Eros Plus Massacre (1969) [Trailer]

Directed by: Yoshishige Yoshida Contry: Japan Kiju Yoshidas groundbreaking work compares the love and independence of anarchist Osugi Sakae, assassinated by the military in 1923, to the vanguard of modern day Japan. The story tells of Sakaes relationship with three women : Hori Yasuko, his wife ; Ito Noe, his third lover, who was to die with him ; and his jealous, second lover, Masaoka Itsuko, a militant feminist who attempts to kill him in a tea house in 1916. Parallel to the reconstitution of Osugis life, two students do research on the political theories and ideas of free love that he upheld. Some of the characters from the past and from the present meet and engage the themes of the movie. Meant to be released in 1970, a long version (210 min.), now available on DVD, was halted as an invasion to privacy, leading to the shorter, edited version (165 min.) that was eventually released in theaters. This one, plus Oshima's Koshikei (Death by Hanging, 1968), Matsumoto's Bara no Soretsu (Funeral Parade of Roses, 1969), Shinoda's Shinjû: Ten no amijima (Double Suicide, 1969) and Terayama's Den'en ni shisu (Pastoral : to Die in the Country, 1974), are maybe the great accomplishments of the Japanese New Wave. Here, Yoshida starts the last political trilogy about Japanese Past and Present (Eros plus Massacre, Heroic Purgatory and Coup D'etat) using a distinctive aesthetics proving that his Cinema contains some sort of a Metamorfosical ethic. In fact, the movie builds an omnipresent dialectic between spectator and characters. History and Symbolic Representation. According to Pascal BONITZER, the "plus" of the tittle is a metonymy for the movie relation and revelation: "You must play too, because you can't dominate it. You must attach, dis-attach, and transform one and another: «Eros» and «Massacre». The spectator is the local of application. The spectator is the plus (+)."