Yoshishige Yoshida

The question mark that hangs over Kiju Yoshida’s 1970 movie Heroic Purgatory is: is he joking? Is this a grand avant-garde modernist movie told in a deliberately non-narrative way, or is it Yoshida parodying the same, as if to pour scorn on an idea prevalent at the time – that you can’t break the bourgeois system using bourgeois tools? Either way, whether he’s joking or being deadly serious, the one thing that will haul you from opening to closing credits nearly two hours later is Yoshida’s astonishing visual sense. This is a fabulously photographed movie full of stark, awkward, angular compositions shot in a high-contrast and often high-key monochrome, and it all takes place … Read more