Den-en ni shisu AKA Pastoral: To Die in the Country

Denen Ni Shisu sounds like a pretty interesting film. I hope you guys don't mind in helping with the page, because information on the film is pretty hard to come by!

edited 3rd May '12 5:48:29 AM by TiggersAreGreat

Everything I’ve heard about this film is fascinating, right down to the soundtrack by the exquisite J. A. Caesar (incidentally, also impossible to find). It’s a pity it’s so rare, it apparently got a lot of accolades when it screened at Cannes.

Do a search for it on Youtube. There is an uploaded version there right now, although the subtitles all seem to be in Chinese. I don't know how much longer it will remain up there, though, because media companies have a tendency to eventually claim copyright if a movie is uploaded in its entirety.

If you have a summary of the film, though, you should be able to figure out what's going on to some degree.

Also, incidentally, if you've watched the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena, it makes so much more sense when you know that this was one of Ikuhara (the director's) inspirations. He even uses some of the exact same imagery, like the hand pointing at random things. I've kind of stayed out of the Utena fandom, partly because a lot of fans seem to overanalyse it without knowing there was a surrealist legacy behind it, and that part of the point of surrealism is to use interesting imagery to express very abstract concepts. I'm not trying to put anyone down; it's just that when you look at it through a surrealist lens as opposed to a "normal" anime lens, a lot of things are different. I actually got interested in surrealism partly through Utena and interest in the music of J.A. Caesar.

Also, about the soundtrack, if you do a Youtube search on J・A・シーザー or 田園に死す (just copy and paste it into the search box), you can get quite a few of the musical pieces. And I agree, they are definitely amazing.

Another soundtrack you should definitely look for if you're a fan of his work is Shintokumaru (身毒丸), a rock opera he composed the music for in the 70s, also directed by Shuji Terayama.