Synopsis
A high school science teacher is the butt of all his students' jokes, until their bus is hijacked on a school trip. But something more sinister lurks beneath the surface: he's building an atomic bomb in his apartment.
1979 ‘太陽を盗んだ男’ Directed by Kazuhiko Hasegawa
A high school science teacher is the butt of all his students' jokes, until their bus is hijacked on a school trip. But something more sinister lurks beneath the surface: he's building an atomic bomb in his apartment.
Kenji Sawada Bunta Sugawara Kimiko Ikegami Kazuo Kitamura Shigeru Kōyama Kei Satō Yūnosuke Itō Eimei Esumi Hiroshi Gojo Yudai Ishiyama Rika Kayama Morio Kazama Hōsei Komatsu Kiyoshi Kurosawa Kōjirō Kusanagi Yutaka Mizutani Toshiyuki Nishida Saburô Shôji Chiaki Takayama Kyôko Togawa Michiyo Yamazoe Yukiko Inoue Tatsuya Hamaguchi Junichi Hosokawa Toshizō Kudō Ken Mizoguchi Midori Mori Satoru Nabe Takayuki Ohira Show All…
Taiyô wo nusunda otoko, Taiyō o nusunda otoko, 盗日者, 太陽を盗んだ男, Человек, укравший солнце, 태양을 훔친 사나이, L'Homme qui a volé le soleil
This movie genuinely felt like contraband... I had to utilize every one of my internet tricks and then some to find a lofi copy of this (and English subs), but id advise anyone else reading this to do the same. One of my new favorites. No spoilers. Wow
This is a story about a school teacher that builds a homemade atom bomb. It is goofy. However when I was watching how the bomb is tinkered together, I slowly started realizing it was actually quite accurate. I learned more from this movie than from How To Blow Up A Pipeline.
At a certain point I felt it was going to much back and forth. At the end, it so over-the-top back and forth, that it is actually very much fun. The finale finally got the Off Screen festival audience responding. Great times.
"I have come here to chew bubble gum and k̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶a̶s̶s̶ build atom bombs, and I'm all outta bubble gum.."
Makoto Kido
A completely deranged, genre-bending post-New Wave epic that is part slapstick nuclear anxiety satire, part hard-boiled 70s cat-and-mouse rivalry cop procedural about a dorky, lonely science teacher (pop-singer-turned-actor Kenji Sawada loosely doing his own goofy version of Travis Bickle—not surprised to see Leonard Schrader was the cowriter here) who in his obsession with the all-consuming power of an atomic bomb, begins to build a one of his own in his apartment in order to cure his isolation and ennui, and which instead amplifies it to extreme/violent degrees and (literally) poisons his mind and body... The actual sequencing of which starts in the realm of daily tedious high school life being suddenly interrupted by these insane hostage situations, Mission Impossible nuclear…
This movie's out to roast everybody: skewering mass media, generational conflict, global arms treaties, and lone-gunmen terrorist narratives. There's plenty to dig into. And it (kinda surprisingly) has a more sophisticated understanding of politics than more explicitly political thrill rides (STRANGELOVE, THEY LIVE, etc).
But that's not what makes this movie Great. I have not seen a movie escalate like THE MAN WHO STOLE THE SUN, my god. I was invested in this as a slow paced kinda technical thriller: watching a lonely weirdo wield too much power and accidentally best a lot of competent people stuck in an incompetent bureaucracy.
And then there's a solid hour of pedal-to-the-floor nonstop action. I'm not sure I took a breath in the second half of this movie. It's unreal.
"why is he doing this" is a bad review to give this film and if you give it that review I recommend feeling bad
I made a really cheesy video with visuals from The Man Who Stole the Sun underscored by the theme from Taxi Driver, I think it really visualizes what I feel while watching this film.
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I have recently finished this film after a long time of being aware of it and I searched for discussions / essays on it but it is surprisingly under-seen. Written by Leonard Schrader, the younger brother of Paul Schrader and coming out only three years after his Taxi Driver, there are many themes and visuals in this film that are directly inspired by Taxi Driver. The Man Who Stole the Sun also shares themes with Dr. Strangelove on the treatment of nuclear weapons. It is very satirical at points but remains a dark…
A nation under the influence. The appeal of the bomb. The Rolling Stones. Very funny and very haunting in equal measures and always finding new exciting ways to expand its ideas and situations. The kind of film that includes a long near dialogue free section about the lead building a homemade atomic bomb that he would later treat like a pet and even cuddle on his sleep. It brings Japanese New Wave trademark nihilism to punk absurd heights, a fine alternative title would be “let’s all rot from radiation poison together”.