Kohei Oguri’s Muddy River (Doro no kawa, 1981) is a wonderfully evocative portrait of childhood which in parts reminded me of Victor Erice’s The Spirit of Beehive (1973) and Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games (1952). Erice, Clement, or for that matter, Truffaut – in 400 Blows – has proved that films about childhood doesn’t need to be sentimental. Similarly, Oguri is a master craftsman when it comes to imbuing profound emotions within simple visuals, while also subtly exploring the mysteries and…

Juzo Itami, a renowed television and movie actor, made a late career shift into directing and screenwriting – at the age of 50 – and went on to become one of the formally and thematically original voices of Japanese cinema. Internationally known for his ‘noodle western’ Tampopo (1985), Mr. Itami directed ten feature films between 1984 and his tragic suicide in 1997 (though contentious theories claim that it’s a murder). A distinct satirist, Itami’s works thought-provokingly as well as hilariously…

Conservatism is unsurprisingly inherent to humans for it renders might to their muscle, and provides them with the cushion of a life free of critical thinking. You don’t natural resources, you borrow them from the ecosystem. But sustainability is unexciting in the short run. It is tempting to claim ownership and exploit such that the present becomes devoid of responsibilities. Tracing the causes and origin of colonialism is a comprehensive exercise that would require detailed academic reading. They can be…

I feel that Uli Edel’s The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) and Koji Wakamatsu’s United Red Army (Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun: Asama sanso e no michi, 2007) are significant films to provide a closer understanding of modern terrorism, provoked as well as extinguished by State’s formidable power. Both the films focuses on the beginning of the age of global terror, set amidst the turbulent cold-war times and flourished due to State’s fascist tendencies and unchecked police brutality. In fact, the 1960s and…

The fifth & final western from the auteur of spaghetti westerns, Duck, You Sucker is arguably the most under-appreciated film of his career. Although not as great as his previous works in the genre, it is still accomplished enough to rank amongst the finest examples of Zapata westerns, thanks to Leone’s fabulous direction, the film’s politically charged premise & dynamite performances from its leads. Serving only as a producer at first before being talked into taking up the directorial duties as well,…

Kaneto Shindo’s Children of Hiroshima (Genbaku no ko, 1952), based on Arata Osada’s novel, was one of the first Japanese films to deal with the nuclear holocaust. In August 6, 1945, a 16-kilotonne atom bomb reduced most of Hiroshima to rubble, killing at least 200,000 as the effects of radiation wreaked havoc on Hiroshima inhabitants long after the initial blast. Kaneto Shindo, the veteran film-maker who directed films for seven decades, captures this devastation through the elegiac melodrama set-up, provoking…

The movie is primarily the journey of two siblings taking their respective razor-thin journeys aiming for reaching the wholeness, the mother’s womb. Can both make it? If one makes it, did the other not make it too? Can one affect the other world? Told from the point of view child, it is about the search for his elder brother in the slums of Mumbai. At the very beginning of the film, we are introduced to the world of little Mulla,…

Devotion to a genre often compels filmmakers to turn a blind eye to the socio-political environment a story grows into. This leads to the creation of a narrative that can only breathe in an alien space and serve gratification for the duration it exists. Such films neither manage to communicate to the audience on a personal level nor evolve as an allegory for some aspect of life. Smita Singh prevents herself from falling into the aforementioned trap by getting concerned…

It is a trick period in life when your body starts to change and one of the most important aspect of it comes when you get interested in the subject of sex. Sex is a subject that is not something so easily discussed with your parents or even with your friends. Exploration of this part during High School, through teenagers is a subject that Hollywood has done so many times. And most of these stories are about bunch of boys…

“If you ever feel like crying, come to my house. We’ll have a good cry together”, says the perseverant teacher, played by the beautiful and strong-willed Hideko Takamine in Keisuke Kinoshita’s pacifist post-war Japanese classic, Twenty-Four Eyes (Nijushi no hitomi, 1954). The line pretty much sums up our emotional reaction to the narrative in which writer/director Kinoshita skillfully expresses the inhumanity of war and jingoism. Twenty-Four Eyes is one of the best examples of melodrama done well where it transplants…