Kôshikei (1968) Reviews

• Kafka meets Japan

  dromasca2009-04-17

  This is one of the most complex and troubling films that I have seen lately. I know unfortunately too little about Nagisa Oshima, beyond his being the director of the famous Empire of Senses. Here he gives an amazingly strong film about the fate of one man identified by a one letter name (as in Kafka's Process) facing death by hanging but refusing to die, and losing his memory in the process. The whole bureaucratic system around works to get his memory back in order to make him pay for his crimes. They will re-enact his crimes starting to look crazier and bringing to surface their own demons and prejudices, plunging the hero redeemed innocent by amnesia and themselves in a complex world that mixes ceremony and nightmare. The film is a strong shout of protest against the death penalty, militarism and any repressive system that crashes human dignity.

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• Nagisa lays it on the line

  sharptongue2002-11-15

  Oshima is a director who usually leaves you in no doubt about what he thinks, but he goes all out here. This film is a strong polemic against the death penalty as practiced in Japan. The condemned man fails to die, and those in the death chamber panic and wonder what to do. After about five minutes of narration (by Oshima himself), the characters gear into action, using Oshima's chosen method : black farce. This is a very funny film, and all the more so because it confronts some very edgy stuff and often crosses the line to outrage. Oshima, as he often does, attacks Japan's sacred cows head on. As well as the death penalty, he deals with prejudice against Koreans, rape, politics, respect for authority and much more. The acting is excellent, particularly the Korean who plays the condemned man. His calm poise provides an excellent balance to the mania of the officials around him, as they try to make him remember who he is and what he's done. Strong stuff, warmly recommended.

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• Film as Execution

  tedg2006-11-12

  One of the benefits of writing film comments is that readers will sometimes send me recommendations. If that were the only benefit, and if this were the only recommendation I would get, it would be worth it. By reading the comments, you may think that the main value of this film is a damning polemic on capital punishment plus a perhaps more powerful examination of (Japanese) racism toward Koreans. It is those things and powerfully so. But the manner in while the narrative unfolds deserves experiencing even if Japanese politics of the sixties doesn't interest you. Its construction is worth your effort. It starts as a documentary of a hanging. The man is hanged but apparently survives. He has lost his identity. In order for his re-execution to be legit, they have to reintroduce him to the crime. Though all the acting is done in the execution room by the executioners (including a doctor, lawyer and Christian priest), the viewer enters shifting imaginations and we are taken on a series of conversions. At one end, the beginning, we have the execution witnesses following the re-enactors from scene to scene, the re-enactors, executioners, taking roles in the drama. The scenes become more real until the murder where an executioner gets carried away and kills an innocent woman. Then things shift more radically and all sorts of complex folds appear simultaneously. Some viewers "can see" and others not. The murdered girl comes out of her coffin to become a competitor to write what we see, combination lover, writer, and sister, shifting from Japanese to Korean. You need to ignore the preaching because it gets in the way. Perhaps the second time around pay attention to it — it maps quite well onto America and its blacks, though there's far less brutality, length of history and institutionalized racism in the US case. But as I say, this all has less value than the way the thing is put together. While watching this, you will notice that the steps of narrative shifting are of different types, radically different types — as varied as you get in "Citizen Kane," or "Annie Hall." They slip sideways in unexpected directions. But the shifts occur at roughly the same frequency and seem at about the same distance. This narrative shifting does serve the political agenda, in part because that agenda is simple. Something that seems invisible in one maturely rationalized perspective, become obvious when the perspective is shifted a bit away from all the storied protections. I think I'm putting this on my list of essential films. Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

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• Dark Satire & Farce Gets Tedious

  larrys32017-02-22

  This 1968 black and white film was made by the Japanese New Wave director Nagisa Oshima. It's a dark satire, often farcical in nature, which takes shots at such issues as the treatment of Koreans in Japan, capital punishment, bureaucracy and its bungling bureaucrats, and censorship, among other subjects. A young Korean man, named R in the movie, has been sentenced to death by hanging by the Japanese courts for rape and murder. However, when he does not die after the attempted execution, it will set off a whole series of wild and farcical events, as the attending officials try and get the amnesiac R to remember who he is and admit to his guilt so they can attempt to execute him again, Overall, lots of effective satirical barbs thrown by Oshima, but the film just got too drawn out, even tedious, as it progressed and became too dramatically overwrought as well.

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• Unsubtle but effective black comedy about social issues

  timmy_5012009-09-20

  The film begins with a documentary style look at a Japanese execution chamber. An unseen narrator explains that the vast majority of people still support the death penalty before the image shifts across a prison to the death camber itself. This chamber looks old fashioned, quaint even, both from the interior and exterior. As the building seems so archaic it's almost hard to imagine that people are actually brought there to die. One doesn't have to imagine, however, since the execution ritual is quickly and efficiently carried out as soon as the viewer is acquainted with the setting. Everything goes smoothly in this case except for one thing: the guilty man is certainly hanged but he continues to live. After a brief recuperation, R, the condemned man, awakens with a strong case of amnesia. The confused officials quickly reveal themselves as fools without the ability to react critically. They are determined to execute this man again but they won't feel right about it until he remembers who he is and why this is happening to him. The rest of the film consists of various people helping R regain the memories of who he is and how he got into this situation. The actions of the various people are often comically absurd as they attempt reenactments of various parts of R's life including his childhood in a slum reserved for "inferior" Koreans and the murders he has been convicted of. It's often a funny film but the subject matter is too serious for it to be seen as anything but the blackest of comedies. This is very much a social issues film for ardent leftist director Nagisa Oshima and several issues are dealt with including capital punishment (of course), nationalism, racism, violence against women, and the postwar lives of war criminals. There is never any doubt which side Oshima is on for any of these issues: the film is unsubtle if not downright didactic. Still, Oshima's prodigious talent as a film-maker greatly increase the effectiveness of this film and many of these issues are still quite relevant all over the world today. This film is not quite as masterful as 1969's less obvious Boy but it's still a worthy of the attention of people interested in Japanese culture and/or Nagisa Oshima.

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