Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets

Director: Shūji Terayama
Year Released: 1971
Rating: 1.0

One of those punk-anarchist experiments in which a multitude of disconnected images and ideas are launched at the viewer - a blend of agit-prop, sex and rock & roll topped off with an "everything's wrong" war cry - with the main target of the attack being Japanese culture. Terayama could care less if any of it is understood - the emotion is everything, from the opening scene berating the audience for being in a theater in the first place to a gang-rape in the bathroom, to a whole bunch o' stuff on fire. But like with Richard Kern's films - which tend to be less intelligent but better structured - the noise and shaky camera and 'fuck you' to everything isn't radical as much as it's irritating and hopelessly naïve - everyone mentions Das Kapital, but who actually read it? Oshima's name is invoked at the end, but it owes more to Godard (especially his use of color).