film

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to the legendary Seven Samurai director Akira Kurosawa) takes a minimalist, quietly unsettling approach to the investigation of ideas of authority, belief, and violence to be found in his acclaimed 1999 film Karisuma. The film focuses on Yabuike, a permanently subdued detective who is summoned to a rural village to deal with a strange stand-off involving a mysterious tree that local residents want cut down. An apparently mundane bit of police work gradually takes on an ominous, allegorical weight as the film unfolds.

Made in the shadow of the crushing social malaise that gripped Japan in the 1990s, Karisuma reflects a society grappling with the collapse of grand narratives and previously trusted leaders. From this base atmosphere Kurosawa crafts a superb meditation on how violence emerges from emptiness, confusion and the absence of moral clarity rather than fanaticism.