花痴的秘密系列7

解放初期匪患肆虐，解放军侦察排长向阳奉命前往三湾里剿匪，乔装潜入时竟与已是清风寨三当家的亲哥向天重逢。兄弟二人因立场相悖，在情义与信仰间激烈交锋，向阳强忍纠葛卧底匪寨，智取情报、烧毁粮仓，与战友里应外合展开围剿。面对龙瞎子等匪首的残暴反扑，向阳带领部队浴血拼杀，在哥哥向天的牺牲帮助下，最终彻底剿灭清风寨匪帮。血与火的较量后，这片土地终于迎来和平曙光。

　　拥有一切的男子都俊，妻子和小孩都在国外生活，也因此他的疑心病变得更重了。某日他一个人喝完酒徘徊时，遇到了一位谜样的女子世莲，陷入她的魅力之中的都俊也因此卷入了某起事件……

　　萱岛(竹野内丰)收到父亲的讣告回到故乡，从萱岛的父亲那里继承土地的宇和岛(山田孝之)与他一起，在山路上开车行驶时遭遇了意外事故。两人醒来时，发现自己身处森林深处，被六个美丽的女人监禁着。

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.