This Transient Life

Akio Jissoji's 1970 Japanese film follows the son of a well-off provincial family. Masao refuses to study or work, rejects his family's expectations and begins a relationship with his sister. When she becomes pregnant a monk from the temple discovers it and Masao is sent away to work for a master carver of Buddhist statues, where he sets about a similar destruction. The film does not attempt a moral verdict and does not present him as an evil man; what it questions is the religious and social order itself. The photography is extremely formal, with wide lenses, strange framing and compositions built on temple architecture. Jissoji is regarded as having made one of the harshest works of the Japanese avant-garde. It won a prize at Locarno. Who it's for: viewers who can take Japanese experimental cinema. Who it's not for: anyone who would rather not approach scenes about incest and religious taboo; the film puts them at its centre.