Reviews & Ratings for
Pastoral Hide and Seek More at IMDbPro »Den-en ni shisu (original title)

14 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
A great visionary film, 20 August 2004

Author: Steve Mobia from San Francisco, CA

Few films are as audacious and unrelentingly imaginative as this one. Set in a dreamlike rural Japan, the story starts out to be about an adolescent boy's attempt to escape his overprotective mother and then surprisingly becomes a filmmakers desire to confront his own elaborated creation. There is also an effort to reconcile the individual with the collective or old and new Japan through this parade of emblematic images. Gossiping women wear sinister eye patches. An outcast simple-minded woman drowns her own baby and later returns as a sophisticated prostitute. A circus fat lady yearns to have her fake body inflated by a dwarf. Curious and astounding scenes abound, all contributing to an overwhelming experience of a creative mind interrogating itself.

5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
How could I get a copy?, 5 December 2004
Author: N N (whatnao@hotmail.com) from San Francisco

This is one of the best surreal film ever made right along Alejandro Jodorowsky's "Fando and Lis", Frank Zappa's "200 Motels", and Wojciech Has's "The Saragossa Manuscript." The film is based on Terayama's original play and series of his haiku about his childhood (IMDb's biography on Terayama is excellent and will give you in-depth view of Terayama's art.) The film has timeless Freudian theme about the adolescent trauma, loss of innocence, and deconstruction of self and memories. I have a Japanese VHS copy and watched with my American friends. I tried to translate dialogue as much as possible, it is very hard to keep up with the pace of film and especially his haiku are very hard to translate. However, even with my poor translation, my friends loved the film. I still think in order to understand Terayama's intention of the film, it is important to appreciate his haiku.

I was wondering how I could get a copy with English subtitle. I want to share the film with American friends. If you have seen this film in the U.S., let me know where you have seen it.

3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
The greatest film of all time?, 29 March 2010
Author: A C from IN

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Not sure if it's the absolute greatest, but if not, it's really, really, REALLY close to being.

Words can't describe this thing. This thing, which is pretty much "unavailable" unless you go through backdoor means, is so beautiful, so flawless, that after one viewing it immediately went up to my top 10 of all time. Never has a film blown me away so much, so quickly. Within 20 minutes, of the strange oversaturated colors, the rows of clocks, the insanely beautiful soundtrack, etc... I was just in total awe.

I literally cannot describe this film. Think "The Holy Mountain" (a lot of similar direction), a bit simplified yet more experimental (if that makes sense) -- extremely personal, kinda like the films Godard always tried to make after 1980 (a film that comments on film, a film which cannot actually be made). A director directs his childhood and then turns the film off, shockingly, and then VISITS his childhood and modifies events, tries to change things.

It's touching, personal, and the ending is actually definitely the best of all time. OVERWHELMING AND INSANE. A masterpiece!

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Terayama's memories and mythologies, 30 December 2010

Author: propast from Canada

Terayama's mastery of the image is inarguable. His compositions - kaleidoscopic, supersaturated, overpowering - are an integral part of his films' unique emotional landscape. He could almost be described as a director of Japanese kink, were his films not so deeply philosophical, cerebral and achingly emotional.

Here, Terayama paints his childhood in broad strokes, then proceeds to shake his head as if disappointed at the results; his images are an embellishment, he concedes, and the rest of the film delves more deeply into the metaphysical as he literally steps foot into his childhood to try to understand it and, if possible, change it, if only to find out what will happen if he does.

The film is charged with budding eroticism, a portrait of an adolescent's confusion juxtaposed with a man's midlife existentialism. Terayama was a fascinating man and he's putting his soul on display in this film, his own poetry woven through it as his memories ring with the surreal and come across more coherently as feelings than as literal moments. The figures of his childhood walk larger than life until, finally, the thin walls of memory come crashing down and the past is forsaken in favour of an urban present.

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