#black rain

[dailyworldcinema]

"Humans are such obstinate creatures. We're strangling our own throats. An unjust peace is better than a just war. Why can't they understand that?" BLACK RAIN / KUROI AME 1989 | dir. Shōhei Imamura

[maxyvert]

🐠 Mermay 3-4🐠 🐠1-2🐠    🐠5-6🐠    🐠7-8🐠     🐠9-10🐠

[deathbypixelz]

a little something for lesbian visibility week <3

[curatorofthisdigitalmorass]

Tony Stella

[neonfeel]

Black Rain (1989)

[kaipanzero]

Black Rain (1989)

[nihillist-blog]

Black Rain (1989)

[cinemaobscura]

Black Rain | 黒い雨 (1989) dir. Imamura Shōhei

[angel-maldonado-enthusiast]

Andy Garcia & Michael Douglas in Black Rain (1989), dir. Ridley Scott.

[unladyboss]

RICHIE READS: BLACK RAIN BY MICHAEL COGAN

Nick Conklin, a New York Police detective, escorts a Japanese criminal back to Osaka, but when his prisoner escapes, Nick must somehow get him back.

[deathbydarkelves]

I couldn't help myself

original

[deathbypixelz]

*makes heart eyes at you* (despite everything)

[steampunkforever]

Black Rain, a neon-drenched crime thriller with a poster that makes it look like a cyberpunk film, is not about anything cyberpunk plot-wise, but deals with the same cultural anxiety that many cyberpunk texts do: the encroaching efficiency of Japanese hypercapitalism.

See, postwar prosperity didn't just hit the countries that won, and by the 80s there was the distinct worry that the japanese firms would overtake and destroy American industry. It's why Back to the Future Pt 2 has Marty taking video calls from Tokyo and what puts the Yutani in Alien's Weyland-Yutani megacorp. The Oni-Mask themed corporate assassins in your favorite cyberpunk media all stem from Americans getting a tad nervous that Japanese firms were doing capitalism better than they were. Black Rain takes those same anxieties, but keeps them in the 80s as it tells the story of two NYC cops chasing an escaped Yakuza hitman in Japan.

This is one of Ridley Scott's lesser discussed films (his next movie was Thelma and Louise, I can see why people would skip over this one) but it provides an interesting analysis of American exceptionalism dealing with the presence of a new economic powerhouse (also present in current anti-China stances in American politics), using American cops forced to abide by another culture's policies while working on *their* case to highlight the cultural differences and grievances between the Americans and the Japanese in the 1980s.

Looking at the auto industry in isolation you'd come to the conclusion that the Cyberpunk writers were right in their predictions made before the start of the Lost Decades. For the world of Black Rain, unlike cyberpunk stories where the key triumph is bombing the corporate offices of Thinly Veiled Racist Caricature Inc, it involves accepting Japanese culture as different but still valuable. Douglas' character's final act literally being trusting his counterpart on the Japanese police force with American money. How could it be any more transparent than that?

[surfingkaliyuga]

Black Rain (1989)

[mad-prophet-of-the-airwaves]

Rest in peace, Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952-2023).

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔄𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔩 𝔇𝔲𝔰𝔱 - 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔠𝔨 ℜ𝔞𝔦𝔫