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Why Ishii Gakuryu’s ‘The Box Man’ Took 32 Years to Reach Berlinale Premiere
Ishii Gakuryu’s ‘The Box Man’ debuts in Berlin after more than 30 years of planning.
At the time Ishii was a leader of Japan’s indie scene, with credits that included the punk rock-themed “Burst City” (1982) and the black comedy “The Crazy Family” (1984). Newcomer Shiramoto Ayana plays a nurse in a rundown clinic whose two doctors, a dying sybarite known as the “General” (Sato) and his sketchy unlicensed assistant (frequent Ishii collaborator Asano Tadanobu) are strangely fixated on a box-wearing homeless man (Nagase), who warily observes the outside world through a slit in his box and frantically writes his thoughts in a tattered notebook. Despite being an object of the doctors’ desire and often appearing in various stages of undress, the nurse reacts to the at-times bizarre proceedings from a cool-eyed distance.
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