恋爱中的死神

本片改编自吉田为了采访3年，穿着歌舞伎的黑衣进入后台的经验而写出的长篇小说，出生于任侠一门、投身于歌舞伎世界、将青春献给演艺之路的喜久雄，赌上自己的生命去追求无尽的梦想的宏伟故事：舞台是从战后到高度经济成长期的日本。出生于任侠家族的喜久雄，遭遇了数奇的命运，被拽到歌舞伎演员的家中。不久后，在动荡的人生中，他作为歌舞伎演员的才能开花结果。

 这部电影设定在18世纪的英格兰，并“灵感来源”于真实事件，是一部关于宗教领袖安·李（Ann Lee）的“史诗寓言”，安·李是谢克教运动的创始人，且被她的追随者宣称为“女性基督”。

　　在击败了邪恶的博士，救回了父亲洛赫特（赫里尼克·罗斯汉 Hrithik Roshan 饰）之后，克里希那（赫里尼克·罗斯汉 Hrithik Roshan 饰）和恋人普瑞雅（朴雅卡·乔普拉 Priyanka Chopra 饰）总算携手步入了婚姻的殿堂，过上了平静而又幸福的生活。而洛赫特利则用他的聪明才智制作了很多造福社会的发明。　　然而，大家都没有想到的是，在一片平静祥和的气氛之下，邪恶亦在慢慢滋生。一个名叫卡尔（维克·奥贝欧 Vivek Oberoi 饰）的邪恶天才，正在利用他的智慧组建一直非常危险的军队，企图给人类带来前所未有的危机。当克里希那挺身而出和卡尔展开对抗时，他并不知道，此次，为了保护世界的和平，他将付出比以往多得多的代价。

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.