Generally called taboo for some this film stays with you even after the final
credits.
I confess that when I heard about the film "In the Realm of the Senses" by Nagisa Oshima (1976) I was still a young man of 15 years old and therefore I still haven't been able to watch this film that had been initially censored by over 18 years old.
I remember that it was on display in my city for almost 7 consecutive years and the audience was usually only men.
Much time has passed and I confess that I was never very curious, as a young man, to watch this type of film.
Thanks to the Criterion Collection that put this title a few years ago on Blu-ray was when I happily started to understand all the controversy caused at the time by this film.
As a result, I felt more intelligently prepared for this diversion from deflecting my mind from permissive thoughts that perhaps could divert my attention from history.
That was very difficult. After all, I am human and the mind fed by the sensual images of the beginning of history perversely reached me ... but that's ok, I thought: "This is part of this experience".
At first it was pure excitement in every way you can imagine, especially with 45 minutes of film. Later, I'm already paying attention and this strange story that I can't even get distracted by other things. The film begins to show its power after an hour and fifteen minutes I already feel mesmerized by the story and that excitement of the first scenes no longer exists when I realize that, in my mind, all that passion of the main characters of the film absorbs me from an uncomfortably and disturbingly sexual. However in the end I would feel completely shaken and sex doesn't even cross my mind anymore.
The story is based on real events that took place in 1936 in Japan in which a "geisha" Sada Abe and her lover Kichizo Ishida who had a sexual relationship across extreme limits. Director Nagisa Oshima, who knew the story well, was well known to all Japanese people - he was looking for funding for the project and got through the contacts in France the interest of the producer Anatole Dauman who was familiar with Oshima's films and gave the go-ahead for the production.
In absolute secrecy and fearing his own arrest in Japan for directing a pornographic film since he decided that his actors would rather have real sexual relations in front of the cameras, the director chose to shoot in Kyoto and thus circumvent possible problems with the severe censorship in Japan. Japan. To this day, the Japanese have not seen the uncensored version of this film.
The magic and power of the film is really not the work of Eiko Matsuda (Sada Abe) and Tatsuya Fuji (Kichi). Why?
If the two actors did not have chemistry for each other the film would only become another pornographic film and nothing more. What differs from this film is the dedication of the director and the actors who have committed themselves to the story, thus making everything work and the film becoming "Art".
At the end of my experience watching this film I felt soberly intoxicated by images that were both sensual and deeply disturbing. Perhaps this film is the only one that in detail shows the process of sexual evolution and the search for a form of supreme pleasure that favors human understanding and goes hand in hand with madness.
This film is certainly not for the faint of heart to watch until the end. But if you open your mind to a certain level, I believe this film will win you over for the strangest reasons that only you will be able to know and recognize. I do not believe that Oshima wanted to become in any way a pioneer in the more elaborate treatment from the visual point of view in order to promote himself at a higher level as a director. I think he simply knew that he would be able to tell such a provocative and controversial story in a simple, honest and effective way. As he also knew that he would find a critical and eclectic audience that would bore him in choosing his method of filming.
He achieved two things to make this film a reality and makes it almost unique in Japanese and perhaps worldwide cinema history. Other directors have tried this and few have succeeded because they have fallen into the traps of basic pornography. Oshima came out more respected and better director with this experience. This is no small feat. DN
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