Product Description

A Cannes Film Festival award winner, "Black Rain" is an unforgettable movie about humanity and survival after the 1945 atomic catastrophe that changed the world forever. Stunning photography vividly details the horror of ravaged Hiroshima, while its shocked survivors struggle with radiation sickness as they rebuild their shattered lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117459 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-03-18
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Black & White, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 123 minutes

From The New Yorker
The most surprising thing about this film, which tells the story of a family of survirors of the atomic-bomb attach on Hiroshima, is that it isn't depressing. It's too intelligent; every scene is drenched in irony. The director, Shohei Imamura, treats the bombing itself with telling poetic concision, as a series of awful tableaux flashing before us with the speed of memory. Then, abruptly, he cuts to a tranquil-looking country scene and a very different kind of story. It's five years later, and the Shizuma family, last seen making their way through the wreckage of the city, now live in a remote village and are preoccupied with a traditional problem of Japanese movie families: arranging a marriage. This leisurely rural existence is restful in only the most superficial ways: two members of the family suffer from radiation sickness and have been ordered not to work hard. The Shizumas live in a perpetual state of suspension, a constant twilight; their survival is more like a wary, static persistence. We're unsure how to respond; we've never seen a family drama quite like this. Imamura's film looks at times like one of Yasujiro Ozu's dignified formal movies about middle-class problems, but the life of the Shizumas is Ozu's world seen in a very dark looking glass. The films's tone is analytical and distanced. Imamura has transformed this Hiroshima story into a Sartrean soap opera. With Yoshiko Tanaka, Kazuo Kitamura, and Etsuko Ichihara. The screenplay, by Imamura and Toshiro Ishido, is based on a novel by Masuji Ibuse. Superb black-and-white cinematography by Takashi Kawamata; a harrowingly beautiful score by Toru Takemitsu. In Japanese. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A MASTERPIECE
BLACK RAIN is the only movie of director Shohei Imamura that can be found in the DVD standard. It's a pity since this director is still one of the most interesting japanese directors even if he's now 72 years old. Winner of two Cannes Palmes d'Or ith THE EEL and THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA, he isn't properly speaking a newcomer but his work deserves to be known by a wider audience.

The black rain is the name Japanese people have given to the rain that fell on Hiroshima right after the nuclear bombing of this island. Black and deadly. The movie, shot in black and white, tells the story of a couple of survivors and their struggle to stay alive and be part of the new japanese society born after the emperor's surrender.

One could say that BLACK RAIN's rythm is slow but I think it's a courageous choice of Shohei Imamura in order that we feel the fear of these people waiting their whole life for the first signs of the inevitable diseases provoked by radioactivity. In between, they try to survive like Yasuko, the heroin, whose search for a husband is pathetic.

Two scenes will stay in your memory. Firstly, the description of Hiroshima in comparison of which those horror movies Hollywood produces by the dozen seem, for the least, ridiculous. And this scene when Yasuko, filled with hope, waits for a shining rainbow, symbolizing life. You wait with her, with all your heart, until you remember that this film is shot in black and white. Simply magistral.

A scene access as sole extra-feature.

A DVD for your library.

A prayer for peace and tolerance
This is a wonderful black and white film by one of Japan's foremost Directors, Shohei Imamura. The film also features the outstanding music of Japan's foremost modern composer, Toru Takemitsu. He also provided the score for Hiroshi Teshigahara's classic, "Woman In the Dunes".

"Black Rain" explores a difficult subject, the bombing of Hiroshima, but does it not by assigning blame for the bombing. Rather Imamura depicts the intollerance of humanity that leads to all wars and their equally terrible aftermath. The characters in the film, all very well acted, are dealing with radiation illness and their positions as new social outcasts in postwar Japan. Perhaps one of the most moving scenes is that of the three Buddhist prayers or "sutras" for Hiroshima's dead chanted by a layman in the absence of the clergy. Indeed the film is one long prayer for peace and tolerance.

The quality of this DVD is acceptable but it seems a shame that Fox Lorber does not seem inclined, with this or many other of their DVDs, to provide any bonus materials.

Life after the bombs: impressive/profound human interest
Immamura's tour de force about a girl and her blood relatives' attempt to go on with life after surviving the August '45 bombing. While the film has been described as "restrained", it is also possible to receive the film as an incredibly eruptive effort: one that portrays its characters *always* on the verge of breaking down -- both physically and mentally -- from the wholly destructive and lingering effects of the bombs. While the ending escalates to full-blown helplessness (by using a self-reflexive comment about the limits of black and white film), the acting is an absolute success, particularly by the girl and the carver that loves her.