Genre:
Culture & Society
Release Date: 06/27/2006
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: Japanese
Sound: DD2
Run Time: 136 min
Distributor/Studio: Facets
The 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway shook Japanese society, resulting in bitter recriminations and national soul-searching comparable to Watergate in America. The group responsible -- Aum Shinrikyo -- was little known to the average Japanese. Believing in a mixture of varying strands of Buddhism along with elements of New Age spiritualism and with rumors of drug-use and bizarre rituals, the group and its members were widely vilified by Japan's voracious media. Six months after the gas attack when Aum's original leaders -- guru
Shoko Asahara along with
Ikuo Hayashi,
Fumihiro Joyu, and others -- were carted off to jail,
documentary filmmaker
Tatsuya Mori approached Aum to shoot an objective fly-on-the-wall-style
documentary about this much discussed and maligned sect. Focusing on the Aum's most visible member, not jailed
Hiroshi Araki,
Mori shows how frighteningly ordinary these members are. This film was screened at the
1999 Yamagata Documentary Film Festival.
~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
