Noisy Requiem
Director: Yoshihiko Matsui
Year Released: 1988
Rating: 2.5
Dreary, narrative-free experiment allegedly took five years for Matsui to make: it starts with a psychotic man killing a pigeon, disemboweling a young woman (to stuff the entrails in his true love, a mannequin), assaulting two Korean cripples and eventually applying for a job, before shifting focus and documenting the meager existence of other outsiders (a rapist, a derelict and so on). There are stretches in this that are repetitive and just go for easy shock value - lots of spitting up/vomiting - and the camera gets a bit too active (swirling around and moving quickly) though the core of this leaves a lasting impression: it's just too bizarre not to (like a documentary about Social Sickness). Matsui can kill sentiment in a hurry: one scene of a deformed little person being laughed at by school kids is quickly followed by a crazed man eating a corpse. It's about alienation ... and, appropriately enough, it's alienating.
