Minamata Mandala (2021) [N/A]
Featuring:
Hideo Ikoma, Toshiyuki Kawakami, Akio Mizoguchi
Directed by:
Kazuo Hara
Release Date:
November 27, 2021
Original Title:
水俣曼荼羅
Alternate Titles:
미나마타 만다라
Genres:
Documentary
Production Companies:
Shisso Production
Production Countries:
Japan
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 373
After years of dumping industrial wastes from the factory to the ocean, Chisso Chemical Corporation contaminated the area of a small Japanese fishing village with excessive amounts of methylmercury. This highly toxic chemical bioaccumulated in fishes of the local water, which when consumed by the local populace resulted in mercury poisoning. In 1977, Minamata disease certification criteria was set by a strange method that tried not to recognize the rights of environmental disease patients. However, an Osaka court won the case for some patients because of a newly developed theory by medical doctors’ recent experiments and proofs. For decades, these patients struggled within the Japanese judicial system for their rights to receive compensation as victims of environmental disease. Those different aspects of these patients’ lives have been filmed by director Hara for the last 15 years, inspired by the late director Tsuchimoto’s documentary MINAMATA: THE VICTIMS AND THEIR WORLD (1971).
In the early 1940s, strange symptoms appear in the people of Minamata. People are having convulsions all over their bodies and tongues are eventually made mute. The government treated those whose physical functions had collapsed as fake patients and controlled the situation in a political context. Minamata Mandala opens by rebelling against the political solution. There is a man in his nineties who has battled in court for more than twenty years, a medical school professor striving to identify the cause of the disease, and a fisherman providing disease samples for medical examinations. Kazuo Hara does not portray them as a tenacious fighter against political power, a dedicated medical scientist, and a suffering victim. The running-time of 372 minutes embraces their long history of suffering in solidarity as well as embodies the individual lives with distinct personalities.
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