Cut

Cut, a powerful and brutal meditation on violence, the role of artists in society and the state of cinema is an amazing ride, not so much from the trials of the main character, Shuji, but the fervid mind of the film’s director. Amir Naderi. Iranian born, now living in the USA has been making uncompromised art films over the last 40 years. In his first Japanese film he tells the story of a Shuji – played with unrelenting intensity by Hidetoshi Nishijima (Dolls, Zero no shoten) – a young cineaste (he shows classic films on the rooftop of his downtown Tokyo apartment building) and filmmaker. In order to pay off his murdered brother’s bad debt to a local gang, he becomes a human punching bag to the thugs – for money. Naderi not only brings up the ideas of how artists must suffer for their art and the transcendence of great cinema, but intriguingly questions the nature of violence as entertainment even as he showers the viewer with an unremitting rain of blows and rivers of blood.

Originally published in EL Magazine, December 2011.