DEATH BY HANGING (Nagisha Oshima)
21 May 2011 Leave a Comment
in Film Review
Watching this film until a half way, made me realized that this wasn’t an ordinary film. The film director set up every scene very carefully to show something to the audiences. At that time what’s on my mind was there might be something happening between Japan, Korea, USA, and some other countries. I mentioned this because they were represented in this film by their flags – in form of shadows and small sizes hanged over the restaurant. Nagisa Oshima in this film showed (almost) clearly about some ideas owned by some different perspectives. Not in very implicit way, but almost explicit I think.
From browsing some film reviews, I found out that this film was made based on a true story. I think Oshima wanted to voice his idea about discrimination faced by Koreans. It was like Koreans fight Japan by doing crimes such murder to the Japanese.
This film presented dark comedy also in its story. First I was entertained but finally all the jokes became so serious.The Death by Hanging story plot was a bit hard to follow I think, because the continuity of every scenes sometimes suddenly came and surprised me, the next scene sometimes (look-alike) no relation with the previous scene.
Honestly, I’m still curious with the ending of this film. A scene where R and R’s sister were rolling to the river, I couldn’t understand it. Was it a conclusion or something audiences must think further? Second, by presenting so many characters in this movie, who was sounding their own perspectives, what message was Oshima trying to sent? Was it kind of public discussion relating to the politic situation between Korea and Japan at that time?
