Confessions

Refreshing and brisk thriller with an original narrative (in the form of the confessions of several protagonists) and a lot of surprising twists. It has a wide scope, you follow quite a lot of important characters and it’s not possible to view any of them under an entirely positive light, which bothered me and prevented a smooth experience as a viewer. The moral justification of Yuko's revenge becomes more and more problematic over time, but the creators do not address that at all. The sympathy is lost by the minute, or jumps back and forth from the original victim to the original culprit. As a result, I don’t have very clear feelings about Confessions. Technically speaking, it’s good, but the story is an invitation for a long debate. 7/10 (12/08/2013)

It was as if I were watching a filmed manga comic book. Kokuhaku is such a hyped, intense movie, that I couldn’t be anything else but tense. It is brutally effective, telling a story from some timeless space and jumping from one brutal situation into another. It is presenting to you the moments which happened and at the same time the moments which could happen. It is quite difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction here. Anyway, hats off for filming such a great revenge. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Not only because I was getting lost in the timeline, but also because the actors were awesome, telling me a story the likes of which are rare to be found. Seen based on the Challenge Tour 2015. (20/04/2015)

An unadmitted Japanese spin-off of Park’s tetralogy (plus the short story Cut) about revenge. This often (and will continue to) comes up in reviews. Like it or not, that’s what it seems like. And maybe more than it really should. Also the revenge theme was inventively and untraditionally approached from several different viewpoints, also interestingly filmed, but despite the quality of the beginning and the hard-hitting ending, is drags on a little in the second third, often getting a little boring. (31/03/2011)

The film is lucky to have been told with this particular narrative, because otherwise I'm guessing it would have received a much lower rating. When you think about it, you realize it's just an ordinary movie about revenge for the death of a daughter and how damaging loneliness is. I was expecting a more shocking ending – the whole movie made me think it was going to be some big reveal, and instead it basically sucked. Definitely not a bad movie, just a little too dark in places for my taste. It did do an interesting job of showing how far obsession (whether that of Oedipus or a broken mother) can go. But I still came away feeling a little embarrassed that perhaps something was missing from the perfection. I'd say that as a book it must have had a bit more gravitas. :-D But it certainly didn't "show" the turning back of time in such an interesting way. A weaker 4 stars. (09/09/2012)

Ah, the Japanese again. After a long time, they managed to fully captivate me with this six-year-old film, which beautifully shows what violence in human life is like and what its consequences can be if we are truly willing to practice it. All of this is presented in a psychologically dark vision of one teacher and children. (17/10/2016)

This is by no means a formulaic revenge tale wrapped in stunning visuals. At the same time, I'd also be reticent to make the opposite claim/assessment – that this is perhaps some kind of deeply thoughtful and authentic portrait of contemporary society (probably Japanese, but the theme can be perfectly generalized to other developed countries as well). In its treatment it is purely original, where the usual pigeonholing and deep reviewing might be pointless, because (at least in my opinion) the whole film radiates incredible energy, boldness, and an excellent ability to use all possible space to make the result as attractive as possible for the audience and make some of the philosophy worthwhile. To dissect the twists and turns in detail and try to convince that "this or that" was a bit over the top would be unfair and superficial nitpicking. For if a film is generally said to be "well made", this Japanese example should be the prototype and model for all "inventive Western filmmakers" who want to make macho films like Fincher while remaining academic in certain respects (like a select number of Spielberg films). An incredible blast, I wasn’t far from ecstatic during the opening half hour and I didn't know what was coming next. It's not a 5-star film, but at least an 8-star film. (19/02/2012)