Change Your Image
gbrandt
Reviews
Chôjin densetsu Urotsukidôji (1989)
underestimated and of incredible freedom
(***might contain spoilers***) around 1997 i had the chance to watch this movie in a cinema as a feature in a festival. this was an unforgettable experience although i had seen it before on underground hacker meetings in the early nineties. i am still fascinated that it is possible to produce feature-size movies of this explicitness in Japan. if you compare it to the harmless Titan A.E., the "first" (there are very few exceptions, eg. Heavy Metal) "adult" (that's why they sell Titan-toys i guess) animation movie of the US you can see how far behind they are in this section. this film is the biggest, most powerful film i know. it features the demolition of buildings and whole cities with huge penises. sex is always rape and ends in gore. the hero is an adolescent antihero, sexually unexperienced and scared of girls. i think to understand the film one should know more about Japan and the people who made it, unfortunately i don't. but if you look at the film from the perspective of the aforementioned antihero it seems to me very clear what it is about: the liberation from sexual needs. and i think more freedom than in this movie can hardly be reached. every imagination however perverse is immediately put to reality. i see the movie as a scream in a world of sexual frustration, and as a display of the dream of how to deal with such a world. at the same time i can understand, that people who don't share the same feelings, who are less adolescent, more "grown-up" will have problems to accept this movie. Urotsukidoji is a large film dealing with the core of man in the only appropriate manner. it is very underestimated and overlooked. the original comic (1986) by the genius Toshio Maeda is now being republished in the US, so try to get it. the pictures are drawn almost photorealistic, and as so often the book is a necessary (well, if you want to deal with it it seriously) complement to the film.
Die Stille nach dem Schuss (2000)
historical details well considered
this film is about a fact discovered after the changes of 1989, namely that the remaining unfound RAF terrorists have been hidden in the DDR.
Schlöndorff has considered many details very well. although he never tells the "true" story i could tell most of the time which historic fact he had in mind, and i remembered many things i myself had read in the newspapers at the time these events had been in the news. the only thing i am not sure about is wether the west actually did know all the time. sounds a bit like conspiracy. maybe "we" did and wanted to avoid "trouble", as so often. the ending is very stupid and easy, like often in Schlöndorff-films, i regret to say. so i was a bit angry when i walked out the cinema. but still i think every German interested in his country's history (and i believe it is the duty of Germans to interested in it!) should watch this movie in order to also consider this last "east"-chapter of RAF terrorism. the last "west"-chapter was the dissolution of the AIZ and Bad Hersfeld. my recommended reading is: Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex by Stefan Aust.