It is difficult to summarise Shohei Imamura's legendary 1967 film, the first picture produced by Japan's countercultural Art Theatre Guild (ATG). Is it a documentary that turns into a fiction? A narrative film from beginning to end? A record of improvisation populated with actors or non-actors (and in what proportion)? Is it the investigation into a true disappearance, or a work merely inspired by actual events? Even at the conclusion of its final movement, A Man Vanishes [Ningen johatsu, or The Unexplained Disappearance of a Human Being] mirrors its subject in deflecting... inquiries into the precise nature of its own being. A middle-class salaryman has gone missing - possibly of his own accord - and a film crew has set out to assemble a record of the man and the events surrounding his disappearance. As the crew meticulously builds a cachet of interviews with the man's family and lovers, their subject and his motivations become progressively more elusive - until the impossibility of the endeavour seems to transform the very film itself. Long unavailable anywhere on home video, Imamura's A Man Vanishes remains a unique and crucial entry in a provocative filmmaker's body of work, daring as it does to ask the big questions: what is reality, and what is a man? [show more]
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 or region free DVD player in order to play. It is difficult to summarise Shohei Imamura's legendary 1967 film, the first picture produced by Japan's countercultural Art Theatre Guild (ATG). Is it a documentary that turns into a fiction? A narrative film from beginning to end? A record of improvisation populated with actors or non-actors (and in what proportion)? Is it the investigation into a true disappearance, or a work merely inspired by actual events? Even at the conclusion of its final movement, A Man Vanishes [Ningen johatsu, or The Unexplained Disappearance of a Human Being] mirrors its subject in deflecting inquiries into the precise nature of its own being. A middle-class salaryman has gone missing - possibly of his own accord - and a film crew has set out to assemble a record of the man and the events surrounding his disappearance. As the crew meticulously builds a cachet of interviews with the man's family and lovers, their subject and his motivations become progressively more elusive - until the impossibility of the endeavour seems to transform the very film itself. Long unavailable anywhere on home video, Imamura's A Man Vanishes remains a unique and crucial entry in a provocative filmmaker's body of work, daring as it does to ask the big questions: what is reality, and what is a man? Directors: Shohei ImamuraFormat: PALLanguage: JapaneseSubtitles: EnglishRegion: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)Number of discs: 1
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