Profound Desires of the Gods

Trying to acknowledge the enigma of Japanese Cinema, outside the paddock of Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) and Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story), is a daunting yet arousing act. With Profound Desires of the Gods (1968), Shõhei Imamura redefined the rigorous notions of 'Japaneseness'. Because the Futori family retain the traditional belief that their island of Kurage was created through the sexual union of a brother god and sister goddess, the other more progressive islanders vilify them. When a Tokyo engineer arrives to supervise the creation of a new well, he unearths the mystifying extremism of the Noro (shaman). With Profound Desires, Imamura examines the dogma of Japanese mythology and investigates the disparaging effect of modernity and the ruinous consequence of Coca-Cola. It is a sizzling masterwork filled with Buñuelian surrealism, which deftly captures the alchemy of the natural world.