Kwaidan

Breathtakingly photographed on hand-painted sets, Kwaidan is at once a Japanese woodcut writ large, and an abstract wash of luminescent colors that seem to come from another world. An electronic soundtrack by avant-garde composer Toru Takemitsu plays hauntingly with natural sounds—crickets, rain, the cracking of wood, the loud silence of snow. Yet the stories—four of Lafcadio Hearn’s ghostly tales—strangely contradict this plastic splendor in their simple, aching humanity. All are tales of mortals caught by forces beyond their comprehension when the supernatural world intervenes in their lives. This version of Kwaidan is the original three-hour Director’s Cut.