6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A murder of a young child. The mother that gives life long penance to the four girlfriends that have witness whose the murderer, but in fear and shock can't remember the face of murderer. 15 years later it isn,t the spoken curse of the mother, but the self- created walk of life of the now 4 adult witnesses and their road to despair are shown in five parts.
Starring: Kyôko Koizumi, Yu Aoi, Eiko Koike, Sakura Andô, Miki HayashidaForeign | 100% |
Drama | 17% |
Psychological thriller | 12% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Japanese: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
To an outsider, Japanese culture can often seem incredibly ordered, even regimented, with a homogeneity of behavior that would seem to suggest social unrest and perhaps even crime are not worrisome items on the agenda anymore. Writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa plays with that perceived calm by presenting long, static takes in Penance where only incremental changes take place—at least for a little while, until something devastating like a child’s brutal murder suddenly wafts into the frame. Penance, based on a bestselling book called Shokuzai by Kanae Minato, which became something akin to the Japanese equivalent of The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy, was adapted into a five hour or so miniseries by Kurosawa which aired on Japan’s Wowow network. Slightly reworked into a putative feature film form (which screened theatrically in a limited release), Penance is, like Dragon Tattoo itself, an episodic account of a long ago murder and its subsequent effects on a coterie of characters. Kurosawa structures the first four of the five episodes around one of the witnesses to the crime—and there were indeed witnesses. Interestingly, Kurosawa shows the viewer the killer, at least in profile, so there’s not much mystery in one sense, though who exactly the culprit is and why he kills a sweet little schoolgirl name Emili is left unanswered until the fifth episode, which deals mostly with Emili’s distraught mother Asako (Kyoko Koizumi), who in unable to cope not just with her daughter’s murder, but the fact that four of Emili’s little playmates refuse (for reasons which are never made entirely clear) to identify the killer. Asako calls the girls together a few months after Emili’s murder, at Emili’s putative “birthday” party, to inform the kids that unless they help identify the murderer, Asako will extract “penance” from each of them, on her own seemingly unhinged terms. Flash forward fifteen or so years, and each of these witnesses to horror have entered into adulthood with various amounts of emotional baggage and coping mechanisms.
Penance is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films and Doppelganger Releasing with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. Reportedly shot with the old school HDCAM, Penance has a somewhat shallow and flat appearance in high definition, something that is perhaps exacerbated by the desaturated look that Kurosawa prefers for the bulk of the film. In fact, it's only in the relatively rosier flashbacks to Emilis childhood where anything approaching "pop" shows up in the palette, courtesy of elements like the little girl's bright red herringbone patterned dress. Much of Penance plays out in almost black and white, with Asako's darker outfits contrasting against a largely monochromatic background. Whites occasionally tend to bloom slightly, and minimal banding is in evidence at times as well. There are one or two instances of noise, perhaps surprisingly not in overly dark scenes. Detail is still very strong throughout the bulk of this presentation, with some close-ups offering excellent fine detail (see screenshot 5).
Penance features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 audio in the original Japanese (optional English subtitles are included). The sound mix here is not especially remarkable, since the bulk of the film tends to play out in rather quiet, almost hushed, dialogue scenes, typically between two characters. The doesn't offer much in the way of even excessive stereo separation. Nonetheless, fidelity is excellent and Yusuke Hayashi's varied score, which traffics in everything from quasi-Herrmann cues to bagpipe music, sounds great.
Penance is probably an example of a whole not being quite equal to the sum of its parts, but this putative miniseries' spell is quite notable, even if the underlying "mystery" turns out to be surprisingly drab and tawdry. Kurosawa is a rather quiet, unassuming provocateur, and his sly directorial misdirection is one of Penance's most arresting achievements. As weirdly surreal in its own way as another famous "murder mystery," Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery, Penance also shares a certain Lynchian quality of asking more intriguing questions than it is able to sufficiently answer. Probably best "enjoyed" (if that's the right word, considering the dour subject matter) as a fascinating experiment in relatively long form television, Penance provides several standout moments in what is ultimately a curiously commonplace tale. Technical merits are generally very good, and Penance comes Recommended.
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