Night and Fog in Japan
Director: Nagisa Oshima
Year Released: 1960
Rating: 0.0
Insufferable early film from Oshima - that is, before he discovered his more potent transgressive side - about political discontent in Japan (the reference in the title to Resnais' masterpiece is completely lost on me). Watching it is like being stuck in the board meeting of a company you know nothing about, and the discussion is going on and on, and your head is swaying back and forth to see all the people, but you don't know what they're talking about and all you want to do is leave ... but you can't, and the room doesn't have a functional clock, and you're made jittery by your inability to flee. At least Godard's political manifestos provide a few chuckles, dance numbers and off-the-cuff improvisations to get you through them; this is stagy filmmaking at its most monotonous. Its topicality is no longer relevant, either, and the characters' thoughts on Marxism and "nihilism" have been better discussed elsewhere.
