Entertainment

‘A Man Vanishes’ review

In 1967, the great filmmaker Shohei Imamura set out to make a movie that would shed light on the thousands of Japanese who were going missing each year, or rather, choosing to disappear. He selected one man, Tadashi Oshima, to investigate. The result, now receiving its first full New York run, is a part-fact, part-fiction narrative that challenges the very notion of whether true documentary can even exist.

Via strikingly framed interviews and deliberately out-of-sync sound, and with Oshima’s glassy-featured ex-girlfriend Yoshie as impetus, the man’s life is probed, from whether he embezzled money down to how he dressed. The more the details pile up, the less Oshima himself seems to matter, until he has all but vanished from the film.

The climax comes when Yoshie, her sister and a purported eyewitness sit down in a teahouse for a tensely circular quarrel that lasts until Imamura pulls his reveal: The teahouse is a really a set. Then Yoshie and her sister meet outside again, and what has now become the longest “did-not-did-too” argument in the history of cinema (at least, at more than 30 minutes, I hope it is) continues.

A groundbreaking, highly influential film, “A Man Vanishes” is a fiercely brilliant piece of work, but it’s more intellectual challenge than pleasure.