Dr. Akagi (1998, Japanese)

Dr. Akagi is another example of Shohei Imamura’s bittersweet evocation of Japanese village life, this time linked with his dark view of the national psyche during the last weeks of World War II. The film stars Akira Emoto as the titular doctor, a stolid man who spends the bulk of his days running up and down the streets of his seaside town, practically eager to continue his diagnoses of a hepatitis epidemic (the film’s Japanese title, Kanzo Sensei, translates as his village nickname, “Dr. Liver”). Focusing on the doctor’s prime obsession, Imamura uses the disease as a metaphor for the way that war has infected even this seemingly remote locale. The period and local atmosphere are wonderfully expressed, down to the air-raid helmet that Akagi constantly wears slung across his back as he travels from door to door (the helmet, along with his charmingly out-of-place white linen suits and English-style straw hat, make Akagi a visually comic character, though his personality is anything but).

Akagi is the middle film in what can be seen as the director’s final trilogy – like The Eel and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, it deals in tandem with the qualities of small-town Japan and the personal crisis of a middle-aged male protagonist, the latter of which develops to form a focal point in the community. While similarly charming and thoughtful, Akagi is nonetheless a bit more transparent and straightforward than the other two films, and the final scenes in particular, though visually quite lovely, hammer home Imamura’s themes in an unfortunately obvious manner.