Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Himizu Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov November 2, 2014

Winner of Marcello Mastroianni Award at the Venice Film Festival, Japanese director Sion Sono's "Himizu" (2011) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of independent U.S. distributors Olive Films. There are no supplemental features on this Blu-ray release. In Japanese, with imposed English subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

Yuichi

The film begins some time after a massive earthquake has destroyed most of Japan. There are piles of debris everywhere, roads are still closed, and many people live in tents. Because the police and military are busy rebuilding, this is the perfect time for various shady characters to blackmail, steal, sell drugs, or get rid of competitors.

Keiko (Fumi Nikaidou) is a 14-year-old girl madly in love with Yuichi (Shota Sometani). They are classmates and see each other daily, but Keiko has been unable to impress Yuichi - which is why she has started stalking him. She has also started collecting his words and taping them on the wall in her tiny room. Occasionally, she would recite them and imagine that he is with her.

One day, Keiko finally approaches Yuichi and reveals to him that she likes him. Much to her surprise, however, Yuichi asks her to leave him alone because he is going through some difficult times and could not possibly be in a relationship with a girl. Yuichi’s honesty and directness inspire Keiko to become even more aggressive and she immediately vows to help him. Then she visits his home by the river where together with his alcoholic mother he rents boats to make ends meet. There Keiko meets some of Yuichi’s friends and neighbors, who live in tents along the river and wait for the government to fix what the earthquake has destroyed.

Keiko also meets Yuichi’s father (Ken Mitsuishi), a cruel and dangerous man with an attitude, who comes out of nowhere and asks his son to give him money. He owes a lot to a local yakuza boss (Denden), who has warned him that if he does not pay his debts on time his men will have to hurt him. When Yuichi gets angry, his father tells him that he was an expensive mistake and that he should have died a long time ago. Then he beats him up and leaves. On the following day, Yuichi’s mother writes on a piece of paper “Have a nice life” and also disappears.

Soon after, Yuichi’s father appears again, this time determined to teach his son a lesson he should have taught him a long time ago. A sea of tragic events ensues.

This is the roughest and least poetic of Sion Sono’s recent films. It is loaded with so much nihilism and the main protagonists are so pessimistic that it is virtually impossible to embrace it. The graphic violence in it is also neither surprising nor problematic but the film’s extreme coldness is enormously off-putting. (Cold Fish is a much more graphic film but far more elegant and deliciously perverse).

Yuichi is a young boy who has essentially been used as an object throughout his entire life. Unsurprisingly, now he has a heart of stone and carries so much anger that it is only a matter of time before he goes off. He lives on cruise control and the only time he reacts to the people around him is when they hurt him. Keiko quickly realizes this and teaches him a game she knows he will appreciate.

The direction the film chooses after Yuichi’s second confrontation with his father is interesting. To a certain extent it justifies Yuichi’s anger. But then the second half introduces a number of bizarre subplots that convincingly throw off all logic out the window. There is nothing wrong with this, really, because after all expecting the unexpected is what makes Sion Sono’s films worth seeing.

Himizu was initially scripted as a straightforward adaptation of Minoru Furuya's manga, but Sion Sono made numerous corrections after last year’s deadly earthquake and tsunami struck Japan.

Himizu Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Sion Sono's Himizu arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films.

The high-definition transfer appears to have been sourced from the same master British distributors Third Window Films accessed when they prepared their Bluray release of Himizu for the UK market. Indeed, excluding a very small discrepancy in the brightness settings -- the UK high-definition transfer is slightly darker -- detail, clarity and fluidity are essentially identical. Because the film was shot with the Red One Camera, shadow definition occasionally fluctuates. Perhaps the black levels could have been adjusted a bit to make up for the fact that light, as captured by the digital camera, could create some unevenness, but when viewed on a big screen the film does look very good. Overall image stability is excellent. Lastly, there are no encoding anomalies to report in this review. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

Himizu Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. For the record, Olive Films have provided imposed English subtitles for the main feature. They cannot be turned off from the disc's main menu or via the remote control.

Depth and clarity are outstanding (listen to the strong wind at the 93-minute mark). There is a very good range of nuanced dynamics as well. It is not difficult to tell, however, that the film was shot with a very modest budget as dynamic intensity is limited and different organic sounds occasionally stick out (random noises). The dialog is crisp, stable, and very easy to follow. The English translation is very good.

Himizu Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplemental features on this Blu-ray release.

Himizu Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The more films I see from Japanese auteur Sion Sono, the more I find myself comparing his work to that of Seijun Suzuki. Obviously, they belong to two completely different eras, but their films have an edge that immediately separates them from the crowd. The manner in which they blend violence and humor is particularly interesting, as it reveals a lot about past and current Japanese social and cultural values. Sono initially scripted Himizu as a straightforward adaptation of Minoru Furuya's manga, but he made numerous corrections after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated his country in 2011. RECOMMENDED.