A Man Vanishes
New York Times Critics' Picks
•
2h 9m
Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1967 • 130 minutes
One of the most important and complex works by two-time Palme d'Or winning director Shohei Imamura, A MAN VANISHES begins as an investigation into one of the thousands of missing persons cases that occur in Japan each year.
The film follows the case of Tadashi, a handsome businessman who has suddenly vanished. Imamura and his crew interview the man's fiancee, Yoshie, who is desperately searching for him, and the filmmaker becomes increasingly involved in her life. But the "investigation" casts a shadow of doubt over the couple's relationship, Tadashi's business ventures, his relationship with Yoshie's sister, and even the investigating film director, Imamura himself, who may not be what he seems.
"An existential essay on elusiveness of identity, a self-debunking bit of directorial mischief, a vertiginous travesty of a procedural, and an influential merging of life and fiction...A MAN VANISHES envisions life as a tangle of subjectively staged "dramas," each complementing and contradicting the other."—Slant Magazine
Up Next in New York Times Critics' Picks
-
A Quiet Passion
Directed by Terence Davies • Drama • With Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle • 2017 • 126 minutes
Cynthia Nixon delivers a triumphant performance as Emily Dickinson as she personifies the wit, intellectual independence and pathos of the poet whose genius only came to be recognized after her death. Acc...
-
Beauty in Trouble
Directed by Jan Hrebejk • Drama • With Anna Geislerová, Josef Abrhám, Jana Brejchová • 2006 • 110 minutes
Beauty in Trouble explores a young woman’s romantic dilemma: torn between a primal connection and the need to provide for her children, she loves two men. Set against the back drop of the ...
-
The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman
Directed by Rosine Mbakam • Documentary • 2016 • 76 minutes
Rosine Mbakam left Cameroon at 27 to live in Belgium. Seven years later—having studied film and married a European—she returns to make what she calls a journey into darkness—to the village of her birth, and later to the capital city of ...
