Posted: Apr 12, 08 10:25am

This week’s movie is “Kamyu nante shiranai“, a japanese film by director Mitsuo Yanagimachi. In the video stores you will find it under the title “Who’s Camus Anyway?” in the “foreign” or “festival winners” section.

I thought this was a very interesting film. Like “Slipstream” this movie plays with the audience’s ability to distinguish between art and reality although this one is done in a much more coherent fashion.

It is the story of a Japanese film class involved in producing a movie about a man who commits murder, simply out of boredom.

The film is not directly about questions of why we commit crimes as is the students’ film project. Yanagimachi’s movie is about the process of young minds cooperating together to produce a work of art. Each member of the crew brings their own perspectives to the project and each has been highly influenced by different writers or classic filmmakers. The project goes so far as to obscure the boundaries between their production and their personal lives. Not art imitating life and not life imitating art, but a fascinating comingle and confusing of the two.

I’ll give this film a rating of twelve cookies, which means I enjoyed it and recommend it to others who don’t mind putting on their glasses to watch a film. It is in Japanese, with English subtitles.

Watch it. Come back here. Let me know what you think.