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monad · 2011.03.16, 02:46 PM

Finally got around to watching Koji Wakamatsu's United Red Army. Brutal hardly begins to describe it -- it's easily the single most difficult movie I've seen. Just terrible, unspeakable cruelty.

The first hour or so sort of drags, spraying out a confusing torrent of history about the emergence of the leftist movement in the 60s. And even with all the detail, it doesn't really go very far in explaining why certain factions of the movement became so radicalized.

And while the last part -- the siege at the Asama Mountain Lodge -- is reasonably exciting and interesting and a well-done portrayal of an important historical event (by the end of the siege, almost 90% of the country was watching the live coverage on TV, and it wound up being sort of a Kent State in reverse, permanently destroying public support and sympathy for the left), it's far longer than it needed to be. Worse, after all we'd seen prior that, it really came across as a distasteful and not very convincing attempt to humanize former friends and associates of the director (who had been a Japanese Red Army sympathizer back in the day, and knew several of the people involved in all of this).

But the middle section...just...damn. If you don't know the story, the URA, which was about 30 people, holed up in a series of remote mountain huts near Karuizawa for military training sessions in the winter of 71-72. Over the course of several weeks, they proceeded to self-immolate in endless group sessions of Cultural Revolution-inspired "self-criticism", a horrific collision of isolation, the Japanese culture of bullying, revolutionary fervor, cowardice, jealousy, and paranoia, punctuated by a slow dribble of murderous purges of members: 12 in total were beaten to death, or gutted, or tied to trees and left to die in the frigid cold, many for preposterously trivial offenses against the revolution for which they couldn't demonstrate a satisfactory degree of remorse -- not noticing scratches on a gun barrel when cleaning it, or wearing makeup, or taking a bath, or changing clothes too often. "Death by defeatism", the leaders called the supposed lack of sufficient self-criticism.

Maki Sakai's portrayal of the confusion and torment of Mieko Toyama (a friend of Wakamatsu, she worked with him on a classic propaganda film for the JRA and the PFLP in Palestine) is just gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. And the soundtrack (by Jim O'Rourke, long-time Sonic Youth collaborator) is superb, ending with a cover of Pictures of Adolf Again that works on about 20 layers of sincere meaning and irony and pain. It was all I could do to keep from breaking into sobs about halfway through the song as the weight of everything came crushing down.

http://soundcloud.com/leclisse1/08-p...of-adolf-again

2011.03.16, 02:46 PM	#168
monad Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 47	Finally got around to watching Koji Wakamatsu's United Red Army. Brutal hardly begins to describe it -- it's easily the single most difficult movie I've seen. Just terrible, unspeakable cruelty. The first hour or so sort of drags, spraying out a confusing torrent of history about the emergence of the leftist movement in the 60s. And even with all the detail, it doesn't really go very far in explaining why certain factions of the movement became so radicalized. And while the last part -- the siege at the Asama Mountain Lodge -- is reasonably exciting and interesting and a well-done portrayal of an important historical event (by the end of the siege, almost 90% of the country was watching the live coverage on TV, and it wound up being sort of a Kent State in reverse, permanently destroying public support and sympathy for the left), it's far longer than it needed to be. Worse, after all we'd seen prior that, it really came across as a distasteful and not very convincing attempt to humanize former friends and associates of the director (who had been a Japanese Red Army sympathizer back in the day, and knew several of the people involved in all of this). But the middle section...just...damn. If you don't know the story, the URA, which was about 30 people, holed up in a series of remote mountain huts near Karuizawa for military training sessions in the winter of 71-72. Over the course of several weeks, they proceeded to self-immolate in endless group sessions of Cultural Revolution-inspired "self-criticism", a horrific collision of isolation, the Japanese culture of bullying, revolutionary fervor, cowardice, jealousy, and paranoia, punctuated by a slow dribble of murderous purges of members: 12 in total were beaten to death, or gutted, or tied to trees and left to die in the frigid cold, many for preposterously trivial offenses against the revolution for which they couldn't demonstrate a satisfactory degree of remorse -- not noticing scratches on a gun barrel when cleaning it, or wearing makeup, or taking a bath, or changing clothes too often. "Death by defeatism", the leaders called the supposed lack of sufficient self-criticism. Maki Sakai's portrayal of the confusion and torment of Mieko Toyama (a friend of Wakamatsu, she worked with him on a classic propaganda film for the JRA and the PFLP in Palestine) is just gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. And the soundtrack (by Jim O'Rourke, long-time Sonic Youth collaborator) is superb, ending with a cover of Pictures of Adolf Again that works on about 20 layers of sincere meaning and irony and pain. It was all I could do to keep from breaking into sobs about halfway through the song as the weight of everything came crushing down. http://soundcloud.com/leclisse1/08-p...of-adolf-again Last edited by monad : 2011.03.16 at 04:32 PM.