Solaris
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Suspense in 8K: Kiyoshi Kurosawa on Wife of a Spy
Despite his association with horror films, few contemporary filmmakers have covered as much ground as Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who has shifted back and forth across genres countless times in his prolific 30+ year career. Nevertheless, his latest film, Wife of a Spy, marks his first period piece. It takes place in 1940-41, telling the story of Yūsaku Fukuhara (Issey Takahashi) and his attempts to expose his government’s atrocities in Manchuria, as well as that of his wife Satoko (Yû Aoi), torn between her husband and her country. With a script co-written by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Wife of a Spy unsurprisingly features intricate […]
by Forrest Cardamenis on Oct 12, 2021 -
“My First Studio, Commercially Made Film”: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi on Solaris, Asako I & II and Japanese Film School
When Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour premiered in 2015, the 317-minute film raised a lot of questions, not least of which: who precisely was Hamaguchi, and what has he been doing for the last decade? There were some unkind trade reviews of his first feature films (Passion and The Depths) but not much else in English to draw upon, and his iMDB resume (including a full feature remake of Solaris!) raised more questions than it answered. Metrograph’s recent retrospective provided some clarity. After his first two features, Hamaguchi collaborated on a trilogy of documentaries collecting testimonies from victims of 2011’s Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 22, 2019 -
Watch: Auteur in Space, ::kogonada on Tarkovsky’s Solaris
“It is art that triumphs here, that speaks to the mystery of existence,” suggests the narrator of this new video essay from ::kogonada on Tarkovsky’s Solaris. Envisioning the filmmaker’s psychological meditation in stark contrast to the purported gadgets and gizmos of 2001: A Space Odyssey, “Auteur in Space” breaks down the humanity and pathos at the center of this most unusual sci-fi. Head to Sight&Sound to watch.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 6, 2015
