HANAGATAMI

FILM EXTRAS

OUT 6 JULY BD, DIGITAL HD EXTRAS Making Of, Featurette

Before his recent death, Japanese free-thinker Nobuhiko Obayashi completed his anti-war trilogy with a long-nurtured riff on Kazuo Dan’s novel. In 1937, teenagers in a pacific town face war: is their youth doomed? If the coming-of-age themes ring familiar, Obayashi’s feverdream handling makes them live anew. Expressionist/ melodramatic stylings and eccentric casting gambits merge, rippling with suggestive resonance. Overuse of Bach and TB metaphors aside, the rapturous results develop “like a half-awake dream” of lost youth, ripe with stealthy emotional returns. Kevin Harley