Dr. Akagi
Director: Shohei Imamura
Year Released: 1998
Rating: 3.0
Village doctor Dr. Akagi quick-shuffles through town, tending to the sickly people and offering the same diagnosis whether his patients have a fever or a bad back: hepatitis. At first he comes across as just a fool, but he's so driven - and his search for an answer is so dogged - that he earns a begrudging respect and becomes, well, a holy fool. It's quite typical of the work of quirky director Imamura: it's meandering and it shifts tone rapidly, going from sex farce to quick critique of the cruelty of the Japanese military. On a quick search of the director's Internet Movie Database page it states that one of Imamura's pupils is none other than Takashi Miike, which is a huge clue to deciphering Miike's mixture of comedy and horror (and morality, like with Visitor Q).
