"Seijun Suzuki: The Taisho Trilogy"
1980-1991
Directed by Seijun Suzuki

While foreign audiences have been quick to embrace Seijun Suzuki's manic, 60s-era yakuza thrillers, Japanese critics often favor this trilogy of films from the early 1980s and 90s--cerebral, supernatural tales that maintain the unique stylistic palette of works like Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill. Zigeunerweisen (1981, 148 mins.) inaugurated the trilogy in playful fashion. The film tells of a Japanese professor whose encounter with a serial killer leads him into the arms of beautiful ghost. Kagero-Za (1981, 139 mins.) is a wildly inventive love story, based on a tale by Kyoka Izumi. The film tells of a playwright in 1926 Tokyo who crosses paths with a luminous apparition. Finally, Yumeji (1991, 128 mins.) reimagines the life of painter-poet Yumeji Takehisa. Kenji Sawada plays the artist as a philandering adventurer trying to escape his demons. In Japanese with English subtitles.  415 minutes.