KIJU YOSHIDA: LOVE + ANARCHISM REVIEWED
Yoshida gets a major Blu-ray bow with “Love + Anarchism”. This trilogy of films focuses on the exploding Japanese Youth movement that hit the area around the same time that Hippies dominated the American West Coast. But, it’s also a biography of an early 20th century Japanese anarchist. How do these two ideas coincide? Plus, why do the last two movies have to share a disc?
Japanese cinema of the late 1960s takes a lot for Americans that were adapted to the impact of the Penn-Pakula years. Shooting styles were far more playful and bared a closer semblance to the French New Wave. Plus, the Japanese were playing with eroticism and carnal shots with a far more European push. These movies aren’t exploitative, but I wouldn’t call them classy. Again, I ask where do these films approach a cohesive ideal?
By the time I reached Coup D’Etat, I was wondering if I was watching an unfinished series. There are several big ideas that focus on life and how one pursues it. Still, these films keep pushing a weird intangible state that doesn’t quite win over the casual.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Yoshida …or: The Explosion of the Story – a 30-minute documentary on Eros + Massacre with contributions from Yoshida and film critics Mathieu Capel and Jean Douchet
- Introductions to Heroic Purgatory and Coup d’etat by Yoshida
- Newly-filmed discussions of Eros + Massacre, Heroic Purgatory and Coup d’etat by David Desser, author of Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave, recorded exclusively for this release
- Scene-select commentaries by David Desser on all three films
- Heroic Purgatory theatrical trailer
- Coup d’etat theatrical trailer
- Limited edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by maarko phntm
- Illustrated 80-page perfect-bound book featuring new writing on the films by David Desser, Isolde Standish (author of Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s) and Dick Stegewerns
A/V STATS
- 2.35:1, 1.33:1 1080p transfers
- LPCM 1.0 MONO
