Black Rain

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Dominique W @RT55261007 02/07/2023 Doesn't live up to its potential, but remains visually and dramatically powerful. See more 12/03/2014 Started to wonder if this movie was based off the Hiroshima museum or vice versa, felt like it covered the same dramatic points. A heavy subject, I think was handled better in Hiroshima Mon Amour. Not an easy topic for a Japanese national to show in film. I admire it's intent, but it kind of felt like Oliver Stones World Trade Center in terms of sentimentality. Don't like criticizing this movie because nuclear warfare in history is something I feel is quite important. The actual shot with the black rain I won't forget though. See more 07/12/2014 The Multiple award winning Black Rain (Japanese title Kuroi Ame) tells the tale a group of survivors facing the aftermath of the devastation caused by the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The movie starts off on that tragic day were 200,000 souls perished along with a city. Bodies are charred black and frozen in time, skin melts off people's bodies, people are blinded by the light of a flash that is described as "brighter than a thousand suns." People who drank water from the poisoned lake die soon after. Black rain falls on the city after the bombing, an effect of the mushroom cloud. The movie is beautifully shot in black and white. The story mainly focuses on Yasuko a young woman who experienced the blast. She lives with her aunt and uncle who are trying to find a marriage partner for her but worry about her prospects because of fear of what the side effects of the black rain that touched her skin. She vows to never marry and live with and take care of them. Perhaps an homage to Yasujiro Ozu's films. There is a side story about Yuichi, a former Imperial Army soldier who suffers from post traumatic stress that is triggered when he hears vehicles passing by (he thinks they're army tanks). A subtle and nuanced film worth seeing. See more 09/02/2012 Even the preachy parts linger. Imamura plants such unforgettable images in the viewerâ(TM)s brain that to watch a film of his is to agree to watch it again and again, whether in your mind or on the screen. See more 06/04/2012 An emotionally exhaustive film about a Japanese family who attempts to adjust to life after the nuclear bombing at Hiroshima. The opening sequence of this film is incredibly haunting, as we witness the tragedy of Hiroshima up close and personal from the villagers point of view. Imamura doesn't shy away from showing us the horrific imagery, from the scorched bodies everywhere to one particularly lasting image of a burnt woman, holding her dead baby, screaming. Most of the film chronicles the everyday life of this one particularly family five years after the bombing. This is a grim experience as we watch this family and their friends slowly wasting away, knowing that ti's only a matter of time until they contract radiation sickness. The narrative focuses on these two parents desperately trying to find a husband for their daughter, Yasuko, whose potential radiation sickness scares off almost all suitors. Everything about this film is handled with extreme care and it's pretty much perfect. See more 04/02/2012 "Black Rain", not to be confused with the Michael Douglas/Jerry Garcia Yakuza crime thriller, is director Imamura Shohei's own scathing commentary on the treatment of those Japanese men and women affected by the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by their own people. With images recounting the memories of that horrific day, I was reminded of no less of a movie than Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" and the atrocities depicted therein. The story tells of a family which, in one scene, watches the explosion from afar. Effected by the nuclear fallout which occurs in the form of a black rain (hence the films title), the characters in the film begin to experience varying symptoms of radiation poisoning, ultimately leading to a painful and tragic death. Routine examinations are given in order to issue papers (almost dignity passports) to those who seem to have escaped any damning effects. Without these papers one may find it incredibly difficult to marry or find work outside of an "infected" community. Shot in black and white, Imamura, in his old age, seems to channel his long dead mentor, the great Ozu Yasujiro, as the family which the film primarily deals with tells of an intensely personal struggle. Yet, as he did in the days of his youth, Imamura breaks free of the polite, restrictive emotions of Ozu and creates a grand indictment of the way in which Japanese government and society dealt with such a tend moment in their own history-- and as a deleted color ending of the film suggests, how they remained to hold on to such a view even the days of its release. Black rain stirs around images in our collective imaginations as if they were somehow related to our own experiences of a nearly forgotten era. It is still hard to relate such destruction to our own past decisions in dealing with the war machine which presented such a threat to life and liberty in the dark days of the second world war. In the end, we all must live with ourselves and each other. See more Read all reviews

Black Rain

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