Zigeunerweisen

FROM THE LINER NOTES

Maverick filmmaker Seijun Suzuki spent the 1960’s concocting cockeyed masterpieces of yakuza psychedelia. With the ambitiously stunning Zigeunerweisen, Suzuki inaugurated his legendary Taisho Trilogy and reincarnated himself as the auteur of modern Japanese art cinema. Set in a 1920’s Japan saturated with decadence and nihilism, Zigeunerweisen is the tale of a disparate quartet drawn together by unseen strings of fate — and nearly driven mad by their own fears and desires. Aochi, a Japanese professor of German, vacations in a seaside town and discovers Nakasago, a former classmate, full-time vagabond — and suspected serial killer. During their reunion, they both fall hard for the beautiful local geisha Koine. But when Nakasago marries — and abandons — eerie Koine-lookalike Sono, the men’s mutual obsession for Koine escalates into paranoia and treachery spiked with undercurrents of witchcraft and the sinister presence of supernatural denizens. Titled after a Pablo Sarasate violin composition that haunts the film both narratively and aurally, Zigeunerweisen was a smash hit on its native soil, capturing the 1981 Japanese Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. (Japanese with English subtitles)