Death by Hanging

Death by Hanging (絞死刑, 1968) is a black-and-white satire from Japanese master Nagisa Oshima that you can watch online on iFILM. A young Korean known only as R is marched to the gallows for killing two girls — and then the hanging fails to kill him.

What follows is two hours of grim absurdity. R survives the drop but loses his memory; he recalls neither the crime nor his own name. The law cannot put to death a man who feels no guilt for an act he can't remember. So the warden, the prosecutor and the guards set about rebuilding his identity, re-enacting his life and his supposed crime to make him own it once more. The harder they push, the more ridiculous the apparatus of punishment becomes.

Loosely drawn from the real case of a Korean youth executed in Japan in the early 1960s, Oshima shapes it into a Brechtian pamphlet on racism, state guilt and capital punishment. Talky, confrontational and oddly funny, it rewards anyone who likes their cinema argumentative. Stream Death by Hanging online on iFILM.