Watching Tetsuichiro Tsuta’s “Black Ox,” a gorgeously shot mood piece based on a Buddhist parable, I was reminded of Gen Nagao’s 2023 “Motion Picture: Choke,” a dystopian fable starring Misa Wada as a female Robinson Crusoe living in a Darwinian alternative world.
Both films unfold in black and white, with Tsuta’s shot mostly on 35 mm film and partly in 70 mm color, the latter a first for a Japanese movie. And both feature a silent, if expressive, protagonist in an episodic story with mythopoetic dimensions.
But Tsuta, whose breakout film “The Tale of Iya” (2013) was another folkloric drama ravishingly shot by cinematographer Yutaka Aoki, has moved beyond the scrappy DIY methods of Nagao, who fashioned his world largely from sticks, gourds and found locations. In addition to Aoki, Tsuta’s collaborators include late composer Ryuchi Sakamoto, whose haunting ambient music can be heard on the soundtrack, and producer Shozo Ichiyama, the programming director of the Tokyo International Film Festival, where “Black Ox” screened last year.
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