and again, you'll always gonna find something new.