United Red Army
Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun: Asama Sanso E No Michi
The Films That Got Away
(Japan, 2007, 190 mins)
In Japanese with English subtitles
35mm
Directed By: Koji Wakamatsu
Producer: Muneko Ozaki
Screenwriters: Koji Wakamatsu, Masayuki Kakegawa
Cinematographers: Yoshihisa Toda, Tomohiko Tsuji
Cast: Maki Sakai, Arata, Akie Namiki, Go Jibiki
Music: Jim O'Rourke
While there has been no shortage of films devoted to the Vietnam-era student radical groups in the U.S. and Europe, the movement’s parallel Japanese exponents have remained largely unknown in the West. Until now. This obsessively detailed docudrama from director Koji Wakamatsu—a storied figure in Japan’s soft-core erotic cinema—traces the rise and fall of the titular militant organization from its idealistic formation to its violent implosion during a 10-day standoff with police in 1972.
Conceived as a corrective to an earlier, authorized film version of those events told from the perspective of the cops, Wakamatsu’s underground epic—for which the filmmaker mortgaged and then destroyed (on camera) his own home—employs a liberal blend of documentary footage and bracing, sometimes intensely brutal dramatized reenactments to immerse us in the psyches of the radicals themselves, as they turn first against one another and finally the invading authorities. The nail-biting tension is enhanced by an original psychedelic rock score from Sonic Youth’s Jim O’Rourke.
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