Monday, November 8, 2010

ECSTASY OF THE ANGELS (1972)

A group of anarchists, who all wear fashionable clothes and live in stylishly furnished apartments, break into a military weapons depot and steal some crates of explosives. There's a shootout with the army and the leader of the anarchist group is blinded. He escapes, but now the group starts to splinter and even attack each other. Everybody is pissed at everybody, but yet still somehow find the time for almost nonstop (boring) lovemaking. There's a ton of nudity and sexual activities, but it's all performed with the energy of somebody putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

Another distracting thing is the anarchist group all name themselves after the seasons of the year, the months and the days. So all the conversations are almost nonsensical with stuff like "Monday, Winter is mobilizing, but October has hidden the explosives." That's not an actual sentence in the movie, but they all sound just like that. After a while it started making sense, but for the first 20 minutes or so it's quite confusing.

Overall, it's an interesting film, but too talky with not enough action. I did really enjoy the street scenes at the end of the movie though. It's like going in a time machine back to early-70's Japan.