Seven Weeks

Obayashi’s most recent film is a grand compilation of his career. Ostensibly about a family mourning the death of their 92-year-old patriarch, it spans the local (set in Ashibetsu, a small northern town whose residents helped fund it) and the global (referencing the history of Japan’s colonization of Sakhalin Island, now part of Russia), and explores themes of lost love, memory, war and art. Ruthlessly fragmenting scenes and setting a furious pace with one experimental technique following another, Seven Weeks breaks down the barriers between past and present, reality and illusion, and even self and other, all in order to create an emotionally profound experience of loss and hope.
 
2014, 171 min., Blu-ray, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. With Toru Shinagawa, Saki Terashima, Tokie Hidari, Yumi Adachi, Takako Tokiwa
 
"Seven Weeks pulses with more hot-blooded vitality and audacity than most films by [Obayashi’s] younger compatriots."
–Don Brown, The Asahi Shimbun

Part of Nobuhiko Obayashi: A Retrospective.

Tickets: $12/$9 Japan Society members, seniors & students

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