The Ruined Map
Moetsukita chizu
Japan
1968
118 Min
Color
2.35:1
Japanese
Synopsis
On one perfectly ordinary day, a salary man named Hiro Nemuro went out to deliver some documents. Having forgotten a paperclip to hold them together, he returned once more to his house, spoke to his wife and left once more, never to be seen again. The movie begins with psychedelic contour maps which look something like Mandelbrot sets presented one after another to the camera. Next, a statement of the facts of the case is read while we fly over a golden Tokyo, as seen through distorted double-vision. Joining a detective who has been hired by the wife of the missing man, the film progresses at first like a hard-boiled detective story as the search leads the investigator further into the seedy Tokyo underworld of unlicensed taxi drivers, blackmail gangs and pornography, but his life becomes bit-by-bit more like the life of the missing man he seeks until he begins to lose his own identity. —KFC Cinema
Director
Hiroshi Teshigahara
Hiroshi Teshigahara (勅使河原 宏, Teshigahara Hiroshi?, January 28, 1927 – April 14, 2001) was an avant-garde Japanese filmmaker.
He was born in Tokyo, son of Sofu Teshigahara, founder and grand master of the the Sogetsu School of ikebana. He graduated in 1950 from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and directed his first film, Pitfall (1962), in collaboration with author Kōbō Abe and musician Tōru Takemitsu. The film won the NHK New Director’s award, and throughout the 1960s, he continued to collaborate on films with Abe and Takemitsu while simultaneously pursuing his interest in ikebana and sculpture on a professional level.
In 1965, the Teshigahara/Abe film Woman in the Dunes (1964) was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1972, he worked with Japanese researcher and translator John Nathan to make the movie Summer Soldiers, a film set during the Vietnam War about American deserters living on the fringe… read more
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John
25Nov11
I feel like there was a rupture between Abe's existentialism, a search for identity and meaning, and Teshigahara's style, which tends to alienate. He broke the line several times, sometimes even has half the frame obscured or out of focus, and on top of that there are those memorable psychedelic scenes. It's the only film in the partnership where I felt that the two didn't make love very well. But still...
Tristan P. Teshigahara likes this
Frank Mugavero
22Jul11
Where can I find this film? I need to see it. Anyone who can help me find a copy of it with English subtitles please let me know. Thanks.
Tristan P. Teshigahara
20Mar10
So Glad this one made it. Since I'm a whiner, where is Go-hime, Jose Toress 1&2 and Summer Soldiers. Go-hime is a must - it's the only film where Hiro uses his bamboo installations as a part of the film set!
John likes this
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teshigahara's the ruined map
20 posts by 10 people
about 1 year ago