Reel World

  Hailed as "the first landmark film in Japanese history" by film critic Mark Cousins,  Souls on the Road  is a film to which many students and scholars of modern filmmaking give a hard pass.  Some criticize the film as offering a patchy narrative and overly melodramatic character portrayals.  It has also been criticized as being "messy" by modern standards, in terms of directing, lighting, camera angles, and in its unconventional, non-linear storytelling. However, all of these criticisms can also be viewed as groundbreaking in these very areas. Once again, scholars, Context reigns as King!  It is imperative to note that at the time this film was made in Japan, live musicians played traditional instruments to one side of the screen, while a narrator or troupe of narrators called "Benshi" elaboratively explained ("setsumei") the action of the film and its dialogue during the screening.  When intertitles arrived in Japan, Benshi would often incorpo