The film begins, like Fellini's "8 1/2", in a car, and like that film once we manage to work our way out of the car we have stepped onto an alien landscape. The terrain in "Japon", filmed on location in a region of the Mexican countryside, feels so alien precisely because it's a place we've never seen before in a movie that I can think of. Sure, there have been a number of films that have made use of rural locations south of the border that are unique to the cinema (a goodly portion of them directed by Werner Herzog), but the landscape in Japon feels as if Mario Bava got a direct line on the forces that shaped that particular pocket of the Earth in order to create the ultimate science fiction landscape.

The thing is, "Japon" is not by any stretch of the imagination a science fiction film. It's narrative, unfolding at the speed of its elderly, suicidal protagonist's life -- slow, but with plenty of opportunity for observation. This is probably not the kind of thing that would appeal to most readers, but if you are in the mood to see something that challenges and disturbs in a way that's different from a horror film, I can say there will definitely be sights to behold in "Japon" that you will not see in most any other movie out there.

A man (Alejandro Ferretis) is heading out into the desert to die. That essentially, is the minimalist structure the film provides. When he first steps away from his last vestige of modern life, he finds that the desert does, indeed, hold death for some that venture into its infernal grip. In this case, it's a flock of birds being hunted for food by a group of men and their sons. None of them can understand why this old man seems to want to find a remote village deep in the desert, far from the main roads, but they oblige him with the directions that get him started on his way.

When he reaches the village he finds life divided pretty equally between farming and drinking, often at the same time. The old man rents a space in the shed of an old woman's farm. She seems to get him to open up a bit, but the man is still obsessed with death.

But we do get a sense he's softening around the edges, and as he finds himself actually developing an interest in the woman's welfare, we sense that the old dog may yet have some changes ahead of him.

But "Japon" doesn't really end there -- in fact its ending could definitely qualify as apocalyptic, in the sense that it will spell a kind of doom for the society the film portrays.

(On the prurient side, I will add that I saw this film on its theatrical run here in the States about three years ago and the only shot my girlfriend still remembers from the film is that of a horse getting a boner -- see, I told you "Japon" offered up unique images-- but I'm not sure if it means I should feel nervous.)

Tartan offers up "Japon" on dvd with a transfer that some will say looks too grainy, but as someone who saw the film on the big screen I can say that the film was grainy as hell to begin with, so this is actually a very good transfer. The film was shot in 16mm with anamorphic lenses to create the cinemascope ratio, and the dvd is letterboxed in said ratio.

You know extras are going to be sparse when "Chapter Selections" is offered up as a special feature. We get the film's trailer and an interview with its writer-director, Carlos Reygadas, in which he discusses (among other things) why the film is called "Japon", a spanish variation on "Japan". I'm still not so sure about his explanation, but Reygados has made such a unique film that I'm willing to indulge him a bit on the esoteric title.