Eros + Massacre

[Dave Monroe]

Said to be the most important work of the Japanese new
wave, this beautiful and provocative 1969 feature by
Yoshishige Yoshida intertwines two narratives for a
dialectical examination of love and politics, the
individual and society. One, set in the early 20th
century, is based on the life of anarchist Sakae
Osugi, who advocated free love as part of his
philosophy of personal liberation; the other, set in
the 60s, concerns a journalist who emulates Osugi with
two lovers, one a voyeur. Yoshida uses a variety of
devices to distance us from the action, including
scenes staged as theater, incidents presented in
several different ways, and characters from the past
popping up in the present. Yet the film is held
together by his sensitive use of black-and-white
'Scope: filling space with water, cherry blossoms, or
urban surfaces, he casts his characters adrift on the
screen just as the editing floats them across time.
The film implicitly rejects what the actual Osugi
called the "conscious destruction of past cultural
residue" in favor of a more nuanced understanding of
human contradiction, and in their quest for freedom
the protagonists are foiled by the social order and
their inherent limitations, becoming alienated from
each other and themselves. In Japanese with subtitles;
the 35-millimeter print being shown, which runs about
170 minutes, may be the only surviving copy of the
film. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, Chicago,
Saturday, May 11, 7:00, and Wednesday, May 15, 6:30,
312-846-2800.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/critic.html#1

Desser, David.  Eros Plus Massacre:
   An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema.
   Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.

http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress/books/0-253-20469-0.shtml

http://www.uiuc.edu/unit/cinema/faculty/desser.html

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