A.K.A. Serial Killer

A film-essay based on a news item wherein 19 year-old Norio Nagayama murders four people without any apparent motive, Adachi and his fellow filmmakers build this story around the "landscape theory", which posits that all landscapes are fundamentally linked to a figure of power, rendering Japan a toxic place that can drive sane men to madness.

The film is composed of a series of views and landscapes that the young man could have been exposed to and which may have insidiously shaped his worldview and provoked his criminal acts. While the film does not directly address social upheaval, it points out the symbols and structures of power which are omnipresent and which inevitably elicit a call to action...