With the official release of the Japanese New Year's name "Reiwa", the Heisei era, which began in 1989, will also come to an official end.
Although the golden age of Japanese cinema stood in the 1950s and 1960s, there was no doubt that a large number of excellent films emerged in the 30 years of Heisei. Because the age is closer to us, many works are more familiar to us.
Here, I would like to share with you the top ten Heisei movies in my heart. Just throw bricks and stones, I believe you also have your own favorite ten.
1
"Even then it wasn't me"
2006| Director: Zhou Fang Zhengxing
"Even this is not what I did" is the pinnacle of one of the most important authors of the Heisei era, Zhou Fang Zhengxing, and is the no.1 of the top ten newspapers of that year.
The low-prolific Zhou Fang Zhengxing's previous work was "Talk About Love, Dance" 10 years ago, and the next work", "Dance, Chaplin", is also 5 years apart.
What makes this film so prominent and important is that it is a rare courtroom film in the history of Japanese and entire East Asian cinema.
Most of the court films we are familiar with are from the United States, often through a series of reasoning and debate, to make a confusing case clearer and clearer, and finally to the innocent suspect who has been wronged. Behind this is the principle of "presumption of innocence" recognized by legal scholars.
And "Even This Is Not What I Did" does the opposite, it restores the case a little bit, after revealing the facts, it has made us fully understand that the protagonist Che Ping is likely to be wronged. But Japan's stubborn and decadent judicial system has upheld the absurd principle of "presumption of guilt" for many years.
When people thought that the case would be unjustified in a way that turned around, the end of the film still struck the audience with a stick.
It is likely that the innocent Person Tohei, who was eventually found guilty, did not have the privilege of becoming the rare 1%, which is the reality of the Japanese judicial system. And Zhou Fang Zhengxing used this in-depth and simple film to silently "judge" this system that deviated from justice.
2
"The House of the Unhemp"
1997| Director: Toshi Imabari
"The House of the Unma" is Imatoshi's debut work and the culmination of his style. Whether you've seen other movies of the same genre before or not, it's hard not to be shocked and impacted by this animation.
In the field of animation, Imatoshi has clearly created a new style of painting – magnificent but gloomy, dazzling but full of eroticism and violence. In terms of theme, he also borrowed the boundless imagination of animation to present a world that is difficult to distinguish between virtual and real, a dream in which people and dramas are not separated.
Whether or not there is conclusive evidence, I believe that "The House of the Unmaked" influenced a large number of subsequent films. Its existence made Scorsese's later films like "Confinement Island" only like a second-rate work.
3
The Mysterious Circus
2005| Director: Yuan Ziwen
If you want to choose the film that best represents Yuan Ziwen among his many works, this movie is "Mysterious Circus".
Every pore of this movie exudes an evil perverted atmosphere, full of those heavy tastes and bad tastes that Yuan Ziwen has been passionate about for many years, blood plasma splashing, incest abuse, and everything.
But this is also the most advanced time for him to play these bad tastes, in the story of virtual reality, he freely uses a set of layered narratives, and wraps a moving theme of revenge.
This is probably the most profound one of the "perverted" garden temperatures.
4
Quicksand Fantasy Love
1995| Director: Ryosuke Hashiguchi
Ryosuke Hashiguchi was another author known for his low productivity during the Heisei period, with only 4 or 5 works in the past 20 years, but every time a new work was launched, it was almost definitely shortlisted for the top ten of the year in the "Movie Shunbao" that year.
Ryosuke Hashiguchi's films have always focused on the gay community, and even today, this topic is still a field that most movies in Japan refuse to touch. Ryosuke Hashiguchi not only has the courage to face this topic head-on, but also often explores new angles and connotations in this field.
"Quicksand Fantasy Love" is a youth film, which makes the youthful and innocent kind of adolescent love extremely realistic, which seems to be a common love triangle, but in fact, there is a layer of same-sex love hidden behind it.
The most touching thing about the whole film is the delicate details, such as holding hands with the palm prints on the beach, and for example, confessing to the boy wearing a girl's skirt, the person who is confessed can only enjoy the feeling of being loved by the person he likes at this moment.
5
"Talk about love dancing"
1996| Director: Zhou Fang Zhengxing
"Talk about Love and Dancing" is a movie about midlife crisis, but it is not the kind of movie we imagine to tell the midlife crisis.
It does not describe and present the typical symptoms of those midlife crises, depression, collapse, quarrels, divorce, anxiety, etc. All these emotions do not appear in this movie, at best, it will make you faintly feel a hint of that breath.
Nor does it try to sit in a precarious position to discuss with you the bitter and vengeful problems of life, which are dissolved by the seemingly ordinary exit of dancing.
It presents the helplessness and loneliness of middle-aged people in a form of intolerable hair, which is not enough to have an affair, and is also full of an unspeakable sense of beauty. This is probably what is called, emotion, and etiquette.
6
Spirited Away
2001| Director: Hayao Miyazaki
No matter how many years have passed, Spirited Away is one of the most familiar Japanese films in China, and it will also be one of the most recognized Japanese films in the world.
The anime took Miyazaki's prestige to a new level, winning the Golden Bear at that year's Berlin Film Festival as a rare animated film and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film that year as a foreign language film.
In Japan, its box office of 30 billion yen is still an insurmountable myth.
Spirited Away is clearly genuinely loved by audiences all over the world, because the stories it tells and the ideas it conveys are so universal and so deeply rooted in people's hearts. Beyond the dimensions of cinema, it will also be a classic fairy tale suitable for any country and any era.
7
Blood and Bone
2004| Director: Choi Yang-il
The korean issue in Japan is a subdivision that Japanese cinema has been keen to explore for many years, and in this field, Korean-American director Choi Yoo-il is a leader.
"Blood and Bone" composes a typical oriental family epic through the life experience of the character of Kim Joon-ping, played by Takeshi Kitano.
Under the influence of Confucian ideas, patriarchy has always been a huge shadow hanging over every family. On Jin Junping's body, this layer of shadow became a dark cloud more realistically.
The ups and downs of this man's life were accompanied by his extreme selfishness, violence, and arrogance. His harm to family members is a vivid presentation of the ugliness of this deformed family concept and system.
It is worth mentioning that several fight scenes in the film are quite meaningful to the films directed by Takeshi Kitano himself.
8
"Non-Stop Walking"
2008| Director: Kore-eda
Under the theme of family, "Walking Non-Stop" is Kore-eda's best work.
His later "Like a Father Like a Son", "Deeper Than the Sea" and "Thief Family" are variations or re-enactments of this theme.
This film seems to be a warm and delicate depiction of the daily life of an ordinary family, but behind this, it is a deep and subtle observation of the inconceivable cracks and cracks in a family, and in those rather secret and restrained cracks, there is a kind of pain and cruelty that is difficult to describe.
Because it touches this layer of touching and profound reality of life, it is Kore-eda who is far beyond a mediocre chicken soup director and seems so remarkable.
PS: He has an original novel of the same name that was a huge help in understanding the film.
9
"The Train of Hard Labor"
2012 | Director: Atsuhiro Yamashita
At about the same time as "The Train of Hard Labor", it entered people's field of vision, and it was "Yokomichi Seinosuke" that more people would like. If "Yokomichi Seinosuke" is explaining the ordinary beauty of ordinary people's lives, "Hard Labor Train" wants to talk about the pain of ordinary people born doomed to failure.
The pain, or mourning, presented in "The Train of Hard Labor" is beyond our daily perception, so that at certain moments it will make you feel physically uncomfortable, even an offense to the viewer.
But that feeling of helplessness and frustration will still sting you deeply, and although you may not necessarily be as low as the future of Moriyama in the film, you must have experienced that familiar sense of failure. There are always moments that make you feel like you're that loser.
Of course, "Hard Train" finally makes us believe that even if we fall to the deepest bottom, if we don't give up, we will always fight back.
10
"Vortex of Love"
2013 | Director: Ren Ōne
"Vortex of Love" may become a more well-known low-budget myth in the future — a semi-vegetarian cast, an all-room set, and the whole movie is just switching back and forth in a few cramped rental houses.
This film full of voyeuristic meaning is very rare to accurately capture the psychological state and life state of a generation of young people, and the black absurd situation and relationship presented by several groups of characters intertwined with each other will not make people feel false and absurd at all.
The rhythmic drum beat that sounds between scenes will remain in your mind for a long time, initiating repeated percussions.