Minamata Mandala
Directed by Kazuo HaraIn 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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