Black Rain (1989) User Reviews

Shows deep compassion for humanity

[howard.schumann · 9/10 · 1 December 2003]

Shohei Imamaura's Black Rain was released in 1989 just at the onset of the AIDS epidemic, a fact that gives the film about the slow deterioration of Hiroshima radiation victims an added poignancy. The black rain in the title refers to the combination of ash, radioactive fallout, and water that fell one or two hours after the explosion. There have been other books and films about the dropping of the atomic bomb but none as unique and powerful as this one. Based on a novel by Masuji Ibuse who gathered information from interviews and the diaries of real-life bomb victims, the film depicts how an entire family is affected psychologically as well as physically by the bomb years after the original explosion. It is a horrifying vision but one that resonates with deep compassion for humanity.

The film begins in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 as soldiers and civilians go about their normal daily activities. Suddenly a blinding light flashes and a thunderous blast is heard. Almost every single building is destroyed or damaged beyond repair. The first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city is now a part of history. Survivors must somehow restart their lives, unaware of the bomb's devastating after effects. Filmed in high-contrast black and white, the story centers around Yasuko (Yoshiko Tanaka), a young woman who is caught in the radioactive rain as her boat heads back to the city to search for friends and relatives. In Hiroshima, Imamura shows us indelible images that remain with us: a young boy with skin hanging from his body pleads with his brother to recognize him, an older man is in tears over his inability to free his son from piles of debris, a mother is in torment as she rocks the blackened body of her child.

When the family returns to their rural home, Yasuko's life is forever changed. She sees her friends dying around her and waits for the inevitable bouts of radiation sickness that have already affected her Uncle Shigematsu Shimuza (Kazuo Kitamura) and Aunt Shigeko Shimuza (Etsuko Ichihara). Pretending that there is only business as usual, the family denies that the bomb has affected Yasuko. "She forgot how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. Everyone forgot it. They forget the hell of fire and go to rallies like an annual festival. I'm sick of it," says a friend Katayama (Akiji Kobayashi). Yasuko internalizes the tragedy, feeling shame for being different than others and guilty for being contaminated.

When her aunt and uncle try to find her a husband, the eligible men refuse to marry her because of suspicions about her health, even though Shigematsu has copied her diary to prove that she wasn't directly exposed to the bomb. The only suitor she feels comfortable with is another damaged man, Yuichi (Keisuke Ishida), who has a panic attack every time he hears the roar of an engine. At the end, the beauty of life shows itself ever so fleetingly when Yasuko goes to the pond and sees a sight she has been longing for all her life, the king carp jumping in the water, playfully as if to say that beyond despair there is still joy. Sadly we hear on the radio statements by politicians about using the bomb once again in the Korean War. "Human beings learn nothing", says Shigematsu. "They strangle themselves. Unjust peace is better than a war of justice. Why can't they see?" Immamura's Black Rain has hopefully allowed all of us to see more clearly.

Not one of my favorite Imamura films, but powerful, most certainly

[zetes · 9/10 · 23 February 2014]

Shohei Imamura's account of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath. Kazuo Kitamura and Etsuko Ichihara play a middle aged couple who, along with their niece, Yoshiko Tanaka, live on the outskirts of Hiroshima when the atomic bomb is dropped. They live with minor injuries while they explore the horrific aftermath (shown in three different segments, the latter two being flashbacks). The Hiroshima segments in the film are absolutely devastating, just horrifyingly graphic. The bulk of the film takes place five years later. The uncle is trying to negotiate his niece's marriage, but she is tainted in public opinion because of her presence at Hiroshima (people assume she's not healthy, as many other people who were there are not). The film is quietly devastating. I wouldn't consider it one of Imamura's masterpieces, but it's a fine film. Tanaka, in particular, is brilliant, and I loved the score. The black and white cinematography is quite pretty, too.

A bold, sobering portrait of humanity with a plethora of important sociological footnotes demanding to be explored

[TheUnknown837-1 · 8/10 · 21 November 2010]

I am a pioneer to the films of Shohei Imamura. I've been aware of his legacy, which ranks alongside other Japanese directors such as Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, for a long time but I've only just started to expose myself to his creative prowess. The first and only Imamura movie that I have seen to date is his 1989 film "Black Rain" unrelated to the Michael Douglas thriller of the same name. And all I can say is that based on this one experience, I am more than ecstatic to continue delving into this artist's plethora of films.

Mr. Imamura was celebrated for the way that he provocatively told stories that exposed the good and bad in not mankind, but the society of his own country. In this film, for example, he examines the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima on a small group of people. However, as one would not expect from a Japanese filmmaker (or any director, regardless of his race) he does not go for a sentimental approach. He does not go for a cheap shot plot that could be worked into a target for political controversy and false anti-American accusations.

"Black Rain" is not about who dropped the bomb or why it was dropped. What it is about is the way that the bombing or Hiroshima and Nagasaki influenced not only the physical health of Japanese people, but their morality and sense of ethics. After the movie's sobering open, it follows an aunt and uncle and their attempts to find a husband for their niece. The problem is that all three of them were exposed to the radiation of the H-bomb and have, in many ways, been shunned by those who were fortunate enough to escape the nuclear holocaust. During this time, radiation poisoning was like a scarlet letter: a label forewarning the healthy from the condemned as if the victims of Hiroshima had brought this tragedy upon themselves. Just as people in the United States turned on each other after the loss of the Vietnam War, the people of Japan turned on each other following their loss. And Mr. Imamura shows that with astounding detail.

