Though he was far from the most prolific of Japanese filmmakers, director (and artist and photographer and professor) Toshio Matsumoto certainly made his mark with the tiny handful of feature films and experimental shorts he left behind. Best known for his audacious debut cult film Funeral Parade of Roses, he followed that one up fairly quickly with 1971's excellent Demons but focused less on long-form work after that. However, he was definitely a fascinating choice to direct Dogra Magra, his final film and an adaptation of the legendary (and notoriously challenging) "mystery" novel by Yumeno Kyusaku. A slippery, mind-bending experience, the film comes about as close as one could hope to capturing the book's unresolved and labyrinthine mind games and should make for quite the discovery with its first home video release outside of Japan as a Blu-ray special edition in the U.S. and U.K. from Radiance Films.

A linear synopsis of this film is almost beside the point, but the concept here involves an amnesic, Kure Ichiro (Matsuda of Studio Ghibli fame), who is being held in a mental institution under the frequently baffling joint care of Dr. Wakabayashi (Kagemusha's Murota) and Dr. Masaki (Katsura). According to them, Kure killed his fiancee on their wedding day and has lost his memory due to trauma, but the doctors themselves seem to be either gaslighting their patient or carrying on some sort of twisted game between each other that involves a macabre illustrated scroll sharing the title of the film itself. Memories both real and fabricated intermingle, with childbirth playing a major role right from the opening credits.

Though it seems to sort of adhere to the visual storytelling of a semi-realistic thriller, Dogra Magra regularly surprises with dashes of surrealism and a peculiar tone that would make it an interesting one to screen next to films like A Zed and Two Noughts or The Hourglass Sanatorium. This obviously isn't the most accessible film around, but if you're willing to submit to its maniacal storytelling and layers of mind games, there's a lot of enjoyment to be had in its morbid manipulations. The Blu-ray release from Radiance, likely the first legitimate English-friendly release anywhere, is an excellent way to experience the film with a striking, extremely detailed presentation cited as being supervised by director of photography Tatsuo Suzuki and producer Shuji Shibata." It looks excellent with a mostly earthy, saturated look similar to what David Cronenberg did with Naked Lunch, and the LPCM 2.0 Japanese stereo track sounds excellent throughout with solid English subtitles.

Matsumoto himself (who passed away in 2017) is represented by an audio commentary and a video interview (21m23s), both prepared for the film's domestic DVD release, in which he sheds a surprising amount of light on his intentions with the film, the process of adapting a seemingly unfilmable novel, the path that led him to submit this as a production after two prior features for the same company, and the use of the recurring fetus idea throughout. "Dogra Magra Through the Eyes of Tatsuo Suzuki" (13m27s) is a new visual essay by Julian Ross examining the role of the cinematographer in the director's work and the way his visual sense and the inspirations of silent and art house classics informed the translation of the novel into a new medium. "Instructions on Ahodara Sutra" (16m19s) is a great bit of behind-the-scenes camcorder footage showing Showa-era street performer Hiroshi Sakano instructing and performing the dance ritual seen in the film by Masaki. Also included are the original trailer (subtitled) and a new 11-image gallery of sketches by production designer Takeo Kimura compared to the final result. The limited edition package also comes with a booklet featuring essays by Hirofumi Sakamoto, president of the Postwar Japan Moving Image Archive, and Jasper Sharp on screenwriter Atsushi Yamatoya, along with an interview with producer Shuji Shibata and a director's statement.

Reviewed on February 10, 2025