Dodes'ka-den (it's supposed to be the noise that a train makes) is a 1970 flick by one of the masters of the art, Akira Kurosawa. It was also his first fully colour film and it shows. This is the work of someone who had spent his entire career constrained to black-and-white and when finally given the opportunity to break out he did so in spectacular fashion. This thing is a half-painted, fully-mad technicolor beast. It's weird and fun and ingenious in all the best ways and it takes place in a garbage dump. Even with a David Lynch film on this list, this is still one of the more inexplicable entries. But its imagery stands out in a big way. It's not just that it's in colour but that Kurosawa spends the whole film really appreciating the nature of colour itself. It's an unusual thing - especially looking back now - to experience a movie that really explores all of the possibilities and the wonder inherent in such a fundamental aspect of the art. It would be like watching a movie about how great ceilings are. Yeah, sure, they protect us from the elements but we've spent so much time just unthinkingly accepting their presence in our lives that for someone to draw this much attention to them would be odd to say the least. And that only scratches the surface of this anomaly of the arts, filled as it is with a lot of purposely abstract characters that seem to be more at home in allegories, including a mentally handicapped young man who spends every day conducting an imaginary train. This one'll do a number on your head if you let it.
Eric Day co-hosts the Murderville Podcast at www.welcometomurderville.com
Give it a listen. Five minutes. Maybe you'll dig it. Maybe you'll hate it. But at least you'll have tried something new.