That great New York Times critic Vincent Canby made a sobering remark in his excellent review of the film. Mr. Imamura's intent was not to make us weep, but to open our eyes and make us think about our own morality. Because after all, isn't there a fair amount of scapegoating placed upon people with tuberculosis, cancer, and AIDS in our own society?

Mr. Imamura, like his peer Akira Kurosawa, was clearly an artist with an eye for detail. It can be found all throughout his film, but just look at the opening sequence, depicting the bombing. There is a real sense of horror in the movie as we see the mushroom cloud, the poisonous black rain, and finally the decimation of the city itself. As many characters in this scene note, "Hiroshima is gone" and replaced with an apocalypse created by man.

Mr. Imamura co-wrote the screenplay with Toshiro Ishido and created a very memorable story. He has also has a great cast. Kazuo Kitamura and Etsuko Ichihara are convincing both physically and psychically as the aunt and uncle fearing their own deaths but hoping for a better life for their niece. She is played by Yoshiko Tanaka, a very good actress whom Godzilla fans will likely recognize. Supporing performances are created by Shoichi Ozawa, Keisuek Ishida, Akiji Kobayashi, and many others, all of whom help complete this magnificent, haunting portrait of humanity.

"Black Rain" is a very, very good movie that I think should be required study in not only film and film history classes, but sociology as well. For there is a lot of psychological footnotes made by Mr. Imamura regarding society, ethics, and social status. And furthermore, he had the guts not to wrap up with a throwaway ending, but an ending that leaves you in the place of many Japanese people of the late 40s/early 50s: hoping for the best, but fearing the worst.

terror and pity

[allan825 · 10/10 · 29 July 2002]

The opening of Imamura's masterpiece avoids mere sensationalism in its depiction of the unfathomably horrifying events of August 6th, 1945, in which 90% of Hiroshima and tens of thousands of lives were annihilated in an instant. Instead, Imamura emphasizes the unprecedented strangeness of the catastrophe, focusing on such portentous images as the diabolic mushroom cloud louring silently in the distance and the black rain that spatters a beautiful young woman's face. The rest of the film traces the ramifications of the latter incident, bringing the atomic holocaust and its aftermath (over 100,000 people died of radiation poisoning) down to the intelligible level of the plight of Yasuko (Yoshiko Tanaka) and her small "community bound by the bomb."

The survivors strive for normalcy and continuity, most notably by attempting to find a suitable marriage for Yasuko, but the imminent possibility of radiation sickness shadows every aspect of their lives. Yasuko's potential suitors, naturally enough, shy away from a young woman, no matter how attractive, who might suddenly grow sick and die. Genuine love, when it finally does appear, does so unexpectedly and ambiguously. We are left wondering if love across class lines is more a token of Yasuko's status as "damaged goods" or of a common humanity, thrown into bold relief by harsh circumstances, that transcends class divisions.

The film's classically restrained style intensifies the impact, the spare, eloquent interior shots reminding us that Imamura began his career as an assistant to the great Ozu. Imamura's mastery is evident, for example, in the paired scenes of Yasuko bathing, the first emphasizing her lovely back and legs, the second how her hair is falling out. The shots stand almost as bookends to the narrative's trajectory, distilling its tragic essence. The film's documentary-style realism is violated for expressive purposes several times, perhaps most notably in a scene that lays bare the troubled interior life of a shell-shocked veteran. Both the score by the renowned avant-garde composer Toru Takemitsu and the stunning black and white photography contribute greatly to the film's brooding atmosphere. When, in the final shot, Yasuko's uncle (Kazuo Kitamura), the film's laconic narrator, looks to the vacant sky for a rainbow as a sign of hope and regeneration, the black and white imagery suddenly becomes so poignant that it is almost unbearable. Few films from Japan (or anywhere else, for that matter) could be compared to the great, humanist Japanese masterpieces of the 1950s. This film is one of them. When I finished viewing it for the first time, I sat stunned, unable to move for at least five minutes, overwhelmed as I was by the emotions great tragedy should inspire: terror and pity.

Brilliant, frightening and sobering, all at once.

[SLS410 · 10/10 · 14 July 1999]

It infuriates me no end that, now and forever, I will have to identify this movie (which I consider a masterpiece, and I don't use that word lightly) with the qualifier "Not the Michael Douglas movie!" Not only are the titles the same, but they refer to the same thing- the radioactive fallout that rained upon the survivors of the first nuclear bombings. In Imamura's film, this is no cheap metaphor; the whole movie is about the fallout, physical and emotional, from Hiroshima and the war itself. As the deterioration of a couple and their grown niece becomes more grimly clear, the ironic imagery becomes more potent, from the old clock that is reset each night to the stone gods that gradually pile up outside the heroine's door. (These, in turn, are carved by a shellshocked veteran who is compelled, in a series of tragicomic episodes, to attack anything with a motor that approaches the town.) The bombing day itself is shown in piecemeal flashbacks that are coolly horrifying. Yet "Black Rain" ("NtMDm!") can be watched, even repeatedly, because of Imamura's compassion for his characters. I repeat: a masterpiece.

"The Bomb finally got me"

[chaos-rampant · 19 September 2010]

"The Bomb finally got me" is a phrase used in the film by the survivors of Hiroshima as they succumb to radiation sickness years later. Americans prefer their stories of historic disaster, Titanic or Pearl Harbour, to lead towards catastrophe, to build up to it and give it final word as though it's the main attraction. Imamura opens Black Rain on the fateful 6th of August 1945, it gave me chills to read that title because as a Japanese professor hurries on his way to the train station one can imagine the engines of Enola Gay whirring a few thousand feet above in the air, and probably a clicking noise which no one can hear and now the plane's hatch opens to drop Little Boy, and the professor looks at a clock in the train station and doesn't even have a way to know that life as he knows it will be over in approximately 45 seconds.

Imamura gets over with destruction in the first reel, but he doesn't get over with death. This is a movie that takes place in 1950, five years after the Bomb razed Hiroshima to the ground, and the Bomb still looms heavy over everyone's life, like something foreboding and inescapable that you can only see with the corner of the eye, and Imamura's quiet domestical drama takes place in the shadow of all that so that life and death don't happen in one final upflare of heartbreaking disaster but in spite of it, in dogged defiance, on a bed in a quiet farmhouse in the countryside as though what happened five years before was only a bad dream.

I read a review that said Black Rain shows Imamura's apprenticeship to Yasujiro Ozu like no other of his films, and that may be true, for the most part this is a quiet provincial drama about an uncle trying to marry his young niece to anyone who may have her while prospective grooms flee at the idea that she may be sick with radiation after her exposure to the black rain. But then Imamura cuts to flashbacks of a city in flames, cauterized victims of the blast staggering around blind, skin melting off their bodies, faces deformed. It's a monstrous sight of hell on earth, and it's amazing to me how restrained is Imamura, in both depicting carnage and evoking sympathy for the survivors, the sick and the mad, who must go on with their lives.

For people who have seen and loved Come and See, this should be an interesting counterpoint. In that film Elem Klimov doesn't spare us any details, wherever he can find atrocity he's there to show us; Imamura on the other hand shows us the tragedy of war for a moment and then lifts it from our eyes, as to the survivors, literally to inhabit the memory. This is life after death.

very moving

[eileenmchenry · 10/10 · 17 January 2004]

This is a pretty faithful adaptation of Masuji Ibuse's novel, "Black Rain." Like the book it is very moving and thought-provoking. The story revolves around a couple's attempts to see their niece successfully married. They are having trouble finding suitors because of a rumor that she suffers from radiation sickness, after walking through Hiroshima on the day of the bombing. Well filmed, well acted, moving, tragic, horrifying and funny.

Compelling

[paulmartin-2 · 8/10 · 4 August 2007]

It was evident until the final credits that this film was made in 1989, as all the elements of its production were made to look 1960's - the acting, the characterisations, the sets and the props all had an aesthetic from an earlier time.

The film opens to the moments prior to the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and how this tragic incident affects one family: a young woman, Yasuko, who lives with her aunt and uncle. Even in black and white, and using special effects that are quite primitive by modern standards but emotive and effective nonetheless, the depictions of the immediate aftermath of the bomb are quite horrific. Family members become unrecognisable to each other, others resemble zombies as they wander the streets bedraggled and in shock.

The title refers to rainfall that fell soon after the bomb, which was mixed with radioactive ash, and in which Yasuko is caught. Rumors of Yasuko's being in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing affect her marriage prospects and it is later learnt that the black rain is indeed causing sicknesses. The film is concerned not just with the physical effects of the bomb on the Japanese, but on the social and psychological damage that was wrought.

I found the film compassionate and a fascinating journey into a unique culture. While the film is primarily concerned with the pain felt by one family, the film's gentle political message is relevant today and probably for all time - wars have horrific consequences, and should not be entered into unless absolutely necessary. It is said that history repeats itself, and the current leaders of the 'Coalition of the Willing' have learned nothing. While atomic warfare has not resurfaced since 1945, other deadly after-effects have. This film is compelling viewing.

don't confuse it with Ridley Scott's potboiler, please...

[mjneu59 · 7/10 · 7 November 2010]

Not many Japanese films have dared to confront the shame and neglect felt by victims of post-Hiroshima atomic fallout, which makes this sober, emotional portrait of slow death by radiation poisoning one of the more emotional dramas in recent memory. Most of the story revolves around a young woman unable to marry because of her condition, with vivid flashbacks to the chaos of August 6th, 1945, The recreation of Hiroshima after the blast is unflinching in its horror, but can't begin to suggest the impact of the actual devastation, and these scenes are often at odds with the rest of the film: a gentle domestic drama characterized more by its reserve, dignity, quiet poetry, and sometimes over-earnest anti-war appeals ("…war is bad", observes one character). Even with such powerful subject matter, the lasting impression of the film is one of grace, subtlety, and profound sadness.

A sad human story set in larger political context

[freakus · 9/10 · 25 June 1999]

I didn't really concentrate on the larger Genocidal aspects of the story (although the horrific images at the beginning are very powerful). I was really taken with the human story of the girl and her family. Imagine living your life not knowing if you have a time bomb ticking away inside you. I was really wrenching to see Yasuko being rejected as "tainted" by the bomb. The image that stays with me most is when Yasuko stands before the mirror combing her hair, silently watching it come out in clumps.

One rough watch

[BandSAboutMovies · 7/10 · 8 January 2021]

You know, I don't think anyone watches a Shohei Imamura movie to have a good time. This is a really rough one, explaining how Japan dealt with the aftermath of two nuclear bombs dropped on their country and how the hibakusha* - people who were marked and sickened by the blasts - were dealt with.

The hibakusha faced discrimination when it came to prospects of marriage or work, as most people did not know what the consequences of radiation sickness would be, with many believing it to be hereditary or even highly contagious. As a result, even their children were discriminated against.

Based on the book by Masuji Ibuse, the title refers to the literal black rain that fell on Japan in the days after the two blasts, as firestorm-generated, soot-filled rain with high concentrations of fission products and carbon-14 came down on the survivors.

Honestly, when I first started watching this, I was convinced that it was a movie from the 1950's. That's how perfectly the era is captured, as we meet Shizuma Shigematsu and hear and see his journal entries about the differences between Hiroshima in 1945 and five years later.

There's a harrowing moment in the opening as Shigematsu wanders the streets and sees first-hand the damaged people wandering the streets, seeking cool puddles of water to die in. Their skin is literally falling from their bones and one asks, "Do you not recognize me?"

By 1950, some normalcy has returned for people who weren't in the blast. Shigematsu and his wife Shigeko become the guardians for their niece Yasuko (Yoshiko Tanaka, who was in the pop group The Candies and appeared in Godzilla vs. Biollante; she sadly died of breast cancer at the age of 55. She won the Best Actress Award at the 14th Hochi Film Award for this movie).

As time goes on, so many of their friends and family die from radiation sickness and Yasuko's prospects for marriage become more unlikely. In the end, she forms a bond with the poor artist Yuichi, who has been so damaged that he sees cars as American tanks.

This film pretty much swept the 1990 Japanese Academy Awards, winning Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Film, Best Lighting, Best Music Score, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress. All of these are well-deserved, as this is a stunning movie that will stick with you forever.

The cast worked hard for these awards, as they were forbidden by Imamura to leave location, as he didn't want them to have a break from the oppressiveness of the past and begin to enjoy the comforts of modern Tokyo before the film was complete.

In America, we were always taught that the Japanese would never surrender and we had to do this. That may be an easy thought if you haven't had to watch burned babies as ash in a mother's arms. This is a brutal, uncompromising movie that even goes further, showing how a struggle for things to get better can exist side by side with a worry that this could all happen again.

A haunting black-and-white masterpiece

[renelsonantonius · 10/10 · 5 October 2009]

In the light of the recent typhoon that hit the country hard (that is, typhoon Ondoy), I thought it upon myself to re-watch "Black Rain" (1988, Japan), Shohei Imamura's haunting black-and-white masterpiece on the destruction and after-effects of the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima in the closing period of the Second World War. The destruction and impact of both catastrophes (war and typhoon) may differ in degree and quality, but the trauma and scar (physically and psychologically) nevertheless are still there.

It is a testament to a film's power that its images remain as potent and as indelible as when they were first seen. It is only that the difference now, in my case, is that watching those images has assumed a greater sense of poignancy and potency due to a first-hand experience of a near-monumental weather calamity. There is a sense of kinship, so to speak.

Imamura has always been one of my favorite Japanese filmmakers. His films are always a pleasure to watch because of their anarchy, sensuality and earthiness:"The Pornographers:Introduction to Anthropology" (1966), "Eijanaika" (1981), "Warm Water Under a Red Bridge" (2001), his two Palme d'Or-winners "Ballad of Narayama" (1983) and "The Eel" (1997), to name some. Given the mood of his films, who would have thought that he once served as an assistant director to Yasujiro Ozu, Japanese cinema's most austere and minimalist filmmaker? But then, it is Ozu's rigorous formality and domesticity that Imamura was rebelling against.

But then again, with "Black Rain" one can unmistakably sense Ozu's imprints. The father (or the father-figure) being intent on seeing his daughter get married before time runs out on both of them, and the stillness and calmness of the scenes showing all members of the family together (notably, the dinner scenes or in Ozu's film lexicon, the tatami) are something that the revered master filmmaker would perennially explore in his works ("Tokyo Story", "Late Spring"). Essentially, the over-all subdued and deliberate quality of "Black Rain" is a remarkable contrast to the bacchanalian chaos and instinctual drive of Imamura's entire filmography.

Still, this is not to say that watching the film would not be an altogether unsettling experience. "Black Rain", as aptly described by American film reviewer Leonard Maltin, is "filled with haunting black-and-white images." In the film's first 15 minutes, Imamura pulls no punches in showing the immediate and graphic horrors of the nuclear bombing, one after another (stiffly-burnt bodies, hanging flesh, walking dead, fires and debris everywhere, madness all over). An assault to the viewers' senses, definitely it is, coupled with Takashi Kawamata's somber b/w photography (he did the lensing in Yoshitaru Nomura's crime drama "The Incident") and Toru Takemitsu's chilling score (he did the music in such classics as Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" and Masahiro Shinoda's "Double Suicide").

Even during the film's supposed "tranquil" phase (that is, five years after the atomic bombing), one can still never have a sense of contentment and order, with the uneasiness and pain still being strongly felt by the survivors, not only in terms of failing physical health, but more so in terms of psychological trauma and social stigma. The human race, it now indisputably appears, has been destined to bear the legacy of the Bomb, for as long as it lives.

I already wrote a piece about "Black Rain" some years earlier (posted in IMDb.com), but only in comparison to Volker Schlondorff's magnificent "Tin Drum", another film dealing with monumental human folly and global catastrophe. Moreover, it has never been my practice to write twice about a film that I already wrote something about before. It is in the light of the recent weather calamity that devastated our country that I was prompted to re-visit and write something again about this remarkable Imamura film, as there is a wealth of lessons to be learned from both the film and the recent event in regards the imperfections and dangers of scientific knowledge and action, and the long-term scars and wounds inflicted by a wide- scale destruction (whether human- or nature-induced).

There have been a number of films dealing with nuclear holocaust and destruction ("Testament", "Threads", "The War Game", each situated within their own respective countries);and "Black Rain" stands among them, if not more so, for both its unapologetic and somber portrayal of individual and communal disintegration brought about by atomic devastation and the fact that it has a historical event as its basis.

Few weeks from now, another disaster film from Hollywood, Roland Emmerich's "2012", will finally hit (no pun intended) the big screen. As we all know, this American director's bunch of "disaster/apocalypse" films--"Independence Day", "Godzilla", "The Day After Tomorrow"-- serves no other purpose than to be of mere entertainment value, with no real insight into the nature and wisdom of apocalyptic disaster and the human condition being affected. I wonder how this "gigantic" movie would exploit the trauma, disorientation and apprehensions still being experienced by our people because of the recent weather calamity. To say that this flick is a precautionary tale would probably be no more than an overstatement.

But yes, I will still watch "2012".

Sad.

[jeff-201 · 7/10 · 13 April 1999]

Nothing is worse than the genocides of our world's history. This film attempts to describe the horror faced by one particular family - a common narrative device - in the atomic bomb world of Hiroshima. The most memorable parts are the graphic and saddening images that the people of Hiroshima face in the aftermath of war. The story, however, becomes more concerned with the effect on a specific group of people and how they cope with getting on with their lives; in other words, if you don't really care about them, the film grows boring. It's hard not to care, though, when a family's homeland is wrecked. I'm not sure if I would recommend this film, because it says very little politically and, honestly, did not keep my interest in the family's troubles.

Could Have Been Really Dramatic, But It Veers Quickly Into More Of A Melodrama

[ccthemovieman-1 · 3/10 · 8 July 2007]

To preface my remarks on the film, I know the topic is horrendous and words can't adequately express the compassion any decent person would have for people dealing with the post-horrors of an atomic bomb dropped near them.

However, this film doesn't really deal with in a horrific way except for the first 10 minutes. Some of the images there are horrifying, and should be as a reminder what devastation nuclear weapons can produce. Seeing burned people walking around aimlessly or man combing his hair and clumps of hair coming out, etc., is not a pretty sight.

But after the first dozen minutes, this Japanese film concerns people dealing with the aftermath of Hiroshima in the mid-to-late '40s. I actually found the story developing quickly into a boring soap opera.

Almost all the story occurs five years after the bomb and deals mainly with one family's problems at that point. This is why it became more of a melodrama than some shocking story of nuclear disaster. It's simply a story about how these people got on with their lives from about 1950 on, whether one of the women was permanently damaged and if so, should she marry?

This could have been a real impact film but it didn't go in that direction

A study of a community of Japanese in 1950 trying to move on from the horrors of Hiroshima.

[treywillwest · 10/10 · 18 February 2013]

I'd say this is the second best film I've ever seen by Shohei Immamura, which is high praise as my fave film by Immamura is one of the best films I've ever seen, "The Ballad of Nariyama".

Like "Nariyama" this is a portrait of a community in a particular time and place: a small Japanese town not so far from Hiroshima in 1950. While trying to move on with their lives after the holocaust, the people of the town continually wonder if the unnatural effects, if the black rain of the after-math, have poisoned them all. In this context, they attempt to arrange marriages under suspicion of each other's health.

And, as in his great "Ballad" Immamura dramatically and suddenly shifts tone in ways that are both beguiling and magnificent, going from the crudely and cruelly hilarious to the warmly humane to the savage, sometimes in the same scene. Immamura's anti-humanism, his reduction of humanity to just another species of animal striving to collectively survive, is also his humanism. He understands himself as part of his collective subject- in the grand scale humanity, on a more modest scale the Japanese people.

The flashbacks to Hiroshima are properly unspeakable yet unforgettable. In just a few horrible frames we understand the draconian measures adopted by people under the worst kind of siege- the regimentation of the seemingly healthy from the visibly sick from the (literally) melting. Part of the wonder of the film is the way it shows people moving on with near-normal lives only a few years after having experienced such a collective trauma, one that we obviously don't dwell on in the U.S, but that, as the film confrontationally makes clear, has not been adequately addressed by Japanese popular culture. Two of the most sympathetic characters in the film find solace in each other by being able to share their traumatic memories, something the other characters acknowledge, in hushed tones, is not possible for most Japanese to do.

The search for a suitable husband for a daughter is, as mentioned above, the main narrative thrust of the post-war scenes. This is a traditional subject of much Japanese folklore. But the ways this "1950s search for a good Japanese man for the pretty Japanese daughter" is shot- in black and white, with a stationary, waist-high camera (all very uncharacteristic for Immamura in the 1980s) convinced me that he meant the film as a parody of sorts of the post-war work of Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu often acknowledged the war- that young men died in it,etc- but he never acknowledged the American occupation. At one point in one of Ozu's films the main character says "I'm glad the Americans won." This is not Ozu's fault. The Americans imposed strict censorship on all forms of Japanese media in the decades following the war. I think Immamura is trying to show that Ozu's celebrated depictions of post-war Japanese society are, if in some ways brilliantly observational, also, by necessity, somewhat artificial.

It is, of course, one of the few simplistic truths of history that it was for the better that the Axis powers lost the second world war. But this work reinforces how the final victory of the Allies was achieved by a crime against humanity, the nuking, and continued occupation and nuclearization of Japan, worthy of the offenses of the Nazis or the Showaists. It made me think that the Firesign Theater was correct when they held that we actually lost World War II. ("We were FIGHTING fascism, remember?")

On the harm that war can do, years after the last bombs have fallen

[wavecat13 · 10/10 · 17 October 2023]

This is a deeply sad and painful movie, yet Imamura still manages to make it fascinating to watch. The story begins with the horrors of the atomic blast at Hiroshima, but the real focus is on the aftermath. It tells the story of Yasuko, a young woman who was exposed to what the characters call "the flash," and the efforts of her family, her uncle especially, to find her a husband and a normal life. But suitors mostly steer clear (because of the possibility that she has radiation sickness), and she turns down opportunities to work since the family is counting on her becoming a bride. It is an interesting look at life in postwar, rural Japan, as well as a portrayal of the miseries that war can inflict on people years after the conflict has died down. Adapted from a novel by Masuji Ibuse.

Symbolic and complex

[hubertguillaud · 8/10 · 4 February 2022]

After the end of the world, it's still the end of the world, Imamura tells us in Black Rain. In a symbolic and complex, powerful and sobering film about the bomb and even more so about its most intimate consequences. In the remote countryside of untouched Hiroshima, it is inside the bodies that radioactivity corrupts, it is the minds that it upsets and the decorum that it brings down.

This is what the post apocalyps really looks like

[frankde-jong · 9/10 · 1 September 2021]

History is written by the winners. Much the same is truth for war films. Most films about the Second World War are told from the viewpoint of the Allied forces. Films from a German perspective are scarce and even then often made by a non German, as is the case with "Germania anno zero" (1948, Roberto Rosselini, Italy) and "Lore" (2012, Cate Shortland, Australia). Only a film as "Die Mörder sind unter uns" (1946, Wolfgang Staudte) is a film about Germany told by a German.

Talking about the Asian part of the Second World War, "Black rain" (1989, Shohei Imamura) is a film about the Japanese side of the story made by a Japanese. The film can be compared to "Germania anno zero" in the sense that it is situated in the aftermath of Word War II.

What dominates the lives of the characters in the movie is however not the ruins of the city and food shortages. The film is after all located not in Berlin but in a small village near Hiroshima. Many inhabitants of this village were near Hiroshoma when the atomic bomb fell, and they may be contaminated with radio active pollution. Fear for radio active related diseases falls as a shadow over their daily life, and this fear is confirmed from time to time by yet another death in this small village.

Related as it is with the dropping of the atomic bomb, the film is not really anti American. I would say on the contrary, because the film is critical about the way Japanese society adapted to the loss of the war and the victims of this bomb.

The main character of the film is Yasuko. She was a teenager when the bomb fell, and now she is in her mid twenties. Her aunt and uncle (who raised the girl) are very anxious to find a suitable husband (almost like in an Ozu film). Every potential husband is however afraid that Yasuko might have become infertile. To make things even worse, not only outsiders but also Yasuko herself begins to rate herself as a second class citizen because she was "there" on that direful moment.

The film is in black and white. Rogert Ebert suggests that the reason is to let the opening with the apocalyptical attack not become to dominating. I think this makes sense. The film begins with the attack in 1945, but the essence of the film is the period from 1950 onward. How to forestall that spectators are so intimidated after the opening scene that the essence of the film eludes them? After all you can't film the attact with the atomic bomb as an ordinary bombing. I think the answer of Imamura to film in black and white is a wise one.

The post apocalyptical film or doomsday film is a subgenre of the sceince fiction film. In "Black rain" we can see what te post apocalyps really looks like. Maybe less spectacular than in science fiction, but no less dramatic.

Life after horror

[miroslava stern · 1 December 2001]

The powerful images(dressed in black and white for being more "comfortable") of Hiroshima after the nuclear attack open a film that talks about the horrible mark left by the war in the mind and souls of survivors. Taking apart the war consequences the film reminds me Ozu´s films, with the worries of a traditional japanese family in a changing society (main stream in Ozu´s filmography) and even it has a little smell of Ford´s film about people in rural towns.... But a I said before the shadow of war adds a bitter touch of drama. The most remarkable image of the film: those that shows the intimacy of Yasuko and his relationship with the "ray who kills" consequences

P.D: Yasuko looks like the preferred actress of Ozu, Tetsuko hara

A Nutshell Review: Black Rain

[DICK STEEL · 6/10 · 15 September 2007]

WWII movies are a dime a dozen, and so are many movies which touch on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Japan still remains the only unfortunate victim of an actual bombing incident using atomic/nuclear weapons, and I suppose any movie that touches on this topic out of Japan, deserves a watch for the perspective it brings. Black Rain is no different.

Based on the novel by Masuji Ibuse, Black Rain referred to the rain which fell just after the mushroom cloud ballooned, and because of the high radioactivity content in the atmosphere, what fell from the sky was actually contaminated, and was reportedly black in colour. But the film isn't a meteorological exercise, but rather one which is rather rich in its drama on the sufferings of both the direct and indirect victims of the A-bomb, as well as the psychological scars inflicted upon, and endured by surviving soldiers of the war.

Putting its fulcrum on lead character Yasuko (Yoshiko Tanaka), who was near Hiroshima enough for the black rain to fall upon her, it tells of the prejudice everyone else has of her. Faced with social discrimination which hinders her ability to get married, and worse, the need to be isolated into a small village of survivors from the A-bomb, it tells of the horrors of war of the worse kind, and that's the aftermath despise one has to suffer through to the end of one's natural life. Though the village she resides in has interesting characters who encourage one another and keep the spirits up, there is always an overhanging ominous feel to the place, as one by one the inhabitants have to face up to the inevitable.

It's not always doom and gloom in the movie, as it does provide some avenue for much needed comedy to elevate the depressing mood. But the more powerful scenes were those in the beginning. While not possessing snazzy special effects to recreate the events on the tragic day, its simplicity brought the message and visuals out vividly enough. There is no big bang, but rather a lone bomb parachuting down is adequate to send down chills of the unfortunate and expected. The direct victims as portrayed here were the most realistic (even when watched today) of many films that I've seen, and the reminders are to the point and stark.

But the flaws in this black and white movie was the degeneration of the narrative into serious melodrama which for the most parts dragged on for just too long. Clocking just over 2 hours, it actually felt a lot more, and I thought if it could have tightened up the pace a bit with the exclusion of some unnecessary scenes involving too many side characters, and should also have kept focus instead on a select few to support the main lead.

Black Rain though serves its point, in being an anti-war / nuclear bomb movie, and boy does it actually inflict a test of your patience to finish watching it.

As exquisite and engrossing is it is distressing and impactful

[I_Ailurophile · 10/10 · 27 November 2021]

Deep uncertainty, lingering doubts, chronic health problems, and severe PTSD are forefront in the narrative of survivors of Hiroshima struggling to return to a normal life years after the bombing. As a viewer, even these generally pale in comparison to the absolutely horrific flashbacks to the immediate aftermath of the bombing as survivors navigate the ruined city. The wretched incongruities of life and death that populate the narrative are difficult to stomach, and I can hardly say that 'Black rain' is an enjoyable movie experience. But it is roundly excellent, and tells a dire story that remains very important to tell. This is well worth two hour of anyone's time.

There is a definite narrative here, relating the effort of a man and his wife to seek a husband for their niece. However, the film is much more a portrait of people trying to find peace with what they have suffered, and continue to suffer. In that telling - though punctuated by moments of grisly, terrible remembrance - the picture broadly maintains a flat, detached tone, letting the tableau speak for itself. And it surely does, in no small part thanks to a fantastic cast, all slipping into their roles so readily that it feels like they and their characters are one and the same. Every instance of anxiety, grave concern, heartfelt compassion, and tired resignation is realized with an ease and dexterity that defies the inherent artifice of the medium. Special mention must be made for Yoshiko Tanaka, as hapless young woman Yasuko, and Kazuo Kitamura, as her uncle Shigematsu; together forming the center of the tale, they above all are bring extraordinary nuanced range to their portrayals.

Moreover, every aspect of the production is outstanding. Sound design, set design and filming locations, costume design - and particularly where applied in specific instances, lighting, practical effects, hair, makeup, and more. The core narrative is quietly engrossing and increasingly heartbreaking as the human drama plays out, and scenes depicting Hiroshima in the war are visceral and devastating. Whether one is assessing the writing, direction, technical craft, or acting, 'Black rain' is all but flawless from start to finish. If in the middle portion of the runtime the picture is perhaps not wholly engaging, it's only to prime viewers for the home stretch, where the inexorably tragic totality of the story comes fully to bear. In both the harrowing bang that opens 'Black rain' and in the sorrowful whimper that ends it the movie is profoundly affecting, and between these bookends the attempt at resuming ordinary life fits neatly and, in retrospect, all the more poignantly.

Between the tone adopted throughout, scenes of awful carnage, and the very personal adversity that define the title, this is hardly going to be for everyone. It's not pleasant, and "entertaining" is not a good word to describe this movie, either. It is, however, wondrously absorbing, at length tremendously impactful, and greatly satisfying as a viewer. For anyone open to the acutely distressing nature of events that such films make manifest, this earns a very strong recommendation - yet even at that, given the direct connection to abhorrent war crimes and their lasting effects, I think it's safe to say 'Black rain' becomes essential. The more I think on it, the more I truly appreciate this; if you have the opportunity to watch, don't pass.

Very Grim And Fairly Predictable.

[net_orders · 7/10 · 21 September 2016]

Viewed on DVD. Score = seven (7) stars; subtitles/translations = four (4) stars. (Editorial Note: The horror of witnessing nuclear annihilation is impossible to image (at least it is for me). The horror of just visiting holocaust museums in Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki may leave you depressed for days (like it did me).) Director Shohei Imamura tries mightily (and within budget) to re-image Hiroshima's vaporization, but soon moves on from this impossible task to more familiar (and more-or-less predictable) territory by concocting a post apocalyptic Shomin-Geki (house drama) tale about the lives and deaths of nuclear-attack survivors. But this, of course, is far from the usual Shomin-Geki trivia of old. Those suffering from radiation poisoning are shunned (even made fun of) by the healthy, as survivors seem to be "insufficiently" Japanese! Traditional match makers have to deal with the very real possibility that their prospective grooms and/or brides may die suddenly and without warning (even after having survived for many years)! The film contains many more riveting vignettes for those tying to some how image what it might be like to survive a nuclear blast. Cinematography (semi wide screen, black and white) is good, but scene lighting is a bit on the dark side. Restoration is fine. The film's score is performed by a mid-sized orchestra that adds much to the on-screen drama. Dialog subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen, and in two colors when two characters are chatting. This is a nice touch, but translations are often too long given their fast flash rate. Expository information (sometimes superfluous) appears at the top of the screen in white. This dual use of data streams is a great concept, but very poorly executed. Expository data streams also are often too long given their fast flash rate. And they frequently compete with dialog subtitles for the viewer's divided attention. Data-overload city! (Both or either one can be turned off.) Viewing this movie is far from a fun experience, but, nonetheless, a recommended--if not necessary--one. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

"Kuroi ame" (Japan) versus "Black Rain" (USA) is an absurd confrontation

[AndreiPavlov · 10/10 · 4 September 2012]

To start with, both movies of 1989 - "Kuroi ame" (Japan) and "Black Rain" (USA) - are quite familiar to me and they both are quite impressive: the former - as a historical drama and the latter - as a dramatic crime/action. It was the American feature that made me stumble upon "Kuroi ame" (it really had looked strange to me that the movies with the same title had been of the same year as well). To compare the two is futile. They do not handle the same material (though, the Ridley Scott feature touches upon the black rain topic appropriately to say the least) and belong to different genre sections. Watch "Black Rain" after "Kuroi ame" and you will have an impression that the doppelgangers of those young Japanese bikers, who appear at the very end of "Kuroi ame", have a story of their own in "Black Rain".

My review concerns the Japanese movie (no surprise) that consists of two parts (surprise?): the original black and white feature plus the colour "alternate" ending, which is actually the real ending of the movie with the events that never collide with the first part, but add new details to the tragic story. Don't be afraid to watch the colour excerpt. It will not spoil the atmosphere of the movie: it will expand your impression. No use re-telling the story itself, so just a few words about some striking features of "Kuroi ame" that impressed me the most.

The dwellers of Hiroshima right after the bombing are quite disturbingly depicted – the director does in cinema what previously was brilliantly done in anime ("Hadashi no gen" – remember?).

The young girl experiences radiation sickness with uncommon patience and courage (no fits of suicidal behaviour), losing her beauty and strength every single day.

Stone figures of those who perished after the bomb had fallen look like the frozen corpses of those who caught the atomic flesh-melting flash.

The unstable young Japanese man fights any vehicle as soon as he hears the engine running but can fight his illness when he is helping his beloved.

The final frames, showing the modern Japan, westernized to a high degree, selling out pieces of Hiroshima to the tourists, and quite possibly not knowing definitely who dropped the bomb and why (and perhaps not caring much), are really an embodiment of the words "unjust peace", which you hear at the very end of the film.

Suppose, the director had a headache: either he should include the colour part into the original black and white feature or not (Mr Takashi Miike told us in the interview that the events of the colour part were not in the novel itself). Well, my point is that he should have. It draws a good bold line under the title and keeps the message of the film running. The viewers do not have philosophical exchanges whether the girl survives or not any more (you could only predict, if you had not seen the colour part), but can dwell upon more profound topics instead (like the one raised by the dying man in the film). And the bloody teeth would have never impressed the audience like this, if it were not in colour.

No drum roll, just a 10 out of 10 for a very good reason. Thank you for attention.

Japanese censors lopped off the last 19 minutes!!

[pixrox1 · 7/10 · 19 February 2013]

BLACK RAIN's 2nd assistant director Takeshi Miike was still alive to help explain to American audiences how this seeming black & white retro piece of imperial propaganda filmed from a 1930s mindset actually was met to come full circle with a WIZARD-OF-OZ style transformation to color for a 19-minute closing segment in which actress Yoshiko Tanaka (who in BLACK RAIN represents the entire civilian population of Japan) was literally tortured till her feet bled by writer\director Shohei Imamura as her guilty conscience compels her to trudge through every imaginable weather and geographical extreme (while those of the "innocent" generation born after WWII pelt her with objects from buses and trains) in a quest to ask for absolution at each of Japan's 88 Shinto\Buddhist temples (ending with her turning into a stone among the rest of her late family members at the foot of temple #88). While most Americans (and many Japanese people themselves, such as Miike, Tanaka, and Imamura) would regard this original color closing as the bare minimum of penance required from a country which aggressed to conquer the rest of its continent, sneak-attacked Pearl Harbor, raped and\or killed millions--all under the well-publicized government-sanctioned banner at the time of "total warfare" (defined by the Japanese as meaning EVERY man, woman, and child was equally active and responsible for the war crimes they knowingly committed), the Japanese censors of 1989 still were powerful enough to get this ending cut (though fortunately hidden away till now by Miike), with the pathetic black & white NO EXIT-style close substituted in its place. What a shame (though not as much of a shame as WWII).

Without Which I Would Be Incomplete

[kurosawakira · 8/10 · 13 April 2013]

It is not prerequisite knowledge for the enjoyment of any Imamura that he worked as an assistant director to Ozu – most famously for "Tôkyô monogatari" in 1953 – and that it was in part this experience with the mentor-director, largely viewing both cinema and culture differently from the younger radical-apparent, that guided Imamura to his path. But, and this is a rather sharp "but", it lends certain mouth-watering anticipation when Imamura, late in his career, turns to Ozu's era, his lighting, and in many ways the kind of small domestic-centered drama very much in Ozu's preference.

Not to say "Kuroi ame" (1989) is some sort of a homage (which it is not yet as if that were a bad thing) or competition, nevertheless the conversation is there. The film is very recognizably Imamuran in its rich introspection into the Japanese sense of self during a time of losing oneself, how and what society is and what it becomes in times like that, and art in the middle of it – film in the middle of it as a witness. Isn't all of Imamura about this?

As is, "Kuroi ame" is among Imamura's most accomplished works. A testament to his ability not to overemphasize (banalize, sentimentalize), he lets the film unfold with a mere gentle narrative push, and a narrative of such gravity certainly gains its own momentum. Heartbreaking from start to finish, the film is not complacently pulling any strings – making loud speeches or adding cues here and there to let us on when to feel and what and how.

The effect of war; the cause of death, life, suffering. In each Imamura there is that one moment that takes on a life of its own and typifies the whole film, in ways becoming its own film altogether. Here it is that one short scene with the man they meet during their escape from the city. They're in the woods, for the moment lying down, gathering their strength. The man, shell-shocked, recounts how his son was left trapped in the ruins, able only to call for his father to help, the father unable to do anything without risking his own life. He leaves, hearing his son calling after him, facing certain death. As a father this is among the most heartbreaking experiences in film that I have come across, not something I necessarily want to experience again but without which I know I would be incomplete.

So it is with this film. It's amazing really to think of Imamura being able to create works of art from decade to the next. Films of integrity, not pandering to the lowest common denominator (whatever that is or whatever he might have thought it to be), neither risking for risk's sake, rather for the film's sake. It sounds so noble one may be inclined to snort, but just might be the most difficult thing not only in film but in all life.