Quote:
With its focus on the emotional aftermath of a religious cult’s terrorist attack on Tokyo, “Distance” was always going to invite comparisons with the Aum cult’s nerve gas attack on the city’s subway system in 1995.

Yet, rather than simply recreating that tragedy, “Distance” takes us into a far more complex, and decidedly more unsettling, drama about loss and bereavement.Three years after the fictional Ark of Truth group has contaminated Tokyo’s water supply with a genetically-engineered virus, leaving 128 people dead and 8,000 injured, four of the dead cult members’ relatives meet to pay their respects to their loved ones at the lake where their ashes were scattered.

Forced to spend the night in the forest after their car is stolen, the foursome end up staying with the group’s only surviving member in their old headquarters.Despite providing plenty of flashbacks to the events that led up to the fatal day, writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda never explains their motivation. Proving more interested in the reactions of the cult members’ relatives, this muted drama builds into a brooding study of their feelings of loss, responsibility, and incomprehension.

By using lots of handheld camerawork and deliberately eschewing the use of any musical score, “Distance” creates the kind of unsettling atmosphere that could have come straight out of a horror film… except there’s no monster, nothing supernatural, and no real demons.

It’s creepy, inspired film-making, demonstrating that Japanese cinema’s current interest in the horrific stretches far beyond shockfests like “Ring”, “Battle Royale”, and “Audition”.

Much like 2001’s “Eureka”, this impressionistic film knows that real horror is to be found in recognizing the gulf of incomprehension that lies between one’s self and others.

3.67GB | 2 h 12 min | 996×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/6BD85B032C2DB62/Hirokazu_Koreeda_-_%282001%29_Distance.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/A35639920F20015/Hirokazu_Koreeda_-_%282001%29_Distance.part2.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/B4CFE9E0D8A0DD0/Hirokazu_Koreeda_-_%282001%29_Distance.part3.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/5672B645562DCE5/Hirokazu_Koreeda_-_%282001%29_Distance.part4.rar

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Hirokazu Koreeda – Distance (2001) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
A massacre initiated by the followers of an apocalyptic religious sect, the Ark of Truth, leaves more than a hundred people dead – including the self-appointed executioners, slain by fellow cult members.

Three years pass. On the anniversary of the slaughter, four friends who lost loved ones in the tragedy seek solace by journeying to the secluded lake where it all began. They encounter a man who was with the executioners until the very moment the killing began, and their pilgrimage takes a strange, unexpected turn.

1.94GB | 2h 12mn | 853×480 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/54D27C1FB269388/Distance_%282001%29_–_Hirokazu_Koreeda.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/35EC1B59DE098FA/Distance_%282001%29_–_Hirokazu_Koreeda.part2.rar

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English (idx, sub, srt)

The post Hirokazu Koreeda – Distance (2001) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Director Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s young protegee debut, an obscurely low key drug drama.

Quote:

Iseya enrolled on a film course at New York University in 1998, which he funded through modelling work, and has gone on to direct this feature under the patronage of his early mentor, Kore-Eda, here acting for the first time in the role of producer.

Kakuto, a composite word made-up from the kanji meaning “Awakening Person” by the director to describe the shock sensations that inspire a young adult’s initiation into maturity is an unashamed piece of fun, charting the course of its clutch of clueless slackers through the three days leading up to and including the 21st birthday of Iseya’s university student Ryo. Nerdish Naoshi (Hassei), a childhood friend of Ryo’s has just got his girlfriend pregnant. A one-off TV appearance when he was five has stirred unrealistic expectations of an acting career in him, but it’s a far cry from the reality, toiling in his father’s garage. Meanwhile Makoto (Ito), a university buddy, has just been dumped without warning by his girlfriend, Kyoko.

The three are in definite need of something to lift their spirits, and so set off to meet an acquaintance of Ryo’s, Suzuki (Kameishi, who co-scripted with Iseya) connected with the yakuza to score some dope for the evening. Somewhere along the line, Ryo gets spiked with LSD and the drugs, stashed away in an empty Marlboro packet, are misplaced. Meanwhile, an ineffectual cop, first seen being given a dressing down by the prepubescent teenager he attempts to avert from buying cigarettes from a vending machine is keeping a beady eye on the apartment of Tezuka, the scrawny fresh-out-jail yakuza they just scored from (Terajima, one of the most charismatic actors working in Japan today, trotting out the usual comedic gangster shtick he’s perfected in dozens of roles for the likes of Kitano or Sabu). If this wasn’t enough, a confused young tearaway associate of theirs, the kleptomaniac Shinji’s just-for-kicks “eat and run” shenanigans in the local cafés have escalated into joy-riding in unlocked cars, and a local duo of drug-dealers are the first to fall prey.

“What does it mean to be born in Japan?”, is the question posed by director Yusuke Iseya in the catalogue for Tokyo FILMeX 2002, where the film received its World Premiere. “In few countries do the citizenry so lack a national confidence as in Japan.” Yes, Japan has had a hard run of it over the past ten years, and Iseya is most certainly not the first to muse over this lack of identity, connection and purpose – Shinji Aoyama, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hirokazu Kore-Eda to name but three have all held up their films up as mirrors in order to explore this void. Meditative, metaphorical, or metaphysical, whatever the approach, there’s only so many films to be made about feckless, alienated youths groping for the abstract before audiences begin to tire, and judging by the state of the industry at the moment, it would appear that they already have a long time ago.

Kakuto clearly has no such philosophical axe to grind, and works precisely because Iseya comes from that generation of financially well off, aimless young suburbanites out for nothing but a good time, and thus his characters come across not just ciphers, but fully rounded characters. His approach is not an attempt at observation or insight, but immersion in the unhampered innocent hedonism of this amoralistic world, and as such it is more likely to nudge knowing smiles from those who have found themselves in such situations as being stripped to their underpants lying face down on the street outside their local convenience store than the chin-stroking cappuccino crowd. Kore-Eda has stated that it was the lack of didacticism in the script that attracted him to the project, fitting in with his stated mission for his production work to put into motion the kind of film that he himself couldn’t make – following Kakuto is the family drama Wild Berries / Hebi Ichigo, the first offering of 28 year-old Miwa Nishikawa.

Charting a now familiar terrain that has run from Trainspotting to the likes of Justin Kerrigan’s Human Traffic and Doug Liman’s Go, Kakuto perhaps most resembles this last film in terms of its feel and form, particularly its use of visual trickery – fast-forward/rewind time manipulation and the creeping spirals that swirl over the car interior as Ryo first succumbs to the effects of the acid – to evoke memories of those sketchy nights which from a simple intention to get off your tits rapidly spirals out of control.

I’m not going to make any overstated claims that this is a perfect film. Whilst it kicks in straightaway, builds up nicely to a peak and keeps you there for an admirable duration of time, the comedown is perhaps a little too long, and its appeal is most definitely reserved for the lads – the female characters barely get a look in here. However, ultimately Kakuto’s fresh-faced exuberance, slick repartee and street-savvy cool are hard to resist, and quite frankly, for a first film effort from so young a director, this knocks the socks of some of the recent efforts of its more grizzled competitors. I think we can safely say that Kore-Eda’s pet project definitely delivers, and will undoubtedly find an audience with the type of people it portrays whichever countries it plays in.

Kakuto.2003.DVDRip.x264.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 47mn
Size:	1.51 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	680x460 ~> 817x460
Aspect ratio:	16:9
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	1 553 kb/s
Audio
Japanese 2.0ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/6B293CB3993EDE7/Kakuto.2003.DVDRip.x264.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Yusuke Iseya – Kakuto (2003) first appeared on Cinema of the World.