Den-en ni shisu

This is one of the best surreal film ever made right along Alejandro Jodorowsky's "Fando and Lis", Frank Zappa's "200 Motels", and Wojciech Has's "The Saragossa Manuscript." The film is based on Terayama's original play and series of his haiku about his childhood (IMDb's biography on Terayama is excellent and will give you in-depth view of Terayama's art.) The film has timeless Freudian theme about the adolescent trauma, loss of innocence, and deconstruction of self and memories. I have a Japanese VHS copy and watched with my American friends. I tried to translate dialogue as much as possible, it is very hard to keep up with the pace of film and especially his haiku are very hard to translate. However, even with my poor translation, my friends loved the film. I still think in order to understand Terayama's intention of the film, it is important to appreciate his haiku.

I was wondering how I could get a copy with English subtitle. I want to share the film with American friends. If you have seen this film in the U.S., let me know where you have seen it.

Not only surrealism but in general the overall balance of the film and the absurdity of the cinematography made all so natural, made the film what it is. So ahead of its time a simple treasure for the film community.

In what may or may not be an auto-biography, Terayama explores his past and the relationship we have with our memories, in a grotesque serie of poetic symbolism, bizarre surrealism, haikus, tragic tales of love and innocence, beautiful scenery and interesting cinematography, all wrapped in a self-referential, intellectually thought-provoking exploration of how our lives are affected by our childhood memories. A magnificent balance between indulgent surrealism and thoughtful objectivism, while still not being really experimental.

Childhood is something that cannot ever be exploited.

In every film where a childhood is depicted, it's never 1 to 1. It's never reality. Reality is boring and it's not interesting, except for the originator. Shuji Terayama, another director I discovered because of LB, knew this and had to Fellinicise, to Parajanovicise, poeticise, abstracise his childhood. Maybe something thin of reality is still there, but something that's common to all of us.

I will not revisit this film, ever. I didn't connect to it and the visual style alone is not something that powerful for me to cling on. But I can appreciate the symbolism of it, the cinematography, the little stories, and what those stories tried to tell, but I will be frank, not all of them were understandable and need multiple viewings to be really digested.

Time is another big theme here and somehow present in every scene through watches, ticking clocks, time paradoxes and even cicadas in the background.

Terayama's mastery of the image is inarguable. His compositions - kaleidoscopic, supersaturated, overpowering - are an integral part of his films' unique emotional landscape. He could almost be described as a director of Japanese kink, were his films not so deeply philosophical, cerebral and achingly emotional.

Here, Terayama paints his childhood in broad strokes, then proceeds to shake his head as if disappointed at the results; his images are an embellishment, he concedes, and the rest of the film delves more deeply into the metaphysical as he literally steps foot into his childhood to try to understand it and, if possible, change it, if only to find out what will happen if he does.

The film is charged with budding eroticism, a portrait of an adolescent's confusion juxtaposed with a man's midlife existentialism. Terayama was a fascinating man and he's putting his soul on display in this film, his own poetry woven through it as his memories ring with the surreal and come across more coherently as feelings than as literal moments. The figures of his childhood walk larger than life until, finally, the thin walls of memory come crashing down and the past is forsaken in favour of an urban present.