This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
‘Everything that is ugly, cruel, stupid…is your fault’
You know the reason I think this film is dividing audiences is that whilst Corbet was looking to create in Toth that sort of complex, imperfect protagonist that we all recognise at this point, we don’t see enough of his inner world. The suffering and turmoil that might have - if not justified his actions - given flesh to them. The most memorable instance is a recurring joke about the character’s, and…
Every Gaspar Noe film is a hate-watch for me. I still can’t countenance what he did to Monica Bellucci in Irreversible, I never actually finished it tbf. This is stylistically similar and equally shallow. The cinematographic concept was interesting but I got a bid bored of it after a while. And that incredible artificial bit of foreshadowing in the first act…. I just find his films so cynical: there’s no hope, no triumph, no redemption. He just revels in darkness and depravity without having anything of remote profundity to say about the human experience. ‘Love’ was pretty good though from what I remember…
The thing that’s kinda cool is that this quaint little life that Hirayama has constructed for himself - one with honest work, and rejuvenating visits to public baths. With all its warmth and familiarity, where he frequents the same establishments, and everyone knows his name - is completely antithetical to the urban condition, which we tend to experience as unfeeling and anonymous, particularly in a bustling metropolis like Tokyo. And you see it all around him, the suggestions of city…
Fairly incisive satire though (expectedly) heavy handed in parts but it was tender and wry in all the ways it wanted to be
