Audience Member
life in post WWII war Japan
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Complex story about love, lonliness, lust, and death. Fairly competent performances, but would've benefitted from better performances. Interesting, experimental and free camera work. The two women at the end reminded me of Ingmar Bergman's Persona. But this film falls short of that kind of brilliance.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/14/23
Full Review
jack c
I actually DID feel confused a lost a couple of time during the film, but only in the first half. It did jump around a lot, but after a certain point I clicked into Oshima's fast-paced rhythm (and it has about 2,000 cuts so that is a lot even by today's standards), and it has such a fiery sense of what is right and wrong and how the gray areas of the world just take over, and also how a rapist and murder can be understood, if certainly not "liked" at all. It's a dynamic, angry character, simmering and volatile, and when he's on screen you can't take your eyes off him (and it makes for one of the really great openings to any movie, as he enters a house and eyes a woman, a very dangerous-sexy scene). I really got engrossed in this story of suicide, regret, guilt, and what happens when enveloped in society - that it's a murder mystery is so secondary a note, maybe even the last thing on Oshima's mind. In fact if it hadn't been for a scene on a train that is just shot very clumsily and pretentiously, it might be close to being a perfect "art" film, where a director takes some major chances with style and effect to tell his story. As it stands, I was drawn into Violence at Noon through the emotionally harrowing performances and the innovative editing (and even among other "New Wave" filmmakers of the era who used editing to unconventional effect this had an uncanny sense of going back and forth in time - taking on memory as snapshots, but still cohesive for a full story).
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Oh you women, 'he's a rapist and a killer and he raped me in front of my dead lover but I love him and I can change him!!!' That's a bit more extreme than 'he's a good for nothing lazy bum who treats me like crap but I can turn him into a loving, caring, candy buying built dude who loves me for who I am!!!' Just a bit.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Nagisa Oshima takes a page from the New Wave and chops this psychological serial rapist thriller into a jumble of jump cuts, rapid edits, time shifts, camera trickery, and political satire, and it's one of the most ambitious, mesmerizing films of his career.
The late Kei Sato stars as the High Noon Attacker, a farmer who, as flashbacks tell us, has devolved into a rapist and a murderer because of the misguided affections of a local school-teacher and a young, comely maid, both of who know they shouldn't be hiding the man's identity from the police, but that's the nature of psycho-sexual obsession. As the film plunges like a speeding train towards it's disturbing conclusion, Sato and the psychology of a murderer become less prevalent than the budding frustrations and duel psyches of the women, who blend in a "Persona"-esque nightmare.
Oshima keeps us guessing as to why the murderer is as he is, and why these two women are so drawn to him (with both hate, and especially, lust), with a narrative that routinely shifts back and forth in time with little indication or physical association for clues, but it's all part of a fascinating cinematic fabric, confusing and exhilarating.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The story of a serial rapist/killer and the two women in his past trying to protect him. Oshima structures the film by cutting between two different chronologies, one following the investigation and more importantly the communication between the women, and the other flashback, establishing the relationships between the characters and the roots of Eisuke's crimes. It's not really a study of his psychosis, however, but rather an exploration of people bound together by violence, failure, lonelieness and despair. I found the film's cinematic aspects more intriguing than its thematic aspects (which, to be honest, I don't think I've quite deciphered yet). Oshima's compositions can be striking, and the frame is often blown out with glaring sunlight. There's also an unusually large number of cuts, and at points certain shots and pans get looped, flipped, or reversed, a kind of schizophrenic turmoil of camera movement. Although overall the film didn't dig into my soul enough to resonate, it's definitely an interesting piece of work.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/17/23
Full Review
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