Caution: major spoiler alert...
This obscure and pretentious Japanese drama supposedly (it's sometimes difficult to tell) presents a modern cautionary fable with overtones of ancient Shinto mysticism, set in a picturesque fishing village slated for corporate development. But the film itself is an unattractive and frequently mean-spirited exercise in cold intellectual obliquity, so emotionally detached that viewers may feel completely unmoved by the startling, bloody climax (assuming they can remain awake until then), when the brawny lumberjack protagonist, in what looks like an ecstasy of purgative self-sacrifice, slaughters his family before killing himself.
This obscure and pretentious Japanese drama supposedly (it's sometimes difficult to tell) presents a modern cautionary fable with overtones of ancient Shinto mysticism, set in a picturesque fishing village slated for corporate development. But the film itself is an unattractive and frequently mean-spirited exercise in cold intellectual obliquity, so emotionally detached that viewers may feel completely unmoved by the startling, bloody climax (assuming they can remain awake until then), when the brawny lumberjack protagonist, in what looks like an ecstasy of purgative self-sacrifice, slaughters his family before killing himself.