Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan)

Took me too long to watch Imamura's early work. Finally tackling the Criterion Imamura "Pigs, Pimps and Prostitutes" Box Set. This film is amazing. I totally see how this film got Imamura on the world cinema scene -- an interesting alternative to what was the old school…

Sean Baker

Imperialism's best weapon is perhaps its ability to let the imperialized hang themselves. Once in power, there's not much the Americans have to do to keep it here – the Japanese women are all too eager to marry and please an American man to move up in life and the Japanese…

reibureibu

With utterly gorgeous cinemascope imagery from the first frame to the very last, it's easy to see why this post war Japanese beauty from Shōhei Imamura has a spot in Wes Anderson's top 10 films. Set largely in the grimy back streets of Yukosuka, Pigs and Battleships…

Graham

the last 25 or so minutes of this movie might be one of the most iconic climaxes ive ever seen in any movie... truly a masterpiece

Chris 🍉

My favorite Shōhei Imamura film so far, and it's such a unique vision he has portrayed on the screen here, being a bold and gritty depiction of post-war economic Japan under the shadow of the American military and the uneasy existence between these factions. It's a bizarre…

Sam

Just me and you against the world, baby. It just so happens, the world’s got a few plans of her own. What initially feels cut from the same cloth as McQueens Lovers Rock in that ‘hiding from the outside world with your better half, a sense of security found in a…

Cormac 👑

It seems some Japanese filmmakers didn’t really like America that much, not sure why… Visually one of the most stunning films I’ve seen all year, Pigs and Battleships plays out like two films, one a typical archetypal gangster flick, and the other a biting critique of…

PopcornIdeology

The story here doesn't really unfurl so much as gradually emerge from an overwhelming barrage of visual and textual information. Imamura out of the gate establishes postwar Japan as a frenzy of hustling so chaotic that "organized crime" seems more of a generous assessment…

Jake Cole

The Criterion Challenge 2021: Round 4 Necessarily transgressive and far ahead of its time, Shōhei Imamura's Pigs And Battelships is a portrait of American-occupied post-war Japan and an autopsy of cultural imperialism. Uniquely satirical in detailing the relationship…

Zeke