clan rivalry and looming violence permeates the story but the heart of it is about a romanticism that never quite finds its expression. The depiction of the crime bosses was interesting here and more humanising than usual.
Of course this is rather stylish and focuses more on the story than the characters and dialogue, although at least they were still interesting. Shinoda paints a picture of a pessimistic post-war Japan….
The depiction of the crime bosses was interesting here and more humanising than usual.
Shot in stunning monochrome Cinemascope, Pale Flower plays itself out amidst moodily stylised shadows and angular sets, so that there is little to distinguish Maruki's underworld reality from his angst-ridden nightmares (as realised in one memorable sequence). These two shouldn't be compatible, but they are.
But she saves herself for Yoh, a younger, wilder, more exotic yakuza and this drives Muraki crazy. The main character is trapped by obligations and his own conflicted psyche. Masahiro Shinoda’s (“Double Suicide”) Japanese styled film noir drips with despair. Cinematography was beautiful though!
A bit leisurely, with no real plot, but plenty of atmosphere and intense stares and significant pauses throughout. It's stylish, atmospheric, and has an electrifying score by Takemitsu.
The music is sudden and off putting in a way that picks you apart and pulls you into the world depicted. Pure, pulpy, hard-boiled genre exercise. Just released from prison after serving three years for murdering a member of a rival gang, Maraki, a middle-aged yakuza, returns to his old haunts in Tokyo largely out of loyalties despite not much liking that life or himself in the process. crime, April 6, 2020 Illegal gambling.
Voiceover.
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Although the tone of the film is set by Takemitsu Toru's discordant score, a late climactic killing is scored by an aria from Henry Purcell's opera, "Dido and Aeneas." A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling. the film already had me.
"We just write 'they gamble,'" he told the director. Their faces are lifeless, dead. Japanese gangster Muraki (Ryô Ikebe) is released from jail after a few years and finds both organized crime and the real world have moved on without him.