The Castle of Sand (1974)

Simply A Masterpiece

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I saw "The Castle of Sand" at a Japanese Film Festival this year in Sydney, and I must say that I'm surprised that this movie isn't better known as it's so beautifully made and incredibly moving...It's one of those near-perfect gems that are few and far between. It's a fairly long movie at nearly 2.5 hours, but the movie is one that draws you in very quickly and keeps you wondering up until the very end.The plot centres around the mysterious murder of Miki, a retired policeman in his 60's who was well-liked by pretty much everyone who knew him for his kindness and integrity. Two detectives, one a rookie and one fairly older, are assigned to the case and what at first seems like three unrelated stories slowly weave together to reveal the reasons and the person behind Miki's death. Even if you're not a fan of foreign movies, "The Castle of Sand" is still definitely worth a watch.

I just saw this movie for the first time last night at the Japanese Film Festival held in Melbourne. It was a re-mastered print and on the huge screen it was magnificent. The flashback scenes with the father and son set to the stunning musical score seemed like a completely different movie to what had preceded. But to me, final scenes are important - a skillful movie ending turns a good film into a great film. A bad ending turns an average to good film into a piece of rubbish. As far as Castle of Sand is concerned, what started out as an interesting detective story ended as a sweeping piece which left me walking out of the cinema thinking "That was incredible!!".Japanese cinema rarely fails to impress me. I keep discovering more and more gems, usually from years gone by when I was too young to experience them at the time.

This film CASTLE OF SAND expands on genre conventions and is cinematic in the best sense. YOSHITARO NOMURA takes what was presumably a best selling novel in Japan, and creates a fascinating mystery with all the requisites: the pairing of a veteran and a rookie detective; a murder with a minimum of clues; an unidentified victim; a journey of discovery for both detectives when the investigation seems to have come to a dead end; the seemingly arbitrary introduction of a key figure on which much hinges, and so forth. The director tells a story with voice overs and the requisite dialogue but as often as not his camera tells the story.I have seen any number of Japanese films in my 50 plus years, but I still felt I was undergoing the journey and the search that the two detectives take, through the rural regions of Japan that are in stark contrast to their operating base, Tokyo. The story has elements that take it beyond the realms of the mystery and police procedure genres, and the conclusion is worthy of the time the director has spent in weaving his tragic tale. The film is now available on DVD via Panorama; it is in the original Japanese with Chinese and English subtitles. It is a SINGLE LAYER DISK, LETTERBOXED and in STEREO, which is paramount because music is central to the whole affair. Unfortunately my copy had a sequence when the senior detective is addressing his colleagues and no subtitling is provided (you simply see the same line for an awkward length of time). However the viewer should be able to extrapolate what has been said. All in all, a film and DVD worth seeking out!

At first, I thought this was going to be a standard murder-mystery story. A police detective doggedly pursues slim clues all over the map to find a murderer. However, when the events which led up to the crime are revealed through flashbacks, the story takes an emotional turn which even brings tears to the detective's eyes. Like most Japanese movies, it starts slowly but comes alive at the end. I recommend it.