Welcome to 2026 my project honoring the first quarter of the 21st century. In this extremely lax project I watch a movie from each year to hopefully give myself some insight with what has changed within cinema during this century. At the very least I’ll have watched 25 interesting films and paired them with a dinner inspired by the movie, the place its from, and maybe a little bit of nostalgia for the past 25 years. You can watch along with me or find out what’s up next by checking out the full list of movies.
Today’s feature is from the year 2005, we are headed to Japan to rock out in…
Movie: エリ・エリ・レマ・サバクタニ [My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?]
Year: 2005
Director: Shinji Aoyama
Country: Japan
The Elevator Pitch: A disease has taken over the world in the near future of 2015 that causes a percentage of the population to kill themselves after they are overcome with despair. A wealthy man with an infected daughter brings her to the countryside where two musicians seem immune to the illness.
How Was the Movie?:
This is a really good movie for the right type of person. My husband enjoyed it about 120%, and I really liked it and might watch it again in the future but it isa slow paced thoughtful movie that is made up of at least 25% noise rock music including a full 5+ minute scene of one of the musicians working on tweaking a sound up into a specific noise he likes for about three minutes. You kind of just have to let it wash over and I don’t know if that works for most audiences. If you enjoy sensory experiences and being allowed to sit with uncomfortable and strange feelings, this movie is extremely rewarding.
I was terrified that this movie would trigger me with pandemic feelings but the reality is that the set up of the disease is much more nebulous (and a little goofy) than actually setting up a real pandemic. Pandemic here is less Contagion and more allegory. The film is both an art noise piece but also a genuine question of what makes life worth living and especially what makes things worth the next moment. It meditates pretty deeply on art as a force for rebellion that simultaneously connects and alienates us.
It’s hard to view this movie and not think of rising suicide rates and their public awareness in Japan in the 00s and the flourishing of subcultures to counter act the terrible economic climate and changing social environment. It’s enticing to me to think that this type of “make your own way” art could defeat the horrors especially from where I am sitting in the future. I don’t even think the movie wants you to go away from it thinking that but it seems very potent in the face of AI now and what would have been the increasingly, nearly completely take over of commercial and commodified art then. What will stay with me is that if we keep trying we can connect to people and in some small way and that is almost enough.
While I feel this movie runs a little over its welcome time it’s not so long as to be a burden. The characters in this are pretty thin but it’s enough to keep you invested in the film so it will definitely depend on you being able to stomach noise rock and at times, very wild ambient noises as well. There were a couple points where I didn’t really love that but because my husband is a huge noise rock fan and he was especially jamming out. There is a long sequence at the end which is unforgettable and makes the entire movie so in the end, I’m glad we watched it.
A couple of miscellaneous notes include the title is actually “Eri Eri Lema Sabakutani” which is kind of a mash up of the Greek and Hebrew opening of Psalm 22 but then also, uh, transliterated into Japanese which is insane as a person who can read Hebrew and Japanese my brain kind of did an entire reboot seeing that the first time. They reference in the title in the movie (insert DiCaprio pointing meme here) but it’s fully in Japanese so I’m very interested why the title was picked.
This movie has a lot of proper computers and music software in it. I suppose by 2005 we were really into the full tech age and absolutely people making noise music would be using software in order to do that. It was fun to see everything else being analog including a CD player as a key “player” in the movie. By 2005 I had my 2nd iPod/3rd Mp3 player (I got a Rio800 in 2000 as baby’s first MP3 player) but I think I was a little ahead of the curve :p
This film prompted us to check out Electric Dragon 80000V which uh…I loved and would recommend 110% in case this movie doesn’t sound like it’s for you.
What was for Dinner?:
For dinner I made a very basic yaki udon with some chicken. Yaki means grilled and yaki udon is just stir fried noodles but it uses udon, generally with a bunch of cabbage and other vegetables. Udon are my favorite noodle type so I have no idea why this wasn’t already in my rotation of dinners but obviously it was delicious.
You can put whatever vegetables you like in this. On the left is the giant pile of vegetables before it cooked down so you can get a lot of nutrition in there if you are so inclined. Also it cooks in about 10-15 minutes. Probably the easiest dinner I’ve made in the last two years, and absolutely the easiest out of any dinners for these movie projects. 10 out of 10 go make this!
That’s it for 2005, see you in the future year of 2006!