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Filmed only a few months after Tatsumi Hijikata’s first explosive public butoh performance, “Gisei” features Hijikata and members of his Asbestos Hall Troupe in a brutal allegory of a closed society. Shot by noted Japanese film scholar Donald Richie, “Gisei” still conveys the shock that Japanese audiences in 1959 must have felt at the birth of Hijikata's ankoku butoh, or "dance of darkness". Richie met Hijikata through mutual friend Yukio Mishima. They decided to collaborate on a film about segregation. Richie memorialized the film in his diary: “It is more than ever about the death of an individual, a distinct kind of human sacrifice.”
Director
Status
Released
Original Language
JA
The Driver is hired by the FBI to help defuse a hostage situation. A disgruntled employee has kidnapped a CEO and has hidden her, demanding $5,088,042. The Driver delivers the money, writing the sum on his hand as instructed by the hostage taker. After he is told that he holds the life of a person in his hand, he is ordered to burn the money. As he complies, the federal agents break in and attempt to subdue the man, who shoots himself in the head before he reveals where the woman is hidden. The Driver then tries to find the hostage before she drowns in the trunk of a sinking car. As a twist, the kidnapped woman is revealed to be the hostage taker's lover. She coldly taunts the dying man in the hospital.
