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| A mysterious, beach-set, surrealist poster for Shûji Terayama's Farewell to the Ark |
All the clocks of an entire village are buried. A relationship between two cousins is plagued by the chastity belt forced upon her by her father, along with taunts from the villagers and accusations of impotence, - which lead to homicide. The couple attempt to flee. SPOILER But they invariably return to where they came from, the man loses his mind and is killed.
Farewell to the Ark is written by Rio Kishida (The Boxer/Bokusâ (1977)) and co-writer/director Shûji Terayama (Pastoral Hide and Seek/Den-en ni shisu (1974)) as a loose adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Marquez (Of Love and Other Demons (1994)). The film has visually amusing and distinguished qualities; the hole in the ground, the green goddess sequences, the escape and the ending. As well as occasionally poetic observations.
- But overall the magical allegory of Farewell to the Ark is too ambiguous too relay much else than that modernism stinks. Another problem is that this very theatrical, circus-like film drags out.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertain
[Farewell to the Ark premiered 8 September (Japan) and runs 127 minutes. Details about its making and release are not immediately found. Terayama passed away before its release. It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. Terayama had one last film to his name, which also came out in 1984: Our Age Comes Riding on a Circus Elephant/Jidai wa sakasu no zo ni notte' 84. 285 IMDb-users have given Farewell to the Ark a 7.3/10 average rating.]
What do you think of Farewell to the Ark?
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