The Backwater

2013 [JAPANESE]

Action / Drama

6
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 60% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 60%
IMDb Rating 6.2/10 10 398 398

japanese film

Plot summary

Toma lives in a small riverside town with his brutish father and his father's girlfriend. Witnessing his father's predilections for abuse, Toma becomes anxious that he will have inherited those urges.

Director

Shinji Aoyama Photo
Shinji Aoyama

Top cast

Masaki Suda Photo
Masaki Suda as Toma
Yûko Tanaka Photo
Yûko Tanaka as Jinko / Toma's mother
Yukiko Shinohara Photo
Yukiko Shinohara as Kotoko / Madoka's lover
Ittoku Kishibe Photo
Ittoku Kishibe as Detective
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
937.62 MB
1280*544
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles jp  
23.976 fps
1 hr 42 min
Seeds ...
1.88 GB
1920*816
Japanese 5.1
NR
Subtitles jp  
23.976 fps
1 hr 42 min
Seeds ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by remdear 7 / 10

quite well done.

"The Backwater" is not an easy film to watch, but it rewards patient viewers with its psychological depth and visual poetry. Aoyama's deft handling of the source material results in a film that is both a chilling family drama and a broader commentary on the darker aspects of human nature.Aoyama's direction is quite restrained and controlled.While it may not appeal to all audiences due to its deliberate pacing and disturbing subject matter, "The Backwater" stands as a powerful example of contemporary Japanese cinema, offering a unique and unforgettable viewing experience that lingers long after the credits roll.
Reviewed by Hez1 7 / 10

Sticky, ghostly, dirty and deep

A social fable, about a man who oversteps the community's boundaries and must be removed. But also figuring a shift from a male dominated order to a female dominated one. There is also a complicated theme of inheritance running through it.The titular backwater is like the subconscious of Japan, where life is dictated by natural forces and inherent urges. Much of the action occurs on the ground of a shrine, the ancient tradition representing at once the community's eternal values and it's constantly shifting roles. So when the emperor dies it may not change much overall but here it has great symbolic resonance or rather is a sign of the cultural shift.The film was adapted from a novel and seems a little compressed. It is fairly didactic with the characters only just fleshed out. On the other hand, it has a literary complexity and a flowing narrative. The setting is very convincing. Even though it is winter, watching the film it felt like a cool summer night.
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