Review of the Dvd released by Tartan Video
This is a well packaged film with all the right kind of reviews and accolades on the box to make a foreign or art film lover (and those are among my loves) at least rent it. Unfortunately the actual film suffers from many things that make people hate foreign and art films.
I was going to watch this of course to review it, but had my brother and a good friend of mine who like this kind of film insist on watching it with me. About 50 minutes in they were begging me to turn it off. Why?
Well for starters you can see by the running time above. This is a long movie but it feels much longer. It's a small story, really about two people and they are either in small grimy interiors or large barren exteriors. A review on the box compares it to a Tarkovsky movie. Japon actually starts with a long but interesting drive from the city out into the wasteland and the sequence is much like the long driving sequences at the beginning fo Tarkovsky's version of SOLARIS. But this film is paced for people who think that Tarkovsky or Werner Herzog's movies move too fast for them. It feels here, unlike with those two sometimes great filmmakers, that the pace is a result of a first time director not knowing what to really take time with and so then he just takes too much time with everything.
The story is about a semi hobbled older man who goes out to the middle of nowhere to kill himself. He finds only a bleak lonely wilderness wasteland environment. He stays at an old woman's shack for a while and that's all that happens until about 50 minutes in. He has a inexplicable dream of a bikini clad beauty kissing the old woman a moment put on the back of the DVD box I suppose to try to ensnare some of the gay art house audience.
The old woman tells him a story about a relative of her's who was in prison and used to masturbate to a picture of the virgin Mary. That night the man is about to shoot himself and instead decides to graphically masturbate. I guess the story has awakened in him what the DVD box promises the film offers "raw sexuality."
This is a way distributors sell foreign films to American audiences. You'll see real sexy stuff done by those uninhibited foreigners we all wish we were, or at least enjoy seeing being decadent. Well you do get to watch two horses have pretty graphic real sex from start to finish. Then you also have one of the longest most awkward joyless-feel-bad-for-the-actors sex scenes in film history. Neither of the leads are the type of people you want to see naked. They don't have any chemistry together, though the stilted slo-motion paced dialogue never allows them to either. In fact Magdalena Flores' whole performance feels like what it is, a confused non actor dealing with a script that is probably unplayable and then being pushed around in this really distasteful sex scene. In fact her filmography shows that her previous experience in films before this was as a continuity person! The male lead Alejandro Ferretis also feels like a non actor though he does have presence and a strong profile. He has since been murdered so this is his sole film credit.
Oh you do get to see several real dead, or really killed on or almost on camera and or rotting animals. Pretty sexy stuff watching that decapitated birds head blink and gasp for air for an eternity. This is momentarily fascinating but in a real pornography of violence way. The film just all starts to seem grimy and pointless a short ways in and then you just think it will never end at all.
Look many or most American films especially right now have almost no connection to real life. But this film doesn't either. This isn't the way people act or speak in real life and this story doesn't have enough going on any level to justify the running time or the graphically ugly moments. It seems like a first time director out to shock the audience for fear of rejection of his ideas. The film only ends up being tedious and unpleasant, not stirringly, shocking or deep.
Widescreen 2:35 photography is sort of washed out looking and the hand held walking around shots at the beginning are pretty hard to watch without getting motion sickness even on the smaller home screen. There isn't much music but it is really effective when it does play as is the occasional expressive use of sound. I was only watching a screener so I did not have the interview with the director that is on the actual release version. Honestly I sort of wonder what he was thinking at times, perhaps that would give some answers, but would not make it a better film.
There may be promise of better things to come in moments of Japon for first time director Carlos Reygadas but the rewards he's gotten for this film aren't deserved yet. I freely admit I ended up fast forwarding to reach the end of it. I think most people will probably just hit stop.
This is a well packaged film with all the right kind of reviews and accolades on the box to make a foreign or art film lover (and those are among my loves) at least rent it. Unfortunately the actual film suffers from many things that make people hate foreign and art films.
I was going to watch this of course to review it, but had my brother and a good friend of mine who like this kind of film insist on watching it with me. About 50 minutes in they were begging me to turn it off. Why?
Well for starters you can see by the running time above. This is a long movie but it feels much longer. It's a small story, really about two people and they are either in small grimy interiors or large barren exteriors. A review on the box compares it to a Tarkovsky movie. Japon actually starts with a long but interesting drive from the city out into the wasteland and the sequence is much like the long driving sequences at the beginning fo Tarkovsky's version of SOLARIS. But this film is paced for people who think that Tarkovsky or Werner Herzog's movies move too fast for them. It feels here, unlike with those two sometimes great filmmakers, that the pace is a result of a first time director not knowing what to really take time with and so then he just takes too much time with everything.
The story is about a semi hobbled older man who goes out to the middle of nowhere to kill himself. He finds only a bleak lonely wilderness wasteland environment. He stays at an old woman's shack for a while and that's all that happens until about 50 minutes in. He has a inexplicable dream of a bikini clad beauty kissing the old woman a moment put on the back of the DVD box I suppose to try to ensnare some of the gay art house audience.
The old woman tells him a story about a relative of her's who was in prison and used to masturbate to a picture of the virgin Mary. That night the man is about to shoot himself and instead decides to graphically masturbate. I guess the story has awakened in him what the DVD box promises the film offers "raw sexuality."
This is a way distributors sell foreign films to American audiences. You'll see real sexy stuff done by those uninhibited foreigners we all wish we were, or at least enjoy seeing being decadent. Well you do get to watch two horses have pretty graphic real sex from start to finish. Then you also have one of the longest most awkward joyless-feel-bad-for-the-actors sex scenes in film history. Neither of the leads are the type of people you want to see naked. They don't have any chemistry together, though the stilted slo-motion paced dialogue never allows them to either. In fact Magdalena Flores' whole performance feels like what it is, a confused non actor dealing with a script that is probably unplayable and then being pushed around in this really distasteful sex scene. In fact her filmography shows that her previous experience in films before this was as a continuity person! The male lead Alejandro Ferretis also feels like a non actor though he does have presence and a strong profile. He has since been murdered so this is his sole film credit.
Oh you do get to see several real dead, or really killed on or almost on camera and or rotting animals. Pretty sexy stuff watching that decapitated birds head blink and gasp for air for an eternity. This is momentarily fascinating but in a real pornography of violence way. The film just all starts to seem grimy and pointless a short ways in and then you just think it will never end at all.
Look many or most American films especially right now have almost no connection to real life. But this film doesn't either. This isn't the way people act or speak in real life and this story doesn't have enough going on any level to justify the running time or the graphically ugly moments. It seems like a first time director out to shock the audience for fear of rejection of his ideas. The film only ends up being tedious and unpleasant, not stirringly, shocking or deep.
Widescreen 2:35 photography is sort of washed out looking and the hand held walking around shots at the beginning are pretty hard to watch without getting motion sickness even on the smaller home screen. There isn't much music but it is really effective when it does play as is the occasional expressive use of sound. I was only watching a screener so I did not have the interview with the director that is on the actual release version. Honestly I sort of wonder what he was thinking at times, perhaps that would give some answers, but would not make it a better film.
There may be promise of better things to come in moments of Japon for first time director Carlos Reygadas but the rewards he's gotten for this film aren't deserved yet. I freely admit I ended up fast forwarding to reach the end of it. I think most people will probably just hit stop.