Calling a movie “problematic” isn’t exactly a compliment in the Anglosphere, but the equivalent term in Japanese — mondaisaku — is a popular marketing buzzword. The late producer Mitsunobu Kawamura had a knack for such fare. In the years leading up to his death in 2022, he was responsible for provocative dramas including Michihito Fujii’s “The Journalist” and Keisuke Yoshida’s “Intolerance,” as well as a string of politician-bating documentaries.
“The Moon” is being touted as Kawamura’s final bequest — a dai-mondaisaku (work of great controversy), no less. Though it’s a wonky and often frustrating film, it should at least succeed in getting people talking, which is doubtless what he would have wanted.
Adapted with a surfeit of flair by writer and director Yuya Ishii from a 2017 novel by Yo Hemmi, it’s a plucked-from-the-headlines affair. The story is based on a 2016 knife attack at a care facility in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, in which a former employee fatally stabbed 19 people with mental disabilities, claiming they were mercy killings.