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Black RainRating:
Release Date: 18 March, 1998 Retail Price: $29.99 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: |
Black Rain Reviews
A dedicated journey by an aunt and uncle
If you are a frequent viewer of foreign film, you may know that periodically, you need to view a film twice, especially with oriental films. In this case... Japanese, old film, similar looking people, complex names, lack of clear close-ups, etc.
So, if you don't care to see it twice, pay attention, as it is difficult to simultaneously read subtitles, figure who is who by face, name or situation.
The bomb that hit Hiroshima in 1945 is vividly portrayed with horrifying images. However, one scene shows a young boy with his face practically burned off and he begs that his brother recognize him. This was farfetched as the boy seemed to be without any pain or discomfort. But other images seemed more realistic. Over the length of the film, we see the deteriorating health of those hit by the bomb and the black rain, the radiation fallout.
But with few complexities in storytelling, this plot is rather simple. An aunt, and uncle and senile grandmother live with a niece and the goal is to get her married. The problem lies with a rumor that plagues the niece. Three potential suitors have reneged on the proposal because she is unhealthy because of the bomb. The struggle is to prove that it was not because of a direct hit from the bomb, it was just radiation fallout as the three were merely crossing through the devastated city in search of relatives.
Based on a true story, this is an emotional film that records the journey to simply marry off a young woman who is rumored with an unhealthy certificate for marriage.
Yes, the bombing was an atrocious act and I don't want to go there, so focus on the journey by an aunt and uncle in their quest to get their niece married before they die, because they too, were victims of the radiation fallout. .....MzRizz
Singing about the dark times
Ever since Theodor Adorno first raised questions about the possibility of making poetry after Auschwitz, art has been haunted by the possibility of its own failure, the possibility that one of its most remarkable features--its ability to shock the viewer into new ways of seeing--might be eclipsed by the great spectacles of mass death the extermination camps made possible. How could there be poetry after Auschwitz? To this question another could be added: Can there be cinema after Hiroshima? Or is all cinema doomed to failure given the incursions the mushroom cloud has made on our consciousness?
Perhaps one answer to that question can be found in Bertolt Brecht's poem "Motto" which, while avoiding the question of whether art can, in the face of the technology of mass death, preserve its special ability to re-focus our attention, affirms simply the persistence of poetic testimony:
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing
About the dark times.
Like Brecht, Shohei Imamura's "Black Rain" refuses to remain silent in the face of the 20th century's great horrors, choosing instead the far riskier route of giving voice to them and of painstakingly documenting the devastating effects radiation has on a community while never once imagining that this message, if received, will be heard.
The film haunts the viewer much in the way that the world continues to be haunted by the events of August 6 and 9, 1945. Images linger in the mind long after the film ends, some horrific others hauntingly sad: a reunion of two brothers--one who has been burned so badly beyond recognition that the other at first draws back from touching him and asks for his name, the expedition to see the carp, and Yuichi surrounding Yasuko's house with the Jizo statues. Suffice to say that this is a film that must be seen.
The sad reality, however, is that this film is no longer available to the public, except in the form of very expensive used editions of the DVD. Because I feel strongly that this film deserves to be seen (especially given our highly fraught present) I have begun a petition that I am sending to a number of important international directors to restore and re-release the film. My hope is that in doing so the film will soon be available to the public again.
Eric Johnson-DeBaufre
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