The winds of change blow as a family grapples with unemployment, alienation, mistrust and a lack of communication. When a Japanese salaryman loses his job to outsourcing to China, it's simply the beginning of a series of shattering incidents, leading to the implosion of the family unit.
Direction
Kurosawa turns unemployment horror into something genuinely spooky.
Acting
Teruyuki Kagawa's salaryman shame is physically painful to watch.
Score
Debussey becomes the film's secret language of repressed feeling.
Director
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during the 2008 financial crisis, it hit different in Japan where 'salaryman' identity collapse was already epidemic. Kurosawa basically made a zombie movie where the zombies are employed people.
The dinner scenes are shot like horror setpieces—Kurosawa reportedly told the cast to imagine a ghost was always just out of frame. The ghost was economic precarity.
JP
