Imamura, Shohei

Vengeance Is Mine - Criterion Collection

Long before Vengeance Is Mine, American directors like Jules Dassin (Naked City) invested the procedural with journalistic detail. Similarly, Japan's Shohei Imamura (The Eel) lays out all the facts for the viewer's delectation: names, dates, times of death, and methods of execution, i.e. "skull crushed with blunt object." (In the DVD booklet, Michael Atkinson compares him to journalist-turned-filmmaker Samuel Fuller.) The murderer, however, is no mystery. Imamura introduces us to the unrepentant Iwao Enokizu (Mishima's Ken Ogata) in the opening sequence. He then backtracks to the clutch of murders the con man committed in the early 1960s. At the same time, he keeps an eye on the cops as they follow his trail, while flashing back to Enokizu's rebellious youth. Based on Ryuzo Saki's true-crime novel, Vengeance Is Mine further deviates from the neo-realist noirs of old by withholding judgment. That isn't completely surprising, since it was preceded by nine years in which Imamura worked exclusively in the documentary realm. Vicious killer that he is, Enokizu is outgoing rather than downbeat. Further, his past includes a weak-willed father and an unfaithful wife, but that information doesn't make him sympathetic. Nor does it explain his crimes. Enokizu is an empty vessel for the audience to fill as it sees fit. As Imamura acknowledges in "My Approach to Filmmaking" (also part of the booklet), "I love all the characters in my films, even the loutish and frivolous ones." Vengeance Is Mine is a must for fans of Japanese cinema and unconventional thrillers alike. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

LIKE ALL GREAT SHOHEI IMAMURA PROTAGONISTS, VENGEANCE IS MINE'S IWAO ENOKIZU (KEN OGATA) LURKS ON THE MARGINS OF JAPANESE SOCIETY. A THIEF, MURDERER, AND CHARMING LADY-KILLER, IWAO IS ON THE RUN FROM THE POLICE. DIRECTOR SHOHEI IMAMURA TURNS THIS FACT-BASED STORY, OF THE SEVENTY-THREE-DAY KILLING SPREE OF A REMORSELESS MAN FROM A DEVOUTLY CATHOLIC FAMILY, INTO A COLD, PERVERSE, AND, AT TIMES, DIABOLICALLY FUNNY TALE OF THE PRIMITIVE COEXISTING WITH THE MODERN. MORE THAN JUST A TRUE-CRIME CASE, VENGEANCE IS MINE BARES MANKIND'S SNARLING ID.

September 11

Eleven acclaimed directors each make an 11
minute short film in response to the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. The result is a daring and moving global
cinematic reply that "forces us to look at the
entire event afresh." (New York Times)
Featuring films by: Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, Amores Perros); Mira Nair (The Namesake, Vanity Fair); Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley); Sean Penn (Into the Wild) & more! 135 minutes, color, subtitled

The Eel

The Pornographers - Criterion Collection

Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family. From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead husband, reincarnated as a carp, disapproves. Director Shohei Imamura has always delighted in the kinky exploits of lowlifes, and in this 1966 classic, he finds subversive humor in the bizarre dynamics of Haru, her Oedipal son, and her daughter, the true object of her pornographer-boyfriend's obsession. Imamura's comic treatment of such taboos as voyeurism and incest sparked controversy when the film was released, but The Pornographers has outlasted its critics, and now seems frankly ahead of its time.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge

This strange fable of a movie, like other movies by Japanese director Shohei Imamura (The Eel, Dr. Akagi), is both enchanting and perplexing. After being laid off, a salesman (Koji Yakusho) travels to a small town to seek out a treasure hidden by an elderly friend of his. Instead, he finds a young woman who has a peculiar condition: she releases gushes of water when she has orgasms. Meanwhile, her grandmother waits for the man who left her years ago to return; an African marathon runner passes their house every day; and three fishermen cast their lines into the nearby river, for the water the young woman vents attracts an abundance of fish. The baffling significance of the movie's more fantastic elements doesn't keep Warm Water Under a Red Bridge from also being charming, strangely sincere, and surreally comic. --Bret Fetzer

From legendary filmmaker Shohei Imamura comes this comic fable for adults. A frustrated unemployed architect learns of a treasure hidden inside an old house near a red bridge in a remote fishing village. Upon arriving he encounters a beautiful young woman with an unusual condition who lives with her grandmother in the old house. The relationship that builds between them becomes both vital and volatile. In Japanese with English subtitles

Dr. Akagi

Black Rain

A Cannes Film Festival award winner, "Black Rain" is an unforgettable movie about humanity and survival after the 1945 atomic catastrophe that changed the world forever. Stunning photography vividly details the horror of ravaged Hiroshima, while its shocked survivors struggle with radiation sickness as they rebuild their shattered lives.

Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu

This strange fable of a movie, like other movies by Japanese director Shohei Imamura (The Eel, Dr. Akagi), is both enchanting and perplexing. After being laid off, a salesman (Koji Yakusho) travels to a small town to seek out a treasure hidden by an elderly friend of his. Instead, he finds a young woman who has a peculiar condition: she releases gushes of water when she has orgasms. Meanwhile, her grandmother waits for the man who left her years ago to return; an African marathon runner passes their house every day; and three fishermen cast their lines into the nearby river, for the water the young woman vents attracts an abundance of fish. The baffling significance of the movie's more fantastic elements doesn't keep Warm Water Under a Red Bridge from also being charming, strangely sincere, and surreally comic. --Bret Fetzer