The Great White Tower

Yamamoto Satsuo is one of Japanese cinema’s grandmasters for whom the rest of the world so far hasn’t caught up. One wonders why, after seeing The Great White Tower, a dive headlong into university politics and the battle for who will succeed as the head of the medical department.

Two futures open up by way of the film’s antagonists: the decent researcher and community-conscious humanist against the careerist who uses his undeniable brilliance for nothing other than his own advancement. The two-and-a-half-hour feature unfolds the intricacies of how a university department in Japan works. Lectures and operations, with a side of confrontation, sometimes person to person and sometimes in group settings, in which questions of ethics and politics are fervently debated. 

Entering a whole world, The Great White Tower unveils a staggering black-and-white, a choice justified by Yamamoto to soften the shock from the operation scenes, with a starkness that perfectly reflects the film’s uncompromising moral stance. A singular and multi-dimensional masterpiece!

– Olaf Möller

Trailer

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