Sprawling, almost 4-hour sepia-toned drama about trauma… until the color comes back. Yes — I love to suffer.

Sprawling, almost 4-hour sepia-toned drama about trauma… until the color comes back. Yes — I love to suffer.

Conflicted on giving this a 4 or a 4.5. I think this is a beautiful movie that only began to feel long at the THREE HOUR MARK which is astounding considering how melancholic this was. I'm glad I watched this after putting it off for awhile.

Koji Yakusho is the fucking goat

Conflicted on giving this a 4 or a 4.5. I think this is a beautiful movie that only began to feel long at the THREE HOUR MARK which is astounding considering how melancholic this was. I'm glad I watched this after putting it off for awhile.

Koji Yakusho is the fucking goat

Long Movie Marathon 2.0 Part VI

“do you think one can live only for others?”

the monstrous expectations i had for this film have been exceeded a great many magnitudes. i honestly had no idea what i was getting into, ive been recommended this movie multiple times with the people recommending it holding it to a state of near divine reverence, i knew nothing of the plot, characters, themes, or even Aoyama’s style of filmmaking as this is the first film of his i have seen, it was a completely blind first watch, and im so glad it was.

the concept that resides at the very core of this movie thematically is trauma. much like trauma, this film is extremely quiet, almost deafeningly so, as this allows the painful past of the characters to not just be displayed through dialogue, but also through body language and physical mannerisms that mirror their shattered states of selves. the sepia tone of the film only amplifies this, the off color filter is akin to trauma, it puts a beige sense of decay over everything you see and experience, everything is different, nothing is the same, the pain knows no bounds, its expanse is perpetual, and its reminders are omnipresent. this film conceptualizes trauma and the journey to heal said trauma like few, if any other films ever have. the cast and characters were so well written and cohesive, each of their stories being palpable and emotionally supercharged as well as explored in depth, and then that ending sequence was such a gorgeous cherry on top. what a beautiful and powerful movie, holy shit.

Long Movie Marathon 2.0 Part VI

“do you think one can live only for others?”

the monstrous expectations i had for this film have been exceeded a great many magnitudes. i honestly had no idea what i was getting into, ive been recommended this movie multiple times with the people recommending it holding it to a state of near divine reverence, i knew nothing of the plot, characters, themes, or even Aoyama’s style of filmmaking as this is the first film of his i have seen, it was a completely blind first watch, and im so glad it was.

the concept that resides at the very core of this movie thematically is trauma. much like trauma, this film is extremely quiet, almost deafeningly so, as this allows the painful past of the characters to not just be displayed through dialogue, but also through body language and physical mannerisms that mirror their shattered states of selves. the sepia tone of the film only amplifies this, the off color filter is akin to trauma, it puts a beige sense of decay over everything you see and experience, everything is different, nothing is the same, the pain knows no bounds, its expanse is perpetual, and its reminders are omnipresent. this film conceptualizes trauma and the journey to heal said trauma like few, if any other films ever have. the cast and characters were so well written and cohesive, each of their stories being palpable and emotionally supercharged as well as explored in depth, and then that ending sequence was such a gorgeous cherry on top. what a beautiful and powerful movie, holy shit.

I think this movie means quite a bit to me, because of how hard it was for me to find it. I literally spent like an hour (not exaggerating) trying to find many different sites on which this movie could be, and didn't find it anywhere. I even went to some kind of site which has rare movies, but even there you can only watch from Japan, I found some youtube link to this movie and again, only available from Japan. And when I finally gave up and decided to watch another movie, before doing so I cheked on youtube for some reason and the very first result was the whole movie. So quite ironic that after such a long time searching for it everywhere I ended up finding it on youtube. Anyway, because of that effort and when I gave up I finally found it, I kind of didn't want to "waste it", so I was really locked in and paying attention to every single detail and just really watching carefully while it being a 3h 40min movie. And well for the movie itself, sure as expected it was a bit slow and it was a bit predictable, but it was still great. I think it's really underrated, even though it's actually rated quite high, but very few people know about it. Maybe, because it's quite long and pretty hard to find, but yeah you can watch it on youtube. I think the whole idea was executed pretty well though and the acting was great. Also another interesting thing about this movie is the style of it. It's like black and white kind of, but seems like it's warmer or something. It's more like black and yellow. It's hard to explain, but there seems to be some kind of warm-like colours even though it's black and white. Also I've been watching quiet a few Japanese movies lately and it's just something about them, they're like more psychologically driven and that also really shows in this movie

I think this movie means quite a bit to me, because of how hard it was for me to find it. I literally spent like an hour (not exaggerating) trying to find many different sites on which this movie could be, and didn't find it anywhere. I even went to some kind of site which has rare movies, but even there you can only watch from Japan, I found some youtube link to this movie and again, only available from Japan. And when I finally gave up and decided to watch another movie, before doing so I cheked on youtube for some reason and the very first result was the whole movie. So quite ironic that after such a long time searching for it everywhere I ended up finding it on youtube. Anyway, because of that effort and when I gave up I finally found it, I kind of didn't want to "waste it", so I was really locked in and paying attention to every single detail and just really watching carefully while it being a 3h 40min movie. And well for the movie itself, sure as expected it was a bit slow and it was a bit predictable, but it was still great. I think it's really underrated, even though it's actually rated quite high, but very few people know about it. Maybe, because it's quite long and pretty hard to find, but yeah you can watch it on youtube. I think the whole idea was executed pretty well though and the acting was great. Also another interesting thing about this movie is the style of it. It's like black and white kind of, but seems like it's warmer or something. It's more like black and yellow. It's hard to explain, but there seems to be some kind of warm-like colours even though it's black and white. Also I've been watching quiet a few Japanese movies lately and it's just something about them, they're like more psychologically driven and that also really shows in this movie