dir. Nagisa Oshima
writ. Michinori Fukao, Nagisa Oshima, Mamoru Sasaki, Tsutomu Tamura
feat. Kei Sato, Fumio Watanabe, Toshiro Ishido, Masao Adachi, Rokko Toura, Hosei Komatsu, Masao Matsuda, Akiko Kayama, Do-yun Yu
This relentless film begins with the narrator (Oshima) relating the fact that 71% of people surveyed support the death penalty before leading the viewer into the rarely seen chamber where executions are carried out. The jarringly swift delivery from statistics to the rope snapping around the convict's neck is upset when the intended victim fails to die. The unprecedented occurrence throws the room into chaos, everyone unsure how to proceed, and changes the course of the film from a noirish crime thriller to the darkest of comedies.
As the prison officials attempt to remind the now-amnesiac prisoner of his crimes, in order to induce his guilt and reaffirm their right to kill him, the priest asserts that the man is no longer himself after last rites have been performed upon him, his soul now gone from his body. The guards attempt to reenact rape and murder in hilarious skits that garner no reaction from the serene man.
In the subsequent madness of blustering officials stampeding around the confined space, Oshima manages to effectively question a host of notions including identity, sanity, the treatment of Koreans in Japan, and the right of one man to judge another. More pointedly, the complexity of life, the source of and responsibility for one's actions and reactions, and the distance with which people often view violence are explored as the plot begins to meander, drifting in and out of fantasy, making it even harder to distinguish reality and the slippery concept of guilt.
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