The Box Man
(Hako Otoko)
Gakuryū Ishii
- 2024
- Japan
- Drama
- 2h00mn
- Original version with English subtitles
- Color
Novelty
The “Box Man” wanders around the city taking notes with a cardboard box on his head. ‘Me” would so much love to also become a box man, but it’s not easy to equal the original. Can several box men co-exist?
The great Japanese writer Kōbō Abe (1924-1993) signed the adaptations of his works for four gems by Hiroshi Teshigahara, among which Woman in the Dunes and The Face of Another. He always refused to sell the rights for The Box Man, though it’s one of his craziest novels, and often considered as his masterpiece. Approached by Sogo Ishii towards the end of his life, whose so punk and free filmography he liked, close to his own surrealism, he changed his mind. After a complicated gestation, thirty years after Abe’s death, the result is on par with the novel, philosophical, disorienting, delirious. In a word: insane.
Credits
- With : Masatoshi Nagase, Tadanobu Asano, Koichi Sato, Ayana Shiramoto...
- Screenplay : Kiyotaka Inagaki, Gakuryū Ishii
- Photography : Hideho Urata
- Editing : Banri Nagase
- Music by : Michiaki Katsumoto
- Production : Keisuke Konishi, Tomohiko Seki
