A few days ago, I watched my favorite movie, Yoshishige "Kijū" Yoshida's Eros + Massacre for the sixth time. When it was over, I felt the urge to watch it once more; there's just something really addictive about it. This review is an attempt to try to put into words what it is about E+M that I find so compelling, why it changed the way I look at cinema, why it still feels so original 48 years after its release and why I love it more than any other movie.

First, some historical context. The central figure of the movie, Sakae Ōsugi (1885-1923) was a radical anarchist intellectual known for his beliefs in ethical egoism and free love. He was…

An absolutely stunning piece of cinematic art.

Among the least known names of the Nuberu Bagu, the Japanese take of the international New Wave film movement, Yoshishige Yoshida’s extraordinarily conceived abstract masterpieces can be found. Eros + Massacre is the first installment of his thematically connected, but unofficial “Japanese Radicalism Trilogy”. Although intimidating in its great running time, it is probably his most straightforward and accessible of the group.

By plot formula, Eros + Massacre tells two alternate stories ideologically connected in a parallel fashion: the first one is set in 1920s and is partially based on the real life story of radical Japanese anarchist Sakae Ōsugi (1885 – 1923), who published several periodicals and was assassinated in the Amakasu…

The evolution of radical thought over time is one that descends into normality as we accept such views on a cultural level. Many prior ideas become integrated bit by bit, until what's radical before is no longer.

(this is all looking at the historic trends of the 20th-century generally-speaking, and not one that endorses a teleological premise. trends come and go in both directions, and i'd say that the general one in many countries has been progressively-liberal with some bumps.)

And so Eros + Massacre sits, not merely satisfied with a retelling of a radical figure but interested in exploring the evolution of his thinking. As such it's split, one timeline dedicated to re-interpreting his last days and the other…

"This photograph will be a magnificent monument for the future."

Recited by two teen edokko are the last days of (Japanese anarchist) Sakae Ōsugi and (his late feminist partener) Noe Itō's lives in which they were unjustly massacred by members of the Japanese government in response to their views and writings’ inherent nonalignment with the murderers’ personal beliefs. Kijū Yoshida's avant-garde and enigmatic directing style finds itself parallel with the anarchic subject matter that makes up Eros + Massacre's bloodstream. Yoshida destroys the rules set by films and filmmakers previous in an attempt to render his important period piece timeless; 50 years on, I can confidently say he's succeeded.

Motokichi Hasegawa's beautiful cinematography clashes with Yoshida's blocking gorgeously, constructing images…

The Japanese New Wave emerged around the same time as the Nouvelle Vague in France yet, ignoring some high profile directors such as Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses), Seigun Suzuki (Branded to Kill) and Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman in the Dunes), the films of the movement have never really gained much attention in the West. Yoshishige Yoshida is one such director where his films from the 1960s are incredibly hard to come by outside of Japan resulting in Eros + Massacre being high on my must watch pile.

Like a lot of New Wave cinema, irrespective of which country it comes from, Eros + Massacre is striking, occasionally pretentious and incredibly self-indulgent. The film manages to provoke and…

CAHIERS: And Mizoguchi’s films, don’t you think that they deal directly with politics?

YOSHIDA: Mizoguchi is considered as a “réaliste à la japonaise,” a realist who depicts things such as they are. This is of course a very vague definition, which I will try to make clear by means of an example: if one wants to speak of the past, one cannot help but interpret it from the point of view of the present. The directors of Mizoguchi’s and Kurosawa’s generation were always at risk of falling into the trap of humanism, a trap Mizoguchi knew well. For example, he deals often, in his films, with prostitutes. For us, we considered them to be “alienated” by society, but Mizoguchi preferred…

I cannot overstate how exceedingly gorgeous this film is, as well as being a downright masterclass in blocking and negative space. Sit and listen and watch, every move a picture—as renowned film professor Buddy Love says. Which makes it all the more disappointing in how goddamn dry it is.

The subject matter is interesting in as far as I knew nothing about Sakae Osugi or Noe Ito and they both sound like truly fascinating historical figures. I love the mix of modern 1969 Japanese Blow-Up artsy nudes mingling 1918 traditional Japanese settings and decidedly untraditional leads. But boy is it hard to focus on a four hour long movie about a man pontificating on freedom while oppressing all of the…

Reconstructing and recontextualizing past memories of love, anarchism and state violence—those which radically bloomed in the Taishō period, strucking 1920's Japan just as the very Great Kantō earthquake—through a then-modern lens. The late 1960's were almost equally revolutionary in both thought and spirit as the 1920's, and saw a rising interest in those of the past. With this as a basis, Yoshida—just like in Heroic Purgatory—intertwines and merges past and present to construct a new reality. Both "timelines" interact with each other in some kind of symbiosis, one complementing the other. Then the film becomes about distortions and warped constructs; it suggests that one cannot embrace and expect ideologies to work when one does not fully comprehend them... or at…

I cannot overstate how exceedingly gorgeous this film is, as well as being a downright masterclass in blocking and negative space. Sit and listen and watch, every move a picture—as renowned film professor Buddy Love says. Which makes it all the more disappointing in how goddamn dry it is.

The subject matter is interesting in as far as I knew nothing about Sakae Osugi or Noe Ito and they both sound like truly fascinating historical figures. I love the mix of modern 1969 Japanese Blow-Up artsy nudes mingling 1918 traditional Japanese settings and decidedly untraditional leads. But boy is it hard to focus on a four hour long movie about a man pontificating on freedom while oppressing all of the…

I wish I could pretend I had the disposition for stuff like this, but in all honesty I found this to be highly confusing and relentlessly boring. A ton of the discourse around this seems to highlight the aesthetic qualities and, yeah, there’s some great use of reflective surfaces and interesting lighting, but I found the framing to be nigh on maddening in parts, chopping faces in half to show the scope of a room, or leaving feet of dead space below a figure at the top of the frame. As for subject matter... look, I have very little understanding of post-turn of the century Japan, so I’m sure that multiple layers of meaning have been lost on me. In this…

For some, it’s impossible to have a conversation about the Japanese New Wave movement without mentioning Eros + Massacre. And, despite my rating being on raw display, it does make some amount of sense. It’s as confident and unconventional as it gets and it’s bound to leave a lasting impression on you regardless of how many of its thematic intricacies fly over your head. Its cinematography, in all of its alien, beautiful quality, is the cornerstone of any raving review, so evidently a lot of its appeal comes from that alone. However, although I've hardly scratched the surface of Japanese New Wave in all honestly, I did dabbled with a handful of New Wave films before finally giving this supposed…