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Powerful

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

A surreal period film following a university professor (Toshiya Fujita) and his eerie nomad friend (Yoshio Harada) as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.Director Seijun Suzuki was terminated from his contract with Nikkatsu Studios in 1968 for making "movies that make no sense and no money" (specifically "Branded to Kill") and was subsequently blacklisted. In the following years he conversed frequently with his crew at his home and continued developing ideas for new projects. Suzuki's blacklisting ended with the release of his critically and commercially unsuccessful 1977 film "A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness". But it was "Zigeunerweisen" that brought him lasting acclaim.You might wonder, why does a Japanese film have a German title? Well, "Zigeunerweisen" (also known as "Gypsy Airs") is a musical composition for violin and orchestra written in 1878 by Pablo de Sarasate, based on themes of the Roma people. This composition provided the title and much of the soundtrack for Seijun Suzuki's film. Indeed, the concept of wandering is intrinsic to the plot.But this is less about plot and more about dreamlike imagery. There are many strange visuals. Not outright bizarre, but some things bordering on performance art. One scene, for example, has two men buried in the sand beating each other with rods. Why is this necessary? It isn't, but is all a part of what makes the film memorable."Zigeunerweisen" was a surprise success in Japan, both commercially and critically; it took home the Japanese Academy Awards for best picture, director, and supporting actress, and the prestigious Kinema Jumpo awards for best director, film, screenplay, actress, and supporting actress. Suzuki was not just back, he was finally recognized as a real treasure. This success naturally lead to future films, and this became the first part of Suzuki's Taishō Roman Trilogy, followed by "Kagero-za" (1981) and "Yumeji" (1991). Not sequels or a trilogy in a strict sense, they are each surrealistic psychological dramas and ghost stories linked by style, themes and the Taishō period (1912-1926) setting.In North America, Kino International released a DVD edition of the film in 2006. It features a 25-minute interview with Suzuki discussing the making of the Taishō Roman Trilogy, a biography and filmography of the same, the theatrical trailer and a gallery of promotional material and photographs. The Arrow Video Blu-ray brings these features along for the ride. On top of that, they offer a high-definition presentation and a new introduction to the film by critic Tony Rayns.

Away from a studio's constraints, Suzuki shows what he can do on his own, and very beautiful and strange it is too. A precursor of David Lynch's recent work, we are shown a series of unexplained and inexplicable events which may or may not be "real" within the film's terms. it has faults- it's leisurely and too long, to make up for years making ninety-minute B-movies, perhaps, though the scenes are so beautiful it's impossible to say which aren't necessary and an important character, Aeoki's wife Taeko, seems incomprehensible rather than mysterious, but it shows Suzuki didn't need the bonds of studio discipline to fight against. A film about the first encounters of Japan and Europe- especially culturally- it's hard to say what is traditionally Japanese, what from the book, what Suzuki's contribution and every comment I make is tentative. First of all, there's the contrast between Aochi, professor of German (a culture with its own supernatural literature, which may be referred to here), and the vagabond Nakasago: except at home Aochi always wears European dress- suits and ties, polished shoes, overcoats and hats; he is clean-shaven with a carefully trimmed moustache and and well-cut hair. At the same time, he looks constricted and distorted by them. Nakasago is his exact opposite- traditionally dressed and dishevelled with uncut hair and beard, (apparently) open in behaviour and speech, but he was once a colleague of Aochi's and presumably dressed like him then. Their first encounter is unreal- no matter how deferential the society, a policeman wouldn't just release the suspect in a possible murder case just on the word of a strange professor. Indeed, Aochi's very presence at the scene is mysterious.As well as the possibility that they are doppelgangers there is something eerie about the route between the two men's houses- grottos cut from stone and mysterious tunnels divide them- which suggests it may be a journey to the afterlife or another world. Koine suggests she may be a fox- an animal that has magic powers and can take human form in Japanese folklore- and she seems to age less than the other characters in the course of the film. It may be the way Suzuki cuts or hir refusal to use extras but things happen without visible cause in Nakasago's house. Equally, there's the contrast between and among the women- Koine and Sano, traditional Japanese "types"- are they different people- either in "reality" or the dream-world of the film or the same person pretending to be two people?- and Taeko and her sister- there's some kind of mystery about the relationship of those two, and just what is the disease that slowly and elegantly kills Shuko while others die of definite and specified causes? Does her death cure Taeko of her allergies? What is the meaning- is there a meaning?- of the cod roe she hides- or says she hides- in a cupboard for Aochi? Who is the child Toyojiro's father? Aochi may suspect Nakasaya and his wife or having sex but in the film's reality he and Sono definitely seem to have sex. What is the connexion of the two groups of three blind beggars with the central plot and why the references to European art in their scenes? They are obviously non-realistic scenes- the girls' instrument has no soundholes so would not make a noise in reality- but who dreams them at any point in the film? What is the significance of the Zigeunerweisen- an obvious and banal explanation of the film would be that it is a reverie and fantasy inspired by Sarate's gypsy music.It's interesting to speculate on these questions- and others- but I don't think there are answers- certainly not clear-cut answers- and I don't think there are meant to be. There's a dream-logic to the film which works beautifully and all we need to do is sit back and watch these strange and beautiful scenes and the incidental music- entirely percussive: bells, drums, scratchers, gongs, which makes its own strange connexions between the scenes. We can look for meanings- humans can't not look for meanings- but they can't be certain.

