Eros + Massacre

Baffling and skillfully shot Eros + Massacre is far from easy to digest. A complex story with ton to explore and interpret. I feel frustrated that I have to see this film ones more to give it a faire rating, my concern though, is that it displays' more intelligent that it really is.

Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi (1885-1923) which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s' students researching Osugi's theories.

This film is epic, even in its cut form. Yoshishige Yoshida uses a variety of clever, yet subtle, techniques including the idea of reflection to show the split time frames. Unfortunately, the film's shades of gray are not as stark as they could be.

The film is generally considered to be one of the finest film to come out of the Japanese New Wave movement, and sometimes one of the best Japanese films in general. Although relatively unknown in the West, it has gained a small cult following. Thanks to Arrow Video, it can now be seen uncut on Blu-ray. Personally, it is not my cup of tea, but not everything can be.

No, I'm just kidding. But you will be reminded of "Blow-Up" -- as well as his Zabriskie Point" (and "The Baader Meinhof Complex," and other recent films -- "Après Mai," for example). People living differently, finding new ways to shoot each other, and cutting up the footage.

But the thing with "free love" is somebody can break up, get dumped, every day.

(I'd also recommend Iaon Couliano's "Eros and Magic in the Renaissance," 1984.)

The Japanese New Wave is one of my favorite cinematic movements, and this film comes recommended as one of the best of its era. Very unfortunately, it didn't do much for me at all. The one thing about it that I'll say right off the bat really impressed me was the cinematography. No time and place ever produced such gorgeous black and white movies, and this is up there with the best.

The film itself, though, is very slow-moving, kind of pretentious, and uninvolving. The story involves two timelines, one set in the Taisho period (starting in 1916) and the other in the present. It's about free love and the sexual revolution. In 1916, the philosopher Sakae Osugi practices and writes about free love. I'm pretty sure the Japanese word for philosopher translates literally in English to "aloof jerk," because this guy's version of free love is to screw around with different women and then say "Why can't you be chill about this?" when they confront him. In particular, Itsuko Masaoka becomes wildly jealous when he starts seeing Noe Ito on the side. She begins brandishing a knife, always threatening to get stabby with it. Late in the movie, there are like three consecutive sequences that take up a good quarter of the movie where she fulfills her promise.

The 1960s stuff involves two students who are studying Osugi. They have their own problems, but want to subscribe to the free love idea, which seems to be expanding around the world. At least in the director's cut, these segments take up only about a quarter of the film.

Look, I don't generally do well with long films, and perhaps this one's 3 hours and 36 minutes were just too daunting for me. The fact is, though, from the very beginning I was pretty bored with this one. 90% of the scenes just involve two or three people sitting around in a room bickering. I give Yoshida much credit for keeping it visually interesting throughout. The guy definitely has talent, but I wonder if this independently produced art film gave him too much freedom. Maybe he'd be better reigned in.

Whatever the case, I'm still perfectly happy to have this new Arrow Academy box set. Outside of Criterion, they're the best home video production company today. I hope I like the other two films better, and I hope one day I get to take a look at Yoshida's earlier, studio-produced films.

I was told I'd love this film. Instead I hated it. The only thing I liked was the creative cinematography but even that was overdone. There is two stories, one in the past and one in the present (1969 when this film was made) and most of the time when it switches from one to the other, it made little sense. In fact, most of this movie didn't make sense.

There was about ten minutes of story. A lot a time is spent on surreal photography. To much time. There is one scene or plotline they did like 7 or 8 different versions of. After the second or third time I really didn't care. The acting was good but I didn't care about the characters. The ending was an even larger disappointment. It didn't really tie things up.

After 3 and a half hours of this, was there a point to this movie? This was part of a trilogy and I'll skip the other two. You should skip all three.