ATG

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Heroic Purgatory (1970)
[Kiju Yoshida]




This is a gnomic, mysterious film by Japanese director Yoshishige Yoshida. Told through flashbacks, flashforwards and fantasy sequences, the film examines the life, fantasies and sexual hang-ups of a leftist professor who may or may not be a communist.

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Evil Spirits of Japan (1970)
[Kazuo Kuroki]

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Mandala (1971)
[Akio Jissoji]



Working with the noted script writer Ishido Toshiro (1932-), who wrote the scripts for a number of famous films, including Oshima's The Sun's Burial (1960), Night and Fog in Japan (1960) and Yoshida's A Story Written in Water (a.k.a. Forbidden Love, 1965), Jissoji created a complex portrayal of a utopian cult attempting the union of sexuality and an agrarian way-of-life. Two pairs of alienated unmarried college students from Kyoto visit an isolated hotel on a beach near Tsuruga where they become enmeshed in the devious schemes of the charismatic cult leader who eventually leads his surviving disciples on a fatal ocean voyage. The cult advocates a violent rejection of social and sexual norms in order to return to a more primitive and emotionally real life focused on the attainment of an ecstatic state of near-death eroticism. These attitudes are mixed into a syncretic religion containing aspects of Shinto ritual, shamanism, and Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism. To effectively create a brooding atmosphere that Ishido describes as "the use of unreality to depict reality," Jissoji makes use of dramatic camera angles, the still photography of Sawatari Hajime (1940-), classical organ music, locales in Kyoto Zen temples and rural areas, and group scenes that include student members of a theatrical troupe from Ritsumeikan Daigaku. An analysis of Jissoji's film and Ishido's script allows a critique of the fusion of death and sexuality found in the nationalist romanticism that emerged in the Japanese counter-culture movement as portrayed in sixties and seventies film.

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