Profound Desires of the Gods



The culmination of Shôhei Imamura’s extraordinary examinations of the fringes of Japanese society throughout the 1960s, Profound Desires of the Gods [Kamigami no fukaki yokubô] was an 18-month super-production which failed to make an impression at the time of its release, but has since risen in stature to become one of the most legendary — albeit least seen — Japanese films of recent decades.

Presenting a vast chronicle of life on the remote Kurage Island, the film centres on the disgraced, superstitious, interbred Futori family and the Tokyo engineer sent to supervise the creation of a new well — an encounter which leads to both conflict and complicity in strange and powerful ways.

A tragic view of a passing epoch that teeters on the edge of grotesque farce, Imamura’s merciless gaze combines with spectacular colour ‘Scope photography to create a mythic saga convulsing with earthly impulses. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present this unforgettable work in an exclusively restored high-definition 1080p transfer on Blu-ray only.

Special Features

- Spectacular new 1080p HD encode in the film’s original aspect ratio
- New and improved optional English subtitle translation
- New video introduction by film scholar Tony Rayns
- Original Japanese theatrical trailer (in 1080p)
- 44-page booklet with a new essay by Tony Rayns (to accompany his introduction); rare production stills; two statements from Imamura; and a transcript of Imamura’s introduction and Q&A session at the 1994 Edinburgh International Film Festival’s screening of the film

Profound Desire of the Gods! On BluRay! How many more "releases of the year" can we take?!

CORRECTION: Profound Desires of the Gods. Typo, subtly more accurate translation, or whim?

Absolute typo on my part. But still such great news. Can't wait to check this out.

Is this a Janus title?

I'm pretty certain that it is, so it looks like I'll be buying a region-free Blu player sooner than expected, as I can't see CC having the stones to release this on Blu when they do finally get around to it. I would love to be wrong about this being Region B-locked, though...

(this was for the cover, which is now gone)

Please be region free. Please be region free.

Sorry, tavernier. I thought you were responding to the release. I did some rearranging, including removing my own post with the cover. I put the cover in another post over here though, if you would like to applaud there.

No, that wasn't a dig at you or anything - it's plural on the MoC cover, and I've never seen it rendered as such before.

Hell, I'll applaud the release too

We've purposely gone for "Desires" - it's not a slip up.

But the questions are "when" and "what extras"?

And not to harp, but Region Free or Region B...

Pretty much everything coming out of Japan is going to be Region B for us, I'm afraid. I imagine so for the BFI too -- and region A for Criterion. We've tried our hardest to get a level playing field but it's not going to happen until the big boys want that too (licensors and licencees). It's proving to be a very complex (and ultimately pointless) issue for the industry.

We're part of a big eco-system which is misguidedly mired in tedious brinkmanship to protect interests which would be much healthier without protection.

The sooner everyone gets hold of a region-free Blu-ray player the more quickly any possible region-coding effectiveness will melt away (like it has done for DVD). We're going to militantly push region-free Blu-ray players at every turn, there's nothing else we can do.

Since space isn't an issue on Blu-rays, is there a way to include PAL and NTSC versions of the bonus material, as most American TVs can't handle PAL signals even with a region-free Blu-ray player? I don't know how cost-prohibitive it would be, but man would that would be nice

Space *is* an issue on BDs. PROFOUND DESIRES is nearly 3 hours and I'd like the encode to be able to breathe on a BD50. We've got a video introduction (in HD) and the original trailer (in HD) -- so PAL or NTSC SD footage isn't an issue here.

Any MoC BDs that have any SD material always have the SD material in NTSC anyway

Oh, nice then!

Amen! But when this is actually released I predict the same kind of whining as we saw in The Human Condition-thread.

Congratulations Nick on what looks to be a must buy!!!

Arent all PAL TVs capable of handling NTSC material? Isn't that why MoC have done NTSC DVDs in the past? I don't understand why more European DVD companies do that. Instead they release messy NTSC to PAL ghosted work....

I actually have a DVD that has both PAL and NTSC options, Bjork's Greatest Hits.

Here's the rather attractive cover in full, nicked from the Twitter site.

I've never heard of this film, but suddenly have a profound desire to buy this BD. I'm consumerism's plaything.

A seriously weird, very fascinating (and often visually eye-popping) film. No region-free BD player for me in the immediate future -- but I am happy for the sake of everyone who does have one. ;~}

A bit more about the film. I see it as the culmination of Imamura's superb 60s run (it was certainly the termination of it, since it was a big, expensive flop). He follows through on a lot of the themes from his earlier films, but really ties them firmly and pitilessly back down to core issues of Japanese national identity, with key relationships in the film a parody / travesty / straightforward manifestation (this is a film with a very slippery tone) of certain Japanese creation myths. At the same time, Imamura is leaping into new filmmaking realms with supreme confidence: the film is a sumptuous widescreen colour epic, but an extraordinarily perverse one. Maybe the greatest "island film" (cf. Kinoshita's 24 Eyes, Shindo's The Naked Island, Yanagimachi's Fire Festival, Park's To the Starry Island). He's firing on all cylinders here, and if MoC's transfer is as good as I expect, this should be an overwhelming experience.

No, but the vast majority are. I seem to remember Nick telling me that the number of complaints they've had from UK customers who've failed to play one of MoC's NTSC DVDs is in the low single figures.

Also, European Blu-ray players seem to be able to handle NTSC just fine (I imagine all European hi-def tellies can too), so it makes sense to include SD extras in that format if you can't go HD throughout. To maximise compatibility, I think all BFI Blu-rays to date have been 1080p across the board (either that or a second supplementary PAL DVD), though presumably this can't go on for ever as some extras just won't be available in HD.



NTSC is pretty much universal in the world of classical music DVDs. I suspect PAL pitch-shift issues play a part in this, but since the US and Japanese markets are significantly bigger than the European one, that's probably the major factor. Unfortunately, this has led to dreadful releases like Philips' travesty of the Tarkovsky Boris Godunov - a poor-quality PAL-to-NTSC conversion that looks horrendous even on my laptop. (The sound is fine, to be fair, but the picture definitely isn't!).



On the same disc? I assume it would be technically possible, though I note that Apple's DVD Studio Pro software insists on one or the other for the entire encode.

Japanese rightsholders have always been tough on region-coding - I remember back in the days when Criterion was mostly region-free (and how long ago does that seem?), virtually all the exceptions were Japanese.

I'm assuming the upcoming BFI Ozus will be region B unless otherwise advised, though I will of course trumpet any alternative news from the rafters as soon as I get it.