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SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Viewed on DVD. Restoration = five (5) stars; subtitles = four (4) stars. Director Masahiro Shinoda's inventive and dramatic use of a layered presentation technique where a play about making a movie is the movie, sort of. It is a tale of a philandering husband confronting a mid life crisis during Japan's feudal age (a mashup of the usual Shomin-Geki (house drama) and Jidai-Geki (period drama) photo play genres) culminating in the "traditional" lovers' joint murder/suicide . The clever use of helpful and ever-present "stage hands" dressed top-to-toe in black (like those who move things about in the dark between scenes of a stage play) is both menacing and fascinating (they even turn up in the on-location exterior death scenes). Puppets appear in the opening scenes without explanation and then are gone forever without explanation (there is derivative reason for this, but it is missing from the movie). An abstract Torii (a Shinto shrine archway) is used for assisted suicide (or is it willful execution?) with the help of many stage hands (the Director seems to be editorializing here). At about mid point, the movie turns seriously boring from the cumulative impact of nonstop, over-the-top acting histrionics, script repetitions, and scenes of talking heads (the film has been overly stretched and could be cut roughly in half). Cinematography (narrow screen, black and white) is okay (this antiquated format seems to have been used to appeal to art-house theater patrons of the day). Restoration is fine. Score is close to being acoustically invisible. Subtitles are all but missing from the opening credits. They also need some judicious re-editing given the screen flash rate and their accuracy (hey, it's not easy to find translators with Kansai-Ben skills who will work cheap!). Mostly a case of art for art's sake. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

I had never heard of Shinoda or Double Suicide prior to enrolling in a Japanese literature and film class in college. The memory of watching it, though, remains with me. As I did when I first saw Chinatown or Greed or 2001, I sat there like a codfish, mouth open and catching flies. I had never seen anything like it, and I have not seen anything like it since. The film is based on Chikamatsu's 18th-century bunraku play (a type of play that uses puppets and leaves the cloaked puppet masters in plain view of the audience) and offers a wonderful translation of that text and that style of theatre. That's correct, cloaked puppetmasters move about on screen along with the characters. This element and this element alone could have caused my love of this film to grow. It's a simple choice, really, but creates such depth to the story. In the traditional play, the puppetmasters were there because they had to be. In the film they become fate, guiding the actors through the world. It's a wonderful touch and an interesting concept. The photography of the film is incredible as well, though; the stark black and white melding beautifully to the basic, raw emotions of the characters and the harsh view of love put forth by the film. The set design is mindblowing as well, with its over-sized woodblock prints of that era. The film has a visceral impact on its audience, but it does so without overly manipulating one's emotions. If anything, the audience is kept at a distance from the characters and is therefore unable to feel anything sentimental for them. However, the film's bleakness is effective and affective, giving one the feeling, at the end, of having been punched in the guts. Granted, such a feeling is not for everyone, but I appreciate films that can affect me in such ways.

Similar to the fate of the star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet, Double Suicide by Masahiro Shinoda is Shakespearean in its theme of lovers who are forbidden by society's rules to be together and can only find fulfillment in death. The film is based on a 1720 Kabuki (or Bunraku) puppet play, The Love Suicide at Amijima by Monzaemon Chikamatsu, who has been called the Japanese Shakespeare. As the film begins, black-clad puppeteers known as kurago are busy assembling puppets and setting the stage for the drama. Soon live actors replace the puppets but the puppeteers remain in the background, silent participants changing the sets, assembling the props, and "pulling the strings", representing perhaps the inexorable hand that guides our lives or as Shinoda has said the `thin line between truth and falsehood". The film is intensely emotional and has the feel of grand opera but the puppeteers make clear the artificiality of the drama and keep us distanced. In the film, Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura) is a paper merchant who is married with two young children. Though he loves his wife Osan, he has been secretly seeing a courtesan Koharu (Shima Iwashita who also plays Osan) for two and a half years. He has dissipated his fortune at the brothel and now cannot raise enough money to redeem Koharu from her enslavement to the brothel's owner (Kamatari Fujiwara). Though his family finds out about their romance and Osan tries to persuade Jehei to sever the relationship, it becomes apparent that the bond is unbreakable and we watch helplessly as the inevitable tragedy unfolds. Double Suicide has a haunting score by Toru Takemitsu and amazing black and white photography, shown in sharp detail and contrast in the new Criterion DVD, and is highly recommended for a unique viewing experience.

"Double Suicide" is a bunraku puppet performance at its core, with perhaps the only difference being that actual humans play the roles of the puppets.The puppet masters, their faces covered with thin black silk masks, move around props, rapidly change the minimal sets, never interfering with the plot or the characters, yet moving them forward and cooperating with them in a way that is not at all distracting.The puppets themselves are finely crafted, and the characters that they play present a depth of humanity that is rare in all forms of staged entertainment (whether it be a movie, a play, or the like). Being puppets, however, the viewer is left feeling detached from them, even if there is a sense of humanity present that one can grasp. Oddly enough, that is a good thing in this case - it increases the sense of how the only thing that one could do when the tragic events unfold is to watch.This is not a film for all tastes, obviously. But the same statement can apply to the bunraku puppet play that this movie is based on. This performance is pulled off with perfection, and I highly recommend it.10 out of 10