Director: NAOTO YAMAKAWA
Two existentially hungry labourers ‘get in character’ to rob a baker’s shop. But the communist baker outwits them: if they’ll listen to a Wagner opera, he’ll give them all they can eat. They take the deal but the trade off leaves them hungry.
Attack on the Bakery is an adaptation of a short story (originally called The Second Bakery Attack) by Haruki Murakami, one of the few screen adaptations Murakami has ever sanctioned.
In the original story, a young lawyer tells his new wife about a time when he attacked a bakery as a struggling student. His wife persuades him that the attack has left him cursed and that they must stage another in order to overcome the all-encompassing hunger that has beset them in the middle of the night.
Naoto¹s stylish adaptation does not retell the original story,but instead returns to the initial bakery attack, translating Murakami¹s peculiar wit and ironic use of moral ambiguity seamlessly into the language of film.
Commentary by Naoto Yamakawa recorded in Tokyo, Japan
Film courtesy of Cineman Brain Co.
