
DOGRA MAGRA
Director: Toshio Matsumoto Run Time: 109 min. Release Year: 1988 Language: Japanese
Starring: Eri Misawa, Hideo Murota, Leo Morimoto, Shijaku Katsura, Yoji Matsuda
From Japanese cult visionary Toshio Matsumoto (FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES) comes another masterful cinematic exploration of memory and identity from one of the country’s greatest experimental minds. A man wakes in an asylum with no memory. Dr Wakabayashi helps him to recall his past in which he killed his bride on their wedding day. Part of his memory becomes linked to another doctor, Dr Masaki, and a manuscript, Dogra Magra. As the two doctors treat him, reality and fantasy become blurred and the patient becomes unsure of his identity or his doctors’ experiments. The final feature film by Toshio Matsumoto (Funeral Parade of Roses) is an adaptation of the celebrated novel by Kyusaku Yumeno, a period set gothic tale with a sense of dreamy dread that recalls Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure and the locked room mystery of Shutter Island. A stunningly shot phantasmagoria by Tatsuo Suzuki (Pastoral: To Die in the Country), with its kaleidoscopic style and enigmatic tone, DOGRA MAGRA is Matsumoto in top form: mystifying, intelligent, electrifying.