Ecstasy of the Angels (1972) Tenshi no kôkotsu
Ecstasy of the Angels (1972)
WEB-Dl 1080p | MKV | 1920x1080 | x264 @ 8278 Kbps | 88 min | 5,26 Gb
Audio: Japanese (日本語) AC3 2.0 @ 224 Kbps | Subs: English (embedded in MKV)
Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery
WEB-Dl 1080p | MKV | 1920x1080 | x264 @ 8278 Kbps | 88 min | 5,26 Gb
Audio: Japanese (日本語) AC3 2.0 @ 224 Kbps | Subs: English (embedded in MKV)
Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery
Director: Kôji Wakamatsu
Writer: Masao Adachi (screenplay) (as Izuru Deguchi)
Stars: Ken Yoshizawa, Rie Yokoyama, Yuki Aresa
A group of militant extremists whom we know only by their code names - the days of the week - realize that they've been betrayed by their own organization when a nocturnal weapons raid on a U.S. Army base goes awry. The delicate internal balance of trust and friendship splinters apart. Their already fragile, idealistic young psyches quickly disintegrate into a morass of sexual paranoia, violent recrimination and sadistic torture that completely destroys their ability to function as an organization.
This is an excellent film, flawed in the sense that certain aspects of the fictional revolutionary group appear quite caricatured at times but viewed in relation with director Koji Wakamatsu's newest film "United Red Army" it can be seen to draw a surprisingly accurate picture of the revolutionary nihilism of the Japanese student activists of the time. Other reviewers have compared the film to Godard's early work such as La Chinoise and admittedly the artistic style is quite similar though less refined, and far from being less politically aware than Godard, Wakamatsu was actually much more realistically cynical in his portrait of armed student activist cells whereas Godard's revolutionary themed films displayed a certain hopeful naiveté in the potential of a largely dogmatic and authoritarian movement which was strongly criticized by his contemporaries in the Situationist International. The writer of this film Masao Adachi was certainly not a pretentious intellectual out to exploit sex and revolutionary pop aesthetic as some critics have inferred here; a closer look at his personal history shows that shortly after writing the screenplay he actually moved to Lebanon to join the real life armed revolutionary group the Japanese Red Army where he remained a committed activist for 28 years up until his arrest in the year 2000. As such the film can be a unique and telling account of his own mentality and the personal motivations which led to joining the JRA, as well as his prior knowledge of the less-than-ideal dynamics of the lifestyle he would be choosing. One must keep in mind that at the time Wakamatsu was expected by producers to be making films in the 'pink' genre which would explain the gratuitous sex scenes that could be seen as offensive or pointless to some but the unique beauty of the film far outweigh it's occasional rough edges. Highly recommended, though not for casual viewers of film "for entertainment's sake" alone.
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Ecstasy of the Angels (1972) Tenshi no kôkotsu
Ecstasy of the Angels (1972) Tenshi no kôkotsu
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