House

After Eraserhead, House is, aesthetically, its opposite. Monochrome versus Saturation. Industrial versus Domesticity. Masculine versus Feminine. Suffocating versus Exuberant. Minimal versus Maximal. Obayashi’s film is a story of a young, modern postwar Japan being devoured by a brutal, traumatic past it never experienced. Gorgeous and her friends belong to a colorful, frivolous, and increasingly Westernized world. Auntie and her house, in contrast, represent an older Japan, shaped by WWII — losing both herself and her fiancé to the war. Do the girls understand that history? No, but regardless, they inherit it. The trauma, hungry and unresolved, consumes generation after generation. The premise is ridiculous but surprisingly effective and poignant: the past literally eating the youth.