Movielogr
Magnitude 7.9 (1980)
Directed by Kenjirô Ohmori
Twitter Facebook Google+Disