Dr. Akagi

Shohei Imamura
1998
Multiple Viewings

One of my favorite Japanese films by one of my favorite Japanese directors. Shohei Imamura's "Dr. Akagi" has it's titular crazy-legged physician running all over a rural war-weary Japan. In doc's neck of the woods every diagnosis is hepatitis, and this nasty ailment doesn't limit itself to the liver but is instead a monstrous metaphor for a society wracked by it's terminally ill military campaign. Akagi's surgeon pal has hepatitis in the form of morphine addiction, the military police have hepatitis in their bullying and abuse of prisoners, and even Akagi himself comes down with a slight case when his obsession to eradicate the root of the disease causes him to neglect his patients. This picture has one of the better jazz scores I've heard with an unforgettably wobbly theme that kicks in every time the good doctor scrambles from one house call to the next. Imamura sneaks in his recurring preoccupation with sex in the form of semi-reformed prostitute. Sonoko, who begins working as the doc's assistant, puts a human face on the film - outspoken in love and free in expressing emotion, she lights a small fire under Akagi's clinical humanism.