This mind-bending video doc twists the last life from that tired rubric, "the personal is political." Quite the reverse is true for Karin Amamiya, female vocalist in the ultra-nationalist noise band The Revolutionary Truth. Yutaka Tsuchiya, a left-wing filmmaker and outspoken anti-imperialist, took the bold step of documenting the neofascist movement by trying to understand the cultural void it fills in fin-de-siècle Japan. The camera he gives Karin becomes a two-way mirror in front of which she intimately reflects on a lifetime of "cursing the world," on how the Nationalist movement gave voice to her anger and how she in turn gives (very loud) voice to the movement. A live wire, but she's dead inside-until a visit to North Korea sparks questions for her. The themes of American hegemony and "this suffocating peace," worship of the war dead and a concomitant longing for a fatherland give way to compulsive diaristic revelations as Karin is transformed by her relationship with filmmaker Tsuchiya-and he by her. As in a grim fairy tale, the mirror is a magic mirror. (JB)