“Why must I kill?”
In Edo period Japan, a lone ronin lives in a village helping the farmers tend to their land. One day, a group of outlaw swordsmen enter the village.
Director
Screenplay
Status
Released
Original Language
JA
Jirozaemon Sawamura
Carl and Jessie are half siblings who feel trapped by the existential and economic pressures of living in the small mining town of Canaan, Ohio. Their shared rebellion soon takes on the form of an illicit love affair depicted in interwoven sequences of lusty poeticism and ethnographic vérité. When Jessie becomes pregnant, the tension between the couple’s youthful vitality and the dire realities of rural society leads to consequences both despairing and hopeful.
