Synopsis
Eros + Massacre (エロス＋虐殺, 1969) — watch online on iFILM. Japanese director Kijū Yoshida builds the film across two timelines that never stop speaking to each other: the life of anarchist Sakae Osugi in 1920s Tokyo, and two students in the 1960s reconstructing that life as a way of interrogating their own.
Osugi lived openly with three women and defended free love with the same intensity he brought to anarchism. In September 1923 — weeks after the Great Kanto Earthquake had leveled much of the city — military police lieutenant Amakasu took Osugi, his companion Noe Ito, and Osugi's six-year-old nephew into custody and killed all three. Mariko Okada, Yoshida's wife and primary collaborator, holds the film together. The cinematography frames each shot as a formal composition rather than a record.
At 168 minutes, this is slow and deliberate. Yoshida isn't mourning Osugi — he's asking what ideas and desires leave behind when the people who carried them are gone. Stream Eros + Massacre (1969) on iFILM.
Starring
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