Yesterday, in my continuing quest to absorb worthwhile investigation media, I watched the 1974 film 砂の器 / The Castle of Sand. It was…beautiful.
The best copy I found publicly was a 6gb x264 720p file, so I signed up for the Criterion Channel free trial to try streaming it from them instead. Turns out it looked basically the same. Maybe the bluray releases are 720p as well? In practice it was a little soft. Would have loved to see every detail on the film as clearly as possible with this one - so many incredible images.
A man was killed. Two cops gotta figure out who he was and how it happened.
And so we are treated to a luxurious quest across, around and through early 70’s Japan. Unhurriedly stacking up the clues bit by bit, dead ends, breakthroughs. The full fat experience, on location on god’s green earth. We are moved from actual place to actual place, by train, by car, by foot, we wait at the station, we meet the yokels, we link up with the local force, we log their facts and conjecture to our notebooks. I kept Google maps open throughout.
Really generous with its outdoor environments, lovingly displaying them to us as the protagonists putter around from this countryside to that. Big long wide shots that slowly zoom down to a little bus a mile away. We soak in the verdant and perfumed 110deg hot tub of summer '71.
Back in town, the cars, the buildings, the signage, the people walking the streets. I love them. I love to look at it.
The movie’s also got this very charming feature of putting up big overlay text at various points, explaining the situation at hand or summing up the conclusions thus far.
Another favorite of mine, movie candy imo, we get lots of closeup shots of neatly designed documents, ledgers, maps to mull over. Also, one of the two main detectives is named Hiroshi Yoshimura, that’s just a little fun treat for daddy.
All the girls are very pretty.
Looks like it’s time for a Turnabout.
Anyways, we all agree, a transcendent and spiritually moving feast, a testament to the ideals of truth, clarity, and the spirit of pastoral adventure, so far. But anyways at a certain point we, the viewers, become hip to who the villain is and we get to spend some more time in his troubled relationships and learn of his successes and goals. This stuff: not as interesting to me.
We get to the end of the investigation after an hour and a half or so, and we get another delicious giblet of movie candy, we get the main guy in a full room of attentive listeners spelling out the entire case point by point in explicit detail reminding us of all the little proper nouns and verbs we’ve logged up to this point. Our boy gets his arrest warrant and we follow him down to the ok if you’re at all interested in watching this movie it’s better if you don’t read this stuff debut of the villain’s anticipated new symphony.
Yep, he’s a nationally revered evil neoclassical composer and conductor. Anyways, that’s not a reveal we all knew this already the whole movie. But right as we’re about to arrest him the symphony starts, and at the very moment … … … we suddenly shift into an entire-other-movie nearly-hour-long flashback of his tragic hidden-identity backstory as the 5-7 year old son of a man dying from pre-treatment era Leprosy, their years-long pilgrimage journey and struggles with homelessness and exile, and his and his father’s eventual permanent separation while still a young boy.
Also this entire extra free-of-charge second-movie is scored by the villain’s still-in-realtime-progress symphony. The movie ends seconds after its completion.
The first Gyakuten Saiban no Natsuyasumi part is better. But wow. What a movie.
Thank you for reading my movie diary, and I wish you a pleasant evening.
