If you drive a car, you may have experienced a common phenomenon. Spend hours driving at super-highway speed, then, when you exit onto a road where the speed limit is 45 MPH, you will feel as though you are going very, very slowly. This phenomenon has a parallel in the world of movie viewing. With the pervasive acceleration of film pacing that is evident in today's action/thriller films, audiences have become conditioned to expect and even demand fast moving story-telling on their cineplex screens. In 1959, when the curtains closed and the lights came up for the intermission in William Wyler's "Ben Hur", people in the theaters expressed surprise that so much time had elapsed. In its day, that film (particularly the first half) seemed to fly by so quickly that people could scarcely believe its actual running time was as great as it was. Nowadays, we have grown so accustomed to faster-moving fare that many find "Ben Hur" to be rather slow.
Consider then the extraordinary production that Kaneto Shindo brought to the screen in 1960. It was a daringly slow-paced film even then! If you were the sort of film-goer who was forever impatient to see the action unfold swiftly (and there were many such people, then as now), this was hardly going to be your kind of movie. "The Island", as it was titled in its original U.S. release, asked the viewer to enter into the grinding, arduous existence of a little family monotonously toiling to eke out a meager existence on a remote and rugged little island. It continually invites deep contemplation of the minute details of this struggle and the environment in which it occurs. If you are attuned to the style and purpose of the director, you will respond deeply to his visual poetry. You will gain an appreciation of the extraordinary lives and labors of the characters in his story. When the film's intense climax arrives, it will have all the more impact on you because of the way that you have been drawn into an atmosphere of numbingly repetitious daily struggles. What happens to this family will come closer to feeling like it is happening to you. I can not imagine any way this might have been accomplished with greater effectiveness.
Having said all of this, I am not deluded into imagining that this is a film for everyone. Impatient viewers who will never be drawn to contemplative film-making which aims primarily to immerse the viewer in the world of its characters, rather than to hurtle the audience along through a cinematic thrill-ride, had best ignore this picture. For the rest of us, I believe it to be a one-of-a-kind treasure.
Consider then the extraordinary production that Kaneto Shindo brought to the screen in 1960. It was a daringly slow-paced film even then! If you were the sort of film-goer who was forever impatient to see the action unfold swiftly (and there were many such people, then as now), this was hardly going to be your kind of movie. "The Island", as it was titled in its original U.S. release, asked the viewer to enter into the grinding, arduous existence of a little family monotonously toiling to eke out a meager existence on a remote and rugged little island. It continually invites deep contemplation of the minute details of this struggle and the environment in which it occurs. If you are attuned to the style and purpose of the director, you will respond deeply to his visual poetry. You will gain an appreciation of the extraordinary lives and labors of the characters in his story. When the film's intense climax arrives, it will have all the more impact on you because of the way that you have been drawn into an atmosphere of numbingly repetitious daily struggles. What happens to this family will come closer to feeling like it is happening to you. I can not imagine any way this might have been accomplished with greater effectiveness.
Having said all of this, I am not deluded into imagining that this is a film for everyone. Impatient viewers who will never be drawn to contemplative film-making which aims primarily to immerse the viewer in the world of its characters, rather than to hurtle the audience along through a cinematic thrill-ride, had best ignore this picture. For the rest of us, I believe it to be a one-of-a-kind treasure.