Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Belladonna of Sadness
1973 · Eiichi Yamamoto · Belladonna of Sadness on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how long the film holds a single painted image. (cutting)
For long stretches nothing in the frame moves; the camera pans or holds across a watercolor panel while narration carries the story instead.
Payoff: Stillness is the film's normal state, so when it does animate, it means something has changed. In the reading: the readable image. The reading calls this a lectosign: an image that has stopped explaining itself through action and has to be read instead.
Watch the camera scroll sideways across one long painting. (camera)
Many sequences are shot as a lateral pan along a horizontal illustration, revealing what happens the way a scroll unrolls rather than the way a scene is staged.
Payoff: You are asked to read the image the way you would read a page, not simply watch it happen.
Watch one color flood an entire scene at once. (light)
The film repeatedly lets a single hue take over the whole frame rather than sit inside a naturalistic palette.
Payoff: Color here carries the feeling directly, instead of describing what a scene looks like. In the reading: affective color. The reading calls this affective color: a hue that absorbs a whole scene into one feeling rather than describing how it looks.
Listen for the score carrying scenes where nothing moves. (sound)
Masahiko Satoh's acid-rock and jazz score supplies the sense of time passing in the many sequences where the image itself stays still.
Payoff: The music is doing the work of movement the images have given up.
Watch figures grow or shrink as the story continues. (staging)
Characters are drawn at a scale that tracks their power rather than their actual size, growing or shrinking as the story's balance of power shifts.
Payoff: You can watch who is gaining or losing control just from how big they are on the page.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch how rarely the film moves. When it finally does, ask what that motion is costing it.