“Dogra Magra” on Limited Edition Blu-ray! Purchase Here!
A young man wakes up in an asylum cell, unable to remember how he got there, his name, and doesn’t even recognize his face. The asylum supervisor, Prof. Wakabayashi, has been overseeing his condition ever since the suicidal passing of former experimenting director, Dr. Masaki, nearly a month ago. Disoriented, the young man is toured around the hospital grounds where Wakabayashi tells him the tragic tale of a 9th century man who kills his bride the day before their wedding day to capture the stages of her decomposition recorded onto a sacred scroll. Distancing himself from the possibility of being murderous man, Wakabayashi informs him he is Kure Ichiro, the direct descendent of the groom and he enacted the very same events his ancestor committed long ago. When the sudden reemergence of Dr. Masaki covertly corners Ichiro in his office, Masaki divulges his and Wakabayashi’s theories about Ichiro’s case but how the events came to fruition just may be plain and simple murder.
Nature versus Nurture and the psychosis that ensues when discussing Pre-World War II context of Empirical Japan and their either inherent tendencies to repeat a violent past or to be triggered, poked, and prodded toward repeating history is the surmised and experimental plot of writer Yumeno Kyūsaku and his psychoanalytical novel “Dogura Magura.” The title rearranged to “Dogra Mogra” is used for the film adaptation of Kyūsaku’s novel with the script written-and-directed by the avant-garde filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto (Japan’s “Demons” of 1971). Matsumoto cowrites the script with Atsushi Yamatoya (“Story of David: Hunting for Beautiful Girls”) written primarily from the distressed perspective of the protagonist Kure Ichiro only to switch hands when the experimenting Masaki enters the fold. Shuji Shibata and Kazuo Shimizu inpendently produce the 1988 film under production companies Katsujindo Cinema and Toshykanky Kaihatsu AG.
Principal players of “Dogra Magra” boil down to a three-prong outfit centered around Kure Ichiro and his theorized amnesia. Before being the lead voice actor in “Prince Mononoke,” a decade earlier Yôji Matsuda was waking up with an inexplicable unawareness of who he was or what he had done as Kure Ichiro. Matsuda feigns forgetfulness with shock and surprise, that will too place audiences in situational darkness, with the young Ichiro arousing in a powerful moment of unfamiliarity. A shaken, discombobulated Ichiro becomes the object of obsessional mark between two theoretical and experimental-competing psychoanalysts in Prof. Wakabayashi and Dr. Masaki, played respectively by a collectively calm and bearded Hideo Murota (“Rape and Death of a Housewife,” “Original Sin”) that emits a sense of academia and medical security and reason and a hyenic-laughing, bald and glasses-wearing Eri Misawa who is more maniacal and unconventional to the likes of a mad-scientist Yet both men have motivation that stirs the enigmatic pot of Kure Ichiro’s plight, stemmed from the very same source that drives the brutal murder of his beautiful bride one day before their wedding that eerily follows the footsteps of his macabre ancestral history. There’s an inarguable difference between Wakabayashi and Masaki’s approach handling the curious case of Kure Ichiro; Wakabayashi’s hides in the clandestine shadows that aims to subvert the thought dead Masaki’s work whereas Masaki, under his blunt-force mania, is straight forward, almost apathetically. In either case, both psychoanalytical professionals are indifferent to the crux of human life by focusing solely on whether either one of their theories is correct in an odd game of deception and death. “Dogra Magra” rounds out the cast with Kyôko Enami (“Curse, Death & Spirit”) and Eri Misawa.
An attribute for audiences to become lost in “Dogra Magra’s” ethereal can be contributed by Toshio Matsumoto’s accosting avant-garde disorientation that swallows Kure Ichiro past, present, and future, plays tricks on his mind and eyes, and that also fishes patiently for a conclusion that rarely seems apparent. The experimental qualities of “Dogra Magra” seep out of the tap of dark comedy and amnestic thriller and into a basin of spreading horror and exploitation. “Dogra Magra’s” surreal storytelling and interesting, visceral visuals often reminds us of an old-dark house film a decade prior with the Nobuhiko Obayashi film, “Hausu,” and while not based in satirical foreplay like “Hausu,” “Dogra Magra” begins to unravel more questions than answers with a fleeting sense that nothing is real, nothing is as it seems, and maybe perhaps were all stuck in Kure Ichiro’s herded and scrambled mind that may or may not be his inherent, innate doing after all and that changes the narrative entirely. Themes of historical repetition, ancestral culpability, forgetting the past, and empirical brainwashing are churned intrinsically into “Dogra Magra’s” constitution as well as within Japanese legacy with a formidable and prophetical proposition for no hope on horizon through a chimerical lens of learning and growing into the truth.
Radiance Films continues to starkly highlight underscored and wayward films from around the globe and “Dogra Magra” is no exception with a beautifully curated Blu-ray release. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 features the original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1 filmed by cinematographer Tatsuo Suzuki. The Radiance print for the limited-edition Blu-ray is pulled from the original 35mm elements and transferred in Hi-Def by producer Shuji Shibata and supervised by Tatsuo Suzuki. The stunning upgrade leaves nothing to the imagination with a starkly harsh color grading that appears rawer than air or bright, leaning into grayscale more with darker tones of a greenish-yellow to accentuate the morbid, maybe even grittier, side of this tale, but often has naturally flourishing landscapes, such as the beach cove and the asylum yard that provides a good stretch of depth when not filtered through a POV celluloid handheld. What’s a real winner here are the textural details that emerge through a blanket of consistent, healthy stock grain with dust and dirt retained to an extreme minimum. The Japanese LPCM Mono mix disperse a sure-designed composition between natural audio elements layered upon or spliced with the incongruous tunes of one going through a hallucinogenic and dissociative state. Dr. Masaki’s maniacal laughter has a sharp authoritarian jest that makes it even more frighteningly surreal. Dialogue withholds that same sharpness and clarity throughout channeled through a single output, harnessing all the action into a funnel but clearly distinct. English subtitles are optionally available. The static menu’s special features store an achieved commentary track from late director Toshio Matsumoto, a 2003 interview with the director, programmer and curator Julian Ross’s visual essay on the cinematography Dogra Magra Through the Eyes of Tatsuo Suzuki, a featurette Instructions on Ahodara Sutra on the subject of the chant used in the story, a still gallery of production sketches, and the trailer. A 51-page, color book weighs the Blu-ray package with contents that include a director’s statement from 1988, exclusive essays and an interview by Hirofumi Sakamoto Late-Period Toshio Matsumoto and Dogra Magra, Jasper Sharp The Pen is Mightier than the Sword: The Life of Atsushi Yamatoya, and Alexander Fee and Karin Yamamoto Memory traces: Interview with Producer Shuji Shibata, and rounding out with transfer credits and release acknowledgements. The reversible sleeve is housed in a clear Blu-ray Amaray with new illustration compositional art and the original, more traditionally composed, Ukiyo-e artwork on the reverse. Encoded only for regions A and B, Radiance Films’ limited-edition release to 3000 copies has a runtime of 109 minutes and is not rated.
Last Rites: “Dogra Magra” psychosomatic surrealism is mind games on methamphetamines and Radiance Films does the 1988 Japanese picture justice rekindling its worth to the world of cinema.
