Synopsis
Towards the end of the Second World War, a downed U.S. pilot is captured and imprisoned by rural Japanese villagers, who await official instructions as to how to proceed with their “catch.”
1961 ‘飼育’ Directed by Nagisa Ōshima
Towards the end of the Second World War, a downed U.S. pilot is captured and imprisoned by rural Japanese villagers, who await official instructions as to how to proceed with their “catch.”
Shiiku, Содержание скотины, La presa, L'addomesticamento, Le Piège, 饲育
Nagisa Oshima’s first independent feature about what a WWII era Japanese village does when it has to take care the titular catch (an American pilot played by Shadows’ Hugh Hurd). It plays all the allegorical notes expected from a Oshima’s film about Japanese society continuous fascism, but even if it lack surprises his scope framing is as sharp as ever, the image here truly is a weapon.
In one of his more lesser known films, Ōshima tells the radical tale of a captured American pilot towards the end of WWII. Referring to him as “the catch”, Japanese villagers must wait for official instructions on what they will do with him. A relentless and savage fable on repressed aggression and political conflicts. Devastating ending. A relatively engaging war drama but ultimately falls a bit flat in terms of script and direction. Still pretty good though.
I’ve never seen an Oshima film, so I have no idea what to expect. I just got a bootleg set of some of his movies for cheap, so let’s check it out...
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Have you ever noticed how much better the Japanese were at shooting outdoors than Hollywood? Outside of Westerns, that is. There’s so much authenticity in the locations. Kurosawa’s samurai movies, for example, always looked so real to me. Not that I would know, but...
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I love the ominous music, that begins so many Japanese films. You can tell from the deathly drums that this story will be bleak. According to the plot synopsis, I expected nothing else. A small village is tasked with holding a captive…
Japanuary # 11 of 31 (Japanuly?)
If I keep up this pace, I won’t be done in time for Japanuary 2023. I blame the fact that many of these are going to be heavier in theme, and I can’t just knock a few back in a lazy afternoon like they’re Tecate Wildstylez. But, no matter the actual month, I’m committed to the journey.
So, right off the bat, I’m not a fan of the opening credits over some writhing worms, presumably in some fluid on glass. Go ahead, call me squeamish. Hard pass.
And, wow… After a downed American pilot is brought to a Japanese village near the end of the War in the Pacific, this wastes zero time before…
The US needs a director like Nagisa Oshima – a director that is willing to confront the truth and have the guts to provoke his audience with it. Just look at The Catch, made in 1961. Oshima is psychoanalyzing the radical militarism of his country during World War II, but with theatrical black farce and subtle entomological touches. The people of a small farming village outside Tokyo are depicted as wildly racist scumbags and the village chief has a Hitler-esque toothbrush mustache. The scenes that unfold are often very funny and inescapably scary. Even though it was only his third year directing films, Oshima was already to cinema what Brecht is to theatre. He alienates his audience by simply making…
"We just talked and decided that nothing that happened in the war ever happened”
Oshima's first independent film is understandably rough around the edges. The only copy I could find was an aged, 360p Internet Archive rip, but even in this poor state, the film is so vicious in its metaphors and condemnations of fascism that it really didn't matter. It stuns despite its cheap budget and lackluster preservation. It chokes the life out of fascism, diagnoses its late-stage terminality in way that is nasty and crude and direct.
On its surface, THE CATCH is a film about economics in times of crisis. These farmers are the seeds from which fascism grew, and yet they are also its victims; it…
Quite a decent first independent feature from Ōshima. It has a severe unapologetic racial theme which stemmed out from years of feudalistic mindset of the Japanese people. Ōshima never tried to hide it and showed it as it was, suggesting that it wasn't the war that made the people act how they did. There was also the class structure theme that's prevalent in his pictures.
Ōshima uses a lot of allegories in the film and exposes the hypocrisy of his countrymen. The cinematography is too much methodical and slow; sometimes showing people's back while speaking or kept them out of picture, intentionally to highlight the fact that everyone were evil & prejudiced.
What I liked about the film was the use…
During WW2, an African-American soldier is held prisoner by rural Japanese farmers who believe it is their duty to do so on behalf of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Everything about this film is designed to unsettle. From the young girl vomiting in response to violence and conflict to the completely unfiltered racism poured upon the "kuronbo" prisoner by rural Japanese villagers.
You feel as though you're watching a disturbing dream sequence as opposed to a film. The old Imperialist Japan of WW2, represented by the corrupt village overseers, become figures the younger post-war generation steadily grow despise as events unfold.
Every problem in the village, from petty theft by starving families to military desertion, is blamed on the prisoner, who…
Part of my Japanese New Wave Top 200
Ōshima’s first picture after leaving Shochiku studios is not just one of his lesser seen but also, if one will, lesser films. The premise of this disturbing film is good enough (it is apparently based on a novel by Kenzaburo Oe). Ōshima uses the event of Japanese villagers capturing a black US soldier during the end of WWII to expose all the hardly concealed racism, bigotry and barbarism within the Japanese identity. These elements were always there, Ōshima seems to say; all that was needed was an excuse to let them out in the open.
So far, so good; it’s the kind of (a)moral fable you would expect from Ōshima around this…
Ōshima and Ōe is a dream team combo but this is just a bit too elaborative of the same few basic conflicts across most of its runtime; I assume Ōe’s novella works better in original short form. NIGHT AND FOG IN JAPAN is one of my favorite films, so THE CATCH can’t help feeling like a significant step down coming right after, even if it does mark Ōshima’s true independent debut. And it’s cool to see Hugh Hurd here, although he doesn’t get much to do. The allusions to Tokyo burning unseen over the horizon are truly disquieting, as is the long unbroken shot of the villagers burying Hurd’s body while convincing themselves they did nothing wrong.
I’ve never seen anyone so radically critique and challenge their nation’s culture and history with the intensity Nagisa Ōshima did.
This is about a remote Japanese farming village in the last days of WWII that captures a downed African-American pilot, imprisoning him until they military can take him off their hands.
The pilot is less of a character and more of a plot device, triggering the xenophobia and racism and the villager as he becomes a scapegoat for all of their problems. He isn’t given too much screen time as Ōshima focuses on the moral rot of the villagers, the film is about blind allegiance of the Japanese people, and how this kind of nationalistic fervor leads people to commit…
Community through collective denial. Relentlessly bleak stuff from Ōshima as a small town finds an injured Black POW (Hugh Hurd) and proceed to blame him for all the world's ills, as an allegory for the racist and fascist tendencies of Japanese society at that time it's relentlessly effective. The last days of WWII atmosphere is thick and appropriately hellish, rape and violence are omnipresent, it made me think of Goya at times. Ōshima's direction is shadowy and modernist, the script co-written by a young Toshio Matsumoto has a strong theatrical eye for large group dynamics. At times it can linger on an image it's proud of a little long, but it's a very minor fault of a deeply perceptive film,…