Japón

Plot summary

The film follows a man going through an acute existential crisis. He leaves Mexico City to go out to the country and prepare for his death, staying with an old Indian widow in her ramshackle home overlooking a desolate canyon. In the vastness of a wild and impressive nature, he confronts the infinite humanity of the widow and oscillates between cruelty and lyricism. His senses become dull, arousing his desires and instincts for sexuality and life.

Reception

Japón has received high accolades from most critics who have seen it, but the film has had relatively limited exposure. It was placed at #100 on The Moving Arts Film Journal's list of the 100 greatest films of all time. The film also won the special mention of the Camera d'Or prize in the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports 80% approval based on 25 reviews from critics, with a "Certified Fresh" rating.

Controversy

Japón contains a number of scenes of real animal cruelty and the British Board of Film Classification demanded cuts for its UK release in accordance with the Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act 1937. The removed scenes are described as an unsuccessful attempt to strangle a bird that then stumbles around injured on the ground and a dog being forced to sing along with a song through the application of a painful stimulus. The film also includes an unsimulated scene of a bird being shot down and then killed by having its head torn off and the (off-camera) slaughter of a pig. Reygadas defended these scenes, as well as the explicit sexual encounters in Batalla en el Cielo, saying, "If you think about it, what’s so outrageous about a naked obese woman? There are plenty of astonishing images in other films with flying cars and such… What you see in my films, you can see it any ordinary day: a gas station, a hunter killing an animal, people making love. I’m not trying to impress anyone with those images; they make sense in the context of my films."

Awards