User Reviews

What I found most interesting in this quite repetitive "nonsensical" film is the little sense it made, ironically. The movie starts with rapid zooms from all angles around the main character... all the while sporadic, but consistent enough to have us notice and follow along the directional pattern it follows. The character in view; shown mostly from heel to head.

But as the minutes go by, and as the overall camera movements creep into the face (or the mind) of the character, the movement becomes more and more unpredictable; spiraling out of control... There is chaos and no longer any order to how the world around the character reacts. The only thing familiar anymore, is the character's face; unreactive to the wills of his chaotic settlement.

This is by no means an "analysis" of any sort, for what really is there to analyze, but more of a thought that I entertained trying to get through 13 minutes of nonsensical, yet mildly amusing repetition.

"Atman" is a Japanese live action short film from 1975 that is over 40 years old already now and was written and directed by Toshio Matsumoto, one of his more, but not most known works and he made this somewhere in the middle of his career time-wise. The man died last year (2017), but what he left us with this little film is okay at times. It is interesting to look at occasionally and somewhat impressive visually, even given the complete absence of a story and plot altogether. We see a man sitting outside and he wears a traditional Japanese masks. The rest is visual effects and sound effects basically turning this into something else. I think I preferred the former and with better audio I may have given this an even higher rating perhaps. Very experimental this one is and the combination of futuristic sound and traditional, almost mythological, outfits is not always working that well. I like Japanese films, also non-animated, but this one here did not do too much for me I must admit. It's definitely not a failure, but also a bit below the level where I would recommend seeing it. The fact that you won't need subtitles because there is no spoken dialogue makes this one maybe a bit easier to appreciate for non-Japanese audiences, for whom the subject and approach may pose a challenge already anyway. My suggestion is to watch something else instead.