Curapedi
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
cokramer
Wow. Didn't think there was this type of filmmaker still out there in this century. What's even amazing is I find out this director was inspired by most of my favourite directors, most of whom see a bigger picture about humanity than others: I mean Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, Kurosawa, Bresson, etc. This movie is definitely in their tradition. First of all, the woman in the film is unbelievable in the most exalted sense of the word. She is the anchor of it all and so naturally unassuming and modest. I don't want to give anything away but as Reygadas, the director, implies in a surreal beach sequence, beautiful beyond ... I'll leave it at that. Also, the most memorable singing sequence near the end of the film with this peasant labourer after he accepts the gift of a drink from the woman during a work break from smashing up her barn (or maybe from pretend filming). I mean, who says beautiful singing has to be technically beautiful? What he sings and how he sings it beats anything I've ever seen and that says a whole bunch. Anyways, a film definitely worth seeing in view of the overinflated monetary and materialistic attitudes of this new order world of ours. What is it we want? Can we really have everything? That's just one of the many questions posed to us from Reygada's film. Stick with it. The film may seem sluggish at the beginning but it might just blow you right out of the water (or cesspool) in the second half. I'd give it a perfect ten if I were more spiritual but Doestoevsky, most of us are not. Reygadas comes damn close though.
paulgeaf
I watched this film after reading some interesting reviews about a promising art-house director, stunning landscapes and grit and reality, as harsh as it is seen through the ever widening lens. Hmm. All of the above is perfectly fitting. The camera work is sheer brilliance. The audio on this film is what grabs you from the very start: The sound is used to full effect, from the bird calls in the trees; the nearby water; the drunken Mexican workers: especially watch out for the singing scene, all made so very powerful thorough the medium of sound. In lots of scenes, the audio is carrying the visuals and not the other way around. I have to say the story is most unusual and as you may already have read, can be quite uncomfortable at times. At one point I actually thought 'I don't need to be watching something like this on my screen..why am I?', as it just got a bit weird for me. I stuck with it though and, there is a message in there. I won't spoil any of the movie for you by going much deeper into it but as one commenter already said, it is about Man and his loneliness. His desperation and also his bad decisions and inability to change: his world and himself.I can see why there are so many negative remarks here for this. At first, I came here with the intention of doing something similar but when I started writing about this movie I just watched, I find myself analysing it and it sinks in that there really is a work of art and it shouldn't be condemned, it should be talked about and watched by many!There are, for sure, some bad areas where they might have done better to edit certain overly long scenes out or perhaps moved the story around a bit but, this movie isn't about the story, not really. It is about the characters, more than that: it is about Character itself. Even the characters are just a vehicle for the main theme.I urge you to watch this with an open mind.
Philip Van der Veken
This movie is called "Japón" ("Japan" in English), but why they called it that way is a complete mystery to me, because it has nothing to do with Japanese people or with Japan itself.This movie is about a painter who lives in the city and who wants to commit suicide. To do so, he goes to a remote canyon, because he wants to find some calmness and peace during his last moments. He gets to a village and asks for a place to stay. He's send to an old farm on a hillside, where Ascen lives. Ascen is an old and religious lady and, being left alone by her family, she doesn't mind to have some companionship from a stranger. Even though they almost never speak to each other, their love for each other grows.There can be no doubt about the fact that this is a very original movie. It shows us that even old people still need love and affection and that even they can have a sexual life. It also gives an insight on the hardness of Mexico's rural life. However, the story is good and the acting is OK (especially by the old lady), but I couldn't help thinking that this movie might have been better if it had been done by professionals. Nevertheless this is still an interesting movie and it certainly gives an extra option next to all the Hollywood crap that we are forced to swallow. That's why I give it a 6/10.
Howard Schumann
Japon, a film by first-time director Carlos Reygadas, is a sensual meditation on death and the possibility of transformation in which a gaunt middle-aged man comes to a remote Mexican village with the stated purpose of killing himself. We are given no information as to his name or background except that we later surmise that he is a painter who has come from the city to seek solitude for his final act of self-abnegation. The man with no name and no past is the quintessential existential anti-hero, a character that could easily have wandered in from a Wim Wenders movie or a novel by Albert Camus.Reygadas has said that he admires spectators who go to the movies to experience life, not to forget about it. In Japon, Reygadas largely succeeds in engaging those who wish not to forget, showing nature in all its ragged beauty. His images of an unseen pig crying out as it being slaughtered, horses copulating while children laugh, and a bird being decapitated push viewers out of their comfort zone and challenge us to engage life at a deeper, more honest level, similar to the work of Bruno Dumont. Though I found parts of the film to be abrasive, I was pulled in by the stark beauty of the desert landscapes, the authenticity of its non-professional actors, and its willingness to explore issues of man's loneliness and relationship to the natural world.After an opening sequence on the freeway that, in its drone of dehumanized images, pays homage to Tarkovsky's Solaris, a tall man (nameless) with a weather-beaten face played by the late Alejandro Ferretis makes his way down the canyon to a small village in a remote part of Mexico. Limping with the aid of a cane, he tells a man offering directions to the canyon floor that his purpose in going to the remote village is to commit suicide. The man shrugs and tells him to get into the van. Since there are no hotels in the area, he is offered lodging in a barn close to an old woman's shack. The woman is named Ascen, short for Ascension which she says refers to Christ ascending into heaven without help.Japon is a work of mood and atmosphere; the director's static takes and long periods of silence achieve a tone of somber intensity. Ascen, remarkably played by 79-year old Magdalena Flores, is generous and loving, leaving her house guest confused and not sure that he knows what he wants. He fails at a suicide attempt and then settles in to the routine of living in the desert. He drinks Mescal and gets drunk in the village, smokes marijuana (offering some to the old lady), and masturbates while dreaming of a beautiful woman on the beach. It is only when Ascen's son-in-law attempts to cheat her out of her house that he comes alive and asks a strange favor of Ascen that made me decidedly uncomfortable.Little by little the depressed man seems to be engaging more in life and connecting with the people around him. Japon uses an amazing seven-minute circular tracking that employs both natural sound and the sublime music of Arvo Part's Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten to end the film on a note of transcendence. Although Japon is at times vague in its delineation of character and feels derivative of Kiarostami and Tarkovsky, it is a promising first effort and I am eager to follow this audacious director's career.