Suzuki is generally known for his outrageous, eye-popping imagery. I think his films actually contain a lot of depth and are great besides that imagery, but I know it's the visuals that bring him his fame. This film, independently produced after a long hiatus from film-making, is a different kind of Suzuki. A VERY different Suzuki. Zigeunerweisen, named after a musical composition that plays a couple of times during the film and a record of which plays an important part of the plot, is a rather slowly paced art film, a very long one at that, with an almost European feeling. There are a few striking images in its two and a half hours (most notably a woman licking a man's eyeball), but it isn't the phantasmagoria of Suzuki's earlier films, or his later films. The dialogue is often weird and poetic. My favorite line was "You caress me as if sucking my very bones." The film takes place during the Taisho period, which occurred after the Meiji Restoration during the 20s and 30s. It is a period marked by further Westernization and a loss of traditional values (I might be wrong, but I think Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses is set during the same period). The story involves two friends, a professor and a vagabond, and their relationships with their wives, as well as a geisha they once met on a vacation. There isn't too much story, per se. The vagabond marries a woman who looks identical to the geisha, but doesn't stay faithful, or even at home. The film is mostly told from the point of view of the professor (played by Toshiya Fujita, the director of Lady Snowblood). Like I said, the film is very deliberately paced. It was hard to stay interested at times. But the movie moves toward a mysterious and haunting finale. I don't think I get it, but I found the whole film intriguing, at least. Not my favorite Suzuki by a long shot, but maybe I'll understand it better on a subsequent viewing (which probably won't happen for a long while).

I'm on a different track from this movie and so may not have understood it right, since what I understood it to mean didn't agree with the summary in the program. What I got was a metaphysical buddy movie about a sane man who looks somewhat like Edgar Allan Poe and a crazy man who seems to be channeling Toshiro Mifune in "Rashomon." The crazy man treats a succession of women more or less badly, more or less with their complicity, and the sane man more or less permits it, and gets bitten for it in the end. Even death doesn't help him shake off his opposite number. I interpreted this as a Jekyll/Hyde story about the two sides of human nature mysteriously but inescapably linked. Male nature, that is; the women in the film are seen in terms of their relation to men. In the focus on perversity and obsessiveness, the plot reminded me of Poe or Rampo (and the movies from Poe and Rampo), but until the last half hour the atmosphere is not much like a horror movie; more as if Bunuel had written a Kabuki play and Satyajit Ray had started to film it but dropped out and been replaced by Roger Corman; except that the films of all three, to me, are more interesting to watch than this, which I found rather long and monotonous. Much of it seems like a play, most of it is in dialogue, and the more visual parts tend to turn arty and a little silly. The last half hour, in which the plot turns ghost-storyish, I found more entertaining but off the point; an easy out. For me the best thing about the film was the performance of the leading actor, which seemed very good to me and which I would have liked to see applied to a different script. But again, I'm not attuned to its sensibility. Perhaps my life is already so obsessive that I'm jaded; a few more obsessions more or less...ahhh, big deal.