I watched this film after reading some interesting reviews about a promising art-house director, stunning landscapes and grit and reality, as harsh as it is seen through the ever widening lens.

Hmm.

All of the above is perfectly fitting. The camera work is sheer brilliance.

The audio on this film is what grabs you from the very start: The sound is used to full effect, from the bird calls in the trees; the nearby water; the drunken Mexican workers: especially watch out for the singing scene, all made so very powerful thorough the medium of sound. In lots of scenes, the audio is carrying the visuals and not the other way around.

I have to say the story is most unusual and as you may already have read, can be quite uncomfortable at times. At one point I actually thought 'I don't need to be watching something like this on my screen..why am I?', as it just got a bit weird for me. I stuck with it though and, there is a message in there. I won't spoil any of the movie for you by going much deeper into it but as one commenter already said, it is about Man and his loneliness. His desperation and also his bad decisions and inability to change: his world and himself.

I can see why there are so many negative remarks here for this.

At first, I came here with the intention of doing something similar but when I started writing about this movie I just watched, I find myself analysing it and it sinks in that there really is a work of art and it shouldn't be condemned, it should be talked about and watched by many!

There are, for sure, some bad areas where they might have done better to edit certain overly long scenes out or perhaps moved the story around a bit but, this movie isn't about the story, not really. It is about the characters, more than that: it is about Character itself. Even the characters are just a vehicle for the main theme.

I urge you to watch this with an open mind.

Different. Unsettling. Beautiful. Philosophical. Religious, in an unorthodox sense. Children. Very old people. Comparison of animals having sex and humans having sex. Nature. Rain, as used by Tarkovsky in a spiritual sense. Great choice of music (Shostakovich, Bach, Arvo Part). A great debut of two gifted individuals: the director Carlos Reygadas and his Argentine cinematographer Diego Martinez Vignatti. This film is way superior to their next and only other work together: "Battle in Heaven." Reygadas is the best Mexican filmmaker alive, superior to his Oscar-winning contemporaries by a league.

"Japon", Carlos Reygadas' startling directorial debut is a mysterious film that will divide audiences. Mr. Reygadas, working with the talented cinematographer, Diego Martinez Vignatti, takes us along for a ride to an unknown part of Mexico where he sets this complex tale about a man at a crossroad of his life. Shot entirely on location in the state of Hidalgo, "Japon" gives us a bird's eye view of life in those forgotten areas where time seems to stand still forever.

The man at the center of the story wants to commits suicide. For that, he has chosen going back to this desolate part of the country where he wants to do himself in. He suddenly discovers there is a life out there he didn't even know existed. When he befriends the older woman, Ascen, he mistakenly calls her Asuncion, and she corrects him it is Ascencion, an odd name for anyone to have.

The title is probably related to the hari-kiri he intends to commit, and it's the only reference between the title and what's going on in the mind of the would be suicide. When he asks Ascen if she would have sex with him, we are shocked. Isn't she, after all, much too old to be having sex? Yet, when she complies, what we see is something like a redemption, and Ascen is the object where the man suddenly becomes human again knowing the sacrifice she has made in order to redeem him.

Many people have suggested an affinity of Mr. Reygadas with the Iranian filmmaker Kiarostami. Both men have dealt with this same theme, but where Kiarostami becomes repetitive in what he gives the viewer, Mr. Reygadas takes a different approach that rewards us as viewers. Mr. Reygadas also has to be congratulated by the use of non-actors that give intense performances that no other trained professionals would ever dreamed of giving.

Carlos Reygadas will no doubt infuriate some of his audiences, but at the same time he shows he has talent and imagination.