Profound Desires of the Gods (1968)

Profound Desires of the Gods is one of those rare films that feels less like a story you watch and more like a whole world you’ve been dropped into—sweaty, earthy, funny in sudden jolts, and unsettling in ways that linger. Shōhei Imamura turns a remote island and the Futori clan into a living ecosystem of desire, superstition, labor, and modern ambition, and the arrival of a Tokyo engineer isn’t a neat “civilization meets nature” parable so much as a collision where everyone is changed and no one stays morally clean. The film’s power comes from its patience: it observes the rhythms of the island with a novelist’s breadth and a documentarian’s eye, building a sense of myth and inevitability without ever feeling staged or polite. It’s also not for everyone—its frankness about taboo, including incest, and its raw, chaotic energy can be challenging—but if you’re on the fence and want cinema that’s bold, immersive, and genuinely unlike anything else from its era, this is a plunge worth taking.

Profound Desires of the Gods is Imamura swinging for something huge: a sweaty, sprawling clash between modern “progress” and an island community ruled by myth, hunger, and impulse. It’s visually striking and often fascinating in its anthropology-of-the-soul approach, but it’s also deliberately messy, slow-burning, and willing to sit in discomfort far longer than most viewers will tolerate. The incest thread isn’t a cheap shock so much as a blunt instrument to expose taboo, power, and decay—still, if that subject matter is a hard no, this film won’t meet you halfway. Come for a challenging, uncompromising epic with moments of dark humor and raw beauty; skip it if you want a tidy story, likable characters, or emotional safety rails.