Fortunately the Sydney JFF had an excellent print off this masterpiece.

The use of colour is important to the director in aiding dream sequence and as part of the surrealism.

After being bored and not able to finish watching nitram 2021 the day before it was a real pleasure to be engrossed by a sort of Godard of the East.

The playful use of the media to create this film is always engaging and question the viewers relationship to what is on the screen.

Cinema that challenges our perception of itself requires real skill to be effective.

This tale entertains us while also achieving that. A little less demanding than Godard still done with a strong command of the tools available.

Music is a real takeaway. Being used really well and adding so much and yet now a snapshot of its time era

Best seen on the big screen!

It's difficult to describe this rare film by Terayama. I was lucky enough to track down a rare subtitled version of the film. Although the quality was faded, the film still had me glued to the screen. Trippy color filters and noise rock interludes of Sing along angst ridden protest music. The music sounds like punk rock, but the film was made 6 years before the punk movement broke out. The music of the film had to of had some sort of influence on the punk scene. The film has an unconventional narrative style almost like Gummo. Basic story is about a teen in Japan, who plays soccer and deals with his highly dysfunctional family. His grandma is senile, his sister loves her pet rabbit to the point of sexual obsession, and his father gets him a prostitute so he can be more of a man. Out of rage our protagonist runs away and hits the street. But the main story is broken up by random short narratives of various Japanese strangers, punk like sing alongs and psychedelic surreal imagery. The funniest scene has to be when a young girl and teen guy hang up a penis shaped punching bag in a public side walk area. The Directer Terayama was the founder of Japanese Avant-Garde style theater in Japan, Emperor Tomato Ketchup is his more well known film. This is definitely one of the strangest and best Japanese films ever made!!! 10/10

On first look, this movie appeared to have everything I desire, but I was let down. My biggest problem was there were too many distractions from the actual story of the movie which resulted in boredom. The beginning and ending of the film serves as a breaker of the fourth wall which, however interesting, doesn't add one iota to the actual plot. Instead, it seems to serve other political intentions/themes for which I was just not interested in. You can research 1970s Japanese subculture both on the streets and in cinema to understand the connections, but even then, unless you're a film buff with this particular regional interest, it doesn't add to the actual story at hand.

The second plot detractor, was the incorporation of the random scenes. These included things like street dancing, some guys smoking drugs in public, a stutterer reflecting on his speech, and video recordings of personal ads. I'm all for the collage style, but again, I could not find any connection from these to the actual plot or the setting.

The story and the cinematic effects used had so much potential, but I ultimately found myself bored and detached due to all the unnecessary scenes. The director was trying to accomplish more than one mission in this film and the result was that the objectives clashed and eroded each other, mainly the story of our teenage protagonist.