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View Full Version : Penance (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)



Stay Puft
11-23-2014, 06:11 PM
PENANCE
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa

http://i.imgur.com/DWxtxJl.jpg

IMDb page (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2043616/)

Stay Puft
11-23-2014, 06:29 PM
I saw this more than two years ago! It finally turned up here as a theatrical release, but I haven't actually seen the theatrical version so I'm not sure how it compares. I saw the original mini-series, which is impressive in its sprawling scope but overall falls short of greatness. But I'm going on some pretty old memories here (and the only thing I wrote in the TIFF 2012 thread was that I found it engaging but flawed, so... thanks, 2012 self, that's helpful!). The only thing I remember clearly is sitting right behind Atom Egoyan and watching him walk out during the third episode.

Penance is based on a novel by Kanae Minato, who just before this production had another novel, Confessions, adapted into a film by Tetsuya Nakashima. I remember that being pretty popular here (or at any rate, I remember Russ pushing it pretty hard), though I still haven't caught up with it myself.

My suspicion, however, is that Penance is probably only a safe recommendation for the Kurosawa fan club. Much like his latest film, Real, which is super dopey and probably won't play well to anyone who doesn't already have an appreciation for his overall body of work.

Sycophant
11-24-2014, 03:28 AM
I thought the theatrical release in the US was just the entire miniseries (and was playing at very, very few theaters).

It just came out on DVD & Blu-Ray, my copy's on the way, and I'm hoping to watch it before too long.

Stay Puft
11-24-2014, 04:29 AM
Oh, hmm, I seem to be wrong. Apparently I did see the theatrical cut, which is what played the festival circuit (though for some reason I remember TIFF saying that it was screening the whole series). The theatrical cut then is the miniseries edited together into a 270 minute film (but still has title cards for each episode, and an intermission). Apparently it trims some material from the first and last episode, which were originally 75 minutes each (the middle chapters were 50 each, and that sounds right for the version I saw).