Crispin-Bates

This is one for sci-fi lovers of strictly limited intelligence and for serious film fans to miss. You have been warned! Kazuaki Kiriya certainly has good ideas for graphic design and unusual photographic techniques, but this film is hugely over-long, repetitious and massively self-indulgent - which is what happens I guess when the director is also the camera man and script writer. He should have stuck to making 3 minute advertisements, since this is what the 'film' looks like: lots of striking 3-minute sequences strung together with very little attempt at continuity or story-telling. It is like the worst bits of 'Dune' x 100. The script is appalling - when the first reviewer says the film asks 'deep questions' like 'why do we make war', that is indeed exactly what happens! Someone strikes a pose in front of the camera and shouts 'why do we make war, are we not all HUMAN BEINGS?' (a concept that is invoked quite often), there is no answer of course (it is a rhetorical question) then we go back to blurry and never-ending fight sequences. This film is ALL RHETORIC and no depth. Some characters says nothing at all, others spend most of their time shrieking or sobbing, before and after getting shot or cut to pieces (the fate of most of them). Oh, and a lot of women are carried about. Almost every scene begins with someone walking into shot carrying a woman. Have they not got legs for goodness sake? The purpose of course is to heighten the tragic demeanour of the central characters (all men) and to save the trouble of writing any meaningful lines for the women. When I say it is repetitive, I should mention that this extends to a number of sequences in the film actually being repeated, several times, just in case you did not get the heavy, tragic symbolism the first time round. This film also has some of the longest death sequences I have seen for a long time. Although containing elements of originality many filmic ideas are simply ripped off other movies. It is difficult to express what this film is about since the director does not have a clear idea himself. It is a tragedy for the Japanese film industry that movies like this are allowed to be released without someone stepping in and at least demanding severe cuts. I am quite certain the director would never have been given funding for this if he was not married to Japan's most successful and genuinely talented pop singer, Utada Hikaru - although her talent has diminished severely of late since she married this guy and started singing in English. Utada has the great merit of doing all her own song-writing and she sings the closing song of the movie. Next time (if there is one) Kazuaki Kiriya should swallow his pride and get someone else to do the editing and the screenplay.

Set somewhere in Rajputana / northern Madhya Pradesh in central India between the two World Wars, this movie depicts the sordid daily humiliation and exploitation heaped upon villagers by an over-mighty landlord (Zamindar). When his attention focusses on the women, they unite and fight back, to the shame of their feeble husbands. Starring Naseeruddin Shah - a leading dramatic actor - in one of his more devlish roles. An historical epic as well as a manifesto for the liberation of the oppressed in rural India.