Wednesday, July 1, 2009

more-a imamura

last night i watched the second film out of criterion's awesome new boxset, pigs pimps and battleships: the films of shohei imamura the insect woman and suprisingly, i didnt enjoy as much as i thought i would. that isnt to say it wasnt excellent film...whcih it it was.

the plot was fairly simple and linnear. a woman named tome is born into an adulterous relationship and despite her best efforts cannot rise herself out of the sexual and political dereliction she is born into. the opening shot of an insect painfully crawling up a hill is juxtaposed at the end as tome is climbing up a similar hill.

imamura is probably the enfant terrible of japanese film. his stuff was daring, socially relevant, and contraversial much like a godard or a resnais. what really dragged into the film wasnt the plot so much as the use of still frames with voice over narration and sparse music. he employed this tactic at key moments through the film which allow the viewer to enter it their own movements of the characters in between still shots.

apparently, this used to be on theyshootpicture's top 1000 which might have been a little overzealous but this is still definetely worth watching