Kaneto Shindo’s Bokuto Kidan is a biographical film about Japanese writer Kafu Nagai, who, according to the film, loved two things in the world – sex and solitude. And for his literature, he drew inspiration from sex. As he walks through brothels, hires content and writes his never-ending diary, global social events are taking place in Japan. From Russia, it turns out, some Japanese sex workers got the idea that the proletariat should take everything and divide, and the Japanese government wants to stage a militaristic adventure. And Kafu Nagai just wants to have sex and write books, and not pay attention to what is happening in an unstable world.
Nagai was a man worthy of a good biopic. But, unfortunately, Bokuto Kidan has a number of significant drawbacks. It seems that the creators spent a lot of their energy to immerse the viewer in Japan of the first half of the XX century – and this immersion is really a very strong side of the film. But in order to make a movie that inspires or makes you really interested in the fate of the main characters, there was not enough energy. Nagai in the film clearly knows only one type of kiss, which we are shown time and time again, and if at first we like, then in the end it begins to frankly annoy. And his mother, who scolds him, seems to know a lot more about sex. And it feels like you don't like kissing an actor who plays Nagai.
It is difficult to empathize with Oyuki, who has become a real muse for him, since we are clearly given to understand that she is by and large quite indifferent, and even more indifferent than Nagai himself, whose indifference at some point is interrupted, even if it does not look very emotional. And it seems that Oyuki herself did not become the pivot for the main character on the way to personal progress, to get rid of mistakes in her thinking. However, as it was in reality, I do not know. The whole film lacks emotion, and maybe some cinematic tenderness. There is a lot of sex on the screen, but it is the same type and only demotivates with his work to take inspiration from him, as Nagai did. The original, however, seemed to me a sex scene amid smoke from a steam locomotive. This is probably the most memorable and beautiful scene in the film.
In general, the film is objectively good, but for an amateur.