[yasr_overall_rating]
A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.
There’s a scene at the very beginning of “Zigeunerweisen” where the image of a crab is overlaid across a woman’s crotch. The crab increases greatly in size. After this sequence, I thought that “Zigeunerweisen” was going to be as strange a film as Nobuhiko Obayashi’s “House.” After this Bunuel-like beginning, “Zigeunerweisen” resembles something like Roger Corman directing a kabuki play. I haven’t seen other films by the director of this movie, Seijun Suzuki, but I assume that he reigned his oddness in greatly on this picture. For the decade prior to the film, Suzuki had given up filmmaking after he was blacklisted due to making movies that were very strange and largely nonsensical. “Zigeunerweisen” ended Suzuki’s blacklist and actually begat the director’s “Taishō Roman Trilogy.”
One of the first questions I had about this Japanese film is why it had a German title. “Zigeunerweisen” (which in English translates to “Gypsy Airs”), is a musical piece for violin and orchestra written in 1878 by Pablo de Sarasate and was based on themes of the Roma people. The score is used throughout much of the film and there appears to be some thematic overlap between the two works, including contemplations on the concept of wandering.
Set in 1920s Japan, the film is a bit like Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim” in terms of plot. The film tells the story of two different men: a professor, Aochi (Toshiya Fujita) and a madman, Nakasago (Yoshio Harada). Nakasago has recently killed a woman, but Aochi offers rebukes to the law enforcement officers who attempt to arrest Nakasago. The two men eventually create a relationship with a geisha, Koine (Nakao Otani) and a strange love triangle is created between the three. This relationship can be plodding at times, but the last half an hour in which Aochi kills himself and is still tormented by Aochi, is deliciously strange.
The film is better thought of in terms of small segments. One of my favorite images in the film include Nakasago munching wildly on some corn when he is first introduced. My other favorite image is a piece of staging. During a conversation between Aochi and Nakasago, we stare at what looks like a wall but turns out to be a revolving row of books. These small and beautiful moments of “Zigeunerweisen” must be applauded if one is to truly appreciate the film. Otherwise, it is very easy to be turned off by the film as too strange and plodding to garner much interest. The film left me very interested in watching the next two films in Suzuki’s trilogy, “Kagero-za” and “Yumeji.”
Now available on a Special Edition Blu-ray from Arrow Video
