Quote:
In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver’s wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him.

Quote:
With an arresting mix of eroticism and horror, Oshima plunges the viewer into a nightmarish tale of guilt and retribution in Empire of Passion (Ai no borei). Set in a Japanese village at the end of the nineteenth century, the film details the emotional and physical downfall of a married woman and her younger lover following their decision to murder her husband and dump his body in a well. Empire of Passion was Oshima’s only true kaidan (Japanese ghost story), and the film, a savage, unrelenting experience, earned him the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Empire.Of.Passion.1978.1080p.BluRay.x264.FLAC.1.0-ADE.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 45 min
Size: 	9.05 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1792x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	12.0 Mb/s
BPP: 	0.259
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 1.0ch FLAC @ 265 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/8D026855B2D2DF2/Empire.Of.Passion.1978.1080p.BluRay.x264.FLAC.1.0-ADE.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English, Chinese

The post Nagisa Ôshima – Ai no bôrei AKA Empire of Passion (1978) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Here’s a movie that is even stranger than it was intended to be. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” is about a clash between two cultures (British and Japanese) and two styles of military service (patriotic and pragmatic). That would be enough for any movie, and there are scenes when it is enough, and the movie works pretty well.

But then the movie makes another contrast that doesn’t work so well, a contrast between basic views of theatrical acting styles. British tradition suggests that, everything else being equal, actors should behave as if they were real people in a real situation. The Japanese tend toward a more overwrought acting style, made of screams and grimaces, histrionics and dramatizations.

Each tradition works well enough in a movie where it is the only tradition. But in a movie where British and Japanese are on the screen at the same time and are apparently sharing the same reality, the results look odd, and eventually undermine the film. We wonder, in some small irreverent corner of our minds, whether the soft-spoken British notice that the Japanese rant and rave over everything, including the weather, and whether the Japanese, in turn, find the British catatonic.

The movie is by Nagisa Oshima, the best-known of the younger Japanese directors, whose notorious “In the Realm of the Senses” (1976) began with a love affair between a businessman and a geisha and ended in a bloodbath of castration and suicide. He is clearly fascinated by relationships between authorities and victims and that’s the subject here.

The time is 1942, in a Japanese prison camp on Java, and the story concentrates on two pairs of officers. The British are Celliers (David Bowie), very upper crust, duty-bound, guilt-ridden, and Lawrence (Tom Conti), sensitive, bilingual, trying to translate not only the words but the values of the two races.

The Japanese are Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) of the warrior class, filled with pride and glory, and Hara (Takeshi), a sort of Japanese Falstaff with a streak of sadism. How these two pairs get along together will determine the fate of the British (which is complicated by their nominal leader, a blustering bully played by Jack Thompson). The movie develops the situation in a series of scenes that owe something to “Bridge Over the River Kwai.” Rules are made, forgotten, broken, then strictly enforced. Enemies admit at weak moments that they are all human beings, after all. But then there’s a breach of protocol and a crackdown from the top. The most rigid officers on each side (Celliers and Yonoi) have a sort of admiration for each other, which turns into a contest of wills.

This is interesting material, especially since Oshima plunges a little more deeply into the psychology of his characters than your average prisoner-of-war movie is likely to. There are hints of a homosexual attraction between Celliers and Yonoi, eventually leading to one of the movie’s most awkward moments — a parting in which the British soldier actually seems to be saying that both sides were right in the war and both sides were wrong.

It’s awkward, not because of the subject matter, but because of the contrasting acting styles. Here are two men trying to communicate in a touchy area and they behave as if they’re from different planets. The overstatement in the Japanese acting ruins the scene. It’s strange: Japanese acting styles never bother me in all Japanese movies (especially not when they’re modulated, as in the contemporary films of Kurosawa). It’s only when you have actors who are clearly on different wavelengths that the Japanese histrionics become distracting. What this movie needed was a diplomatic acting coach.

review by Roger Ebert on September 16, 1983

Merry.Christmas.Mr.Lawrence.1983.480p.BluRay.x264.AC3.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	2h 3mn
Size:	2.00 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	854x462
Aspect ratio:	1.85:1
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	1 856 kb/s
Audio
English 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/2BF4CF84029B483/Merry.Christmas.Mr.Lawrence.1983.480p.BluRay.x264.AC3.mkv

Language(s):English, Japanese
Subtitles:English,Chinese

The post Nagisa Ôshima – Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Nagisa Oshima’s documentary details the rise of Chairman Mao during the revolution and shows the Communist Party’s struggle and cultural upheaval. Made in 1969 for NTV station, this TV documentary also questions Mao’s dictator tendency during the cultural revolution.

Mao and the Cultural Revolution (Nagisa Oshima, 1969).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	48mn 59s
Size: 	278 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	640x480 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	29.970 fps
Bit rate: 	700 Kbps
BPP: 	0.076
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#1:  	2.0ch AAC

https://nitro.download/view/9ABF762FD8C79D0/Mao_and_the_Cultural_Revolution_(Nagisa_Oshima,_1969).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/3AE4E64844E871F/Mao_and_the_Cultural_Revolution_(Nagisa_Oshima,_1969)_v2.srt

https://fikper.com/ksPepOba7B/Mao_and_the_Cultural_Revolution_(Nagisa_Oshima,_1969).mkv
https://fikper.com/CyAGOq1ka1/Mao_and_the_Cultural_Revolution_(Nagisa_Oshima,_1969)_v2.srt

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Nagisa Ôshima – Mao and the Cultural Revolution (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Nagisa Oshima’s first feature film, A STREET OF LOVE AND HOPE paints a biting portrait of poverty and class difference through the life of a young boy who sells pigeons on the street. The radical and unflinching politics that would become Oshima’s hallmark are here on display in his earliest work.

1.26GB | 1h 02mn | 1920×1080 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/CA37171C233D147/Street.of.Love.and.Hope.1959.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264.KG.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English Hardcoded

The post Nagisa Ôshima – Ai to kibô no machi AKA A Street of Love and Hope (1959) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The Catch 飼育 (1961) : Based on a prize-winning novella by Kenzaburo Oe -– Oshima removes the homoeroticism of the source but adds his typical touch of incestuous desire –- The Catch is set during the final days of World War II. A black GI is captured in a remote Japanese farming village, and becomes a pawn in a power struggle between various factions. As the villagers squabble over their “catch,” Oshima explores subjects that would become his hallmarks – Japanese hypocrisy, racism, xenophobia, insularity, scapegoating – with detached ferocity.

6.15GB | 1h 45m | 1920×800 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/FB54EE77243AC6C/Shiiku.1961.1080p.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-SbR.mkv

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Nagisa Ôshima – Shiiku AKA The Catch (1961) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

When a thief is caught stealing form a book shop by one of its employees, the two embark on an unusual, erotic adventure.

1.70GB | 1h 36m | 960×720 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/0C16F2572797C1F/Diary_of_a_Shinjuku_Thief_-CG.mkv

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English (hardcoded)

The post Nagisa Oshima – Shinjuku dorobo nikki AKA Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Gohatto stars Beat Takeshi, Asano Tadanobu and a fifteen-year-old Matsuda Ryuhei as the beautiful son of a well-to-do merchant who joins the Shinsen Gumi militia in Kyoto for the “right to kill,” and ends up doing so both by his sword and his good looks. Gohatto explores themes of jealousy, madness and destruction within the context of bushido homoeroticism; not only does this violent love story play out within the bounds of same-sex relationships, but within a single militia.

The plot is focused, unfolding in the span of a quick 100 minutes on a beautiful, moody feudal Kyoto backdrop. Cinematography is effective and even playful at times, with rolling cut scenes reminiscent of Kurosawa. Ryuichi Sakamoto lends a tense, dark, tastefully-done soundtrack that sets the tone perfectly (I actually came to know this film through the soundtrack, being a longtime Sakamoto fan).

The script is well done with time/setting appropriate-language and well-acted by the crew; it’s refreshing to watch a samurai movie in which the actors can convey a sense of their personality and come off as real human players in the story, rather than stiff, stylized time period caricatures.

Homosexual relationships, or dousei ai in Japanese, are the vehicle for this story’s happenings, particularly chosen because of their power within the social context of code-laden samurai society. Beat Takeshi’s Captain Hijikata warns, “A samurai can be undone by the love of men.” As rumours spread within the militia about Sano’s liasons with his multiple suitors amidst ironic, if uncomfortable, jokes and chuckles, grave references are made to previous love affairs that led to the suicides or beheadings of Shinsen Gumi samurai. These love affairs were also homosexual, and Gohatto’s story refrains the theme. As Hijikata cuts a sakura tree in half (sacrilege in Japanese culture? ) at the end of the film, his sword gleaming in the mooonlight, he proclaims, “Sano, you were too beautiful.” The destruction around him ensued because of this young man’s beauty, and his power clearly derives from the fact that he’s a beautiful man. This theme is executed irrespective of the sexual identity of the characters; aside from Sano himself, the rest of the characters who become attracted to him have assumedly been with women before, and likely pursue Sano with no precedent of courting men. The sexuality in this movie is about action and consequences, and the consequences are grave in-so-much as they result from these men’s love for a beautiful boy.

Although director Nagisa Ojima clearly isn’t averse to skirting controversy, which Gohatto garnished much of in addition to countless awards and nominations, Gohatto’s English title is actually a bit misleading; hatto (the preceding go an honorific particle) translates closer to “codes” or “rules.” Although some of the men negate the question of their own predilection toward same-sex sex by explaining that they’re “not of that persuasion,” homosexuality is not taboo in 1860’s samurai Kyoto; indeed they talk and joke of it openly. Early on Tashiro and Sano sit side-by-side as fresh recruits looking up at a banner of the Shinsen Gumi code and lament how strict it is, a harbinger of what’s to come. It is not homosexuality, but rather the frivolous overstepping of the “code” as a result of the passion Sano arouses within the men which leads to destruction.

Gohatto is an unsettling yet riveting film. Just like the heated homosexual encounters at its crux, it is rife with machismo and beauty, dark secrets and ambiguity.

2.26GB | 1h 40m | 988×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/138F22A44AC6A01/Taboo.1999.WEBRIP.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Nagisa Ôshima – Gohatto AKA Taboo (1999) first appeared on Cinema of the World.