Dogra Magra

A man wakes in a psychiatric hospital and does not remember who he is. Two doctors tell him a story: his name is Ichiro, he killed his fiancée and has no memory of it. One of the doctors is dead but his voice continues on recordings. There is also a manuscript: a text called Dogra Magra containing exactly these events. Everything the man remembers may be coming from it. Toshio Matsumoto directs. The source is Kyusaku Yumeno's novel of 1935, held to be among the hardest books in Japanese literature and long considered unadaptable. The structure is circular. The narrative seems about to reach an explanation and returns to the beginning each time; which layer is real stays unclear to the end. The idea at the centre of the book is cellular memory: the claim that a person carries the memories of ancestors and therefore commits another's crime. The novel presents it as a scientific thesis and the film keeps that register. Matsumoto came from experimental film; he had made Funeral Parade of Roses and refuses conventional narrative here too. Period design and abstract passages are interleaved; the hospital scenes are realistic and the remembered ones are not. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese experimental cinema and narratives that disorient. Who it is not for: it is very hard to follow, the film explains nothing, and it runs long.