Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

chaos-rampant THE PORNOGRAPHERS is a paradox unto itself. You try and take the plot in, something about a group of underground porn filmmakers trying to make a buck and support crazy family members, pay off yakuza extortionists, cater to the specific requirements of a kinky clientele, and you discover that it's not really getting anywhere. The same points are repeated again and again - men are sleazeballs, women are greedy, teenagers are selfish and unstable. A dysfunctional society in all its demented glory revelling in the most base human instincts. The story feels sprawling and disjointed, too many characters vie for attention each with his particular brand of peculiarities, the eliptical storytelling taking us from one place to the next in a syncopated manner that makes every scene a bit of a struggle for orientation.And then out of nowhere Imamura pulls an amazing shot, an unexpected moment of technical bravado, the movie suddenly becomes creepy and absurd and darkly hilarious, and you can feel sparks flying. Despite what the title might suggest, the focus here is not on the underground porn rings of the 60's. It certainly has nothing on BOOGIE NIGHTS in terms of sleaze or affinity for that kind of culture. Pornography here is used as just another facet of a recurring motif: voyeurism. Indeed, Imamura's camera peers at the characters through half-closed curtains, door openings, windows. Like the pornographers viewing the footage they shot on their 8mm Bolex camera, we're called to take an intimate look at the characters' lives through a keyhole.Not so much about actual pornography then, but the domestic trials and tribulations of Mr. Ogata, leader of this bunch of guerilla hedonists. The halfcrazy widowed mother he has an affair with tries to pimp her 15 year old daughter to him. The older son steals his money and runs off. He's in and out of prison. The widow goes completely crazy. Near the end he has an epiphany - to build a machine girl. No more worries, fast and cheap sex for everyone who wants it. And then we have the whole film within a film idea that makes for a great ending. The thing with the pornographers is that, no matter how confusing or meandering the story can be, it's so ahead of its time in almost every aspect (especially compared to American cinema of the time), not in the flamboyant manner of CITIZEN KANE in '42 but in a way that still feels fresh and modern 30 years later, that you simply can't ignore it. Bold and audacious, it commands attention simply because of the talent involved in the making of it. To go back to the pornography angle, if PT Anderson had to ape Robert Altman's style to make Boogie Nights, Imamura was an original voice.

cwarne_uk Imamura is younger, and less well known, than those Japanese directors who came to international attention in the 1950's. He was for a while a trainee of Ozu's, though there are few stylistic indicators of that in "The Pornographer". This is quite clearly a new-wave film with hints of Godard and Fellini. Freeze frames, fantasy and a habit of framing scenes through windows means that this looks unlike the earlier classic Japanese films. Subu the eponymous pornographer initially believes that he is a public servant, providing for the less salubrious needs of his customers - photos, films and potions. He has a bizarre home life with a widowed hairdresser and her two children. Both the making of pornography and his odd home life provide some moments of rich black comedy. Other elements, such as the interaction with local gangsters, appear less central to the film and don't always fit in easily. This is not the sort of film where acting is of great importance, here it varies from good to acceptable. The main fault of the film is the length. 127 minutes is not necessarily long, it's just that it feels too long here by about 30 minutes (around midway there are some tedious patches). To sum up an interesting film by a director still little known, if it does not reach the heights of Kurosawa, Ozu, Kobayashi or Ichikawa at their peaks, the truth is that no post 1960's Japanese film has. It is certainly better than the three films by Oshima (the only other Japanese new-wave director with any international reputation - possibly more for the "pornograhic" nature of his films than any real quality) I have seen.

MARIO GAUCI Similar to THE INSECT WOMAN in that, apart from its emphasis on sexual perversions (all too clear from the title itself), it features multiple characters whose story (even less clear, and more convoluted, this time around!) unfolds over a number of years - but it's also a more accomplished movie overall, showing Imamura's growth as a film-maker when compared to the generally rough quality of his earlier picture. Once again, the director here equates human beings with insects: in fact, this movie's full title is THE PORNOGRAPHERS: INTRODUCTION TO ANTROPOLOGY! The "film-within-a-film" motif (a couple of the main characters getting together from time to time to watch the amateurish skin-flicks they've shot themselves) accentuates the picture's essential theme of voyeurism, all the while making the audience a knowing accomplice in it; the very last shot, then, suggesting that the film we've just watched has itself been a mere "projection", recalls a unique subplot found in Hiroshi Teshigahara's contemporaneous THE FACE OF ANOTHER (1966; which I've just viewed for the first time myself). Also notable is a hilarious scene involving a retarded girl whose lecherous, incestuous father tries to pass off as a porno actress and an equally amusing subplot in which the main character's wife believes her late first husband to have been reincarnated in a fish, and Imamura occasionally indulges us by showing the unfolding drama from its blurred perspective inside an aquarium!

hedricj Saw this film in a wonderful class on Japanese new wave cinema (thanks, Jyotsna). Along with Imamura's "Ballad of Narayama," some of the finest Japanese work I've seen. This film is brilliant in its portrayal of modern voyeurism and its psychological implications. Beyond that though, it stands out as a film preparing us for things to come in the cinema of the 90's. It took pt Anderson's "magnolia" to finally bring full circle some of the innovative qualities of this truly amazing film. Note the merging of the wonderful score and the main character's consciousness at the end of the film. Shocking, sad, and beautiful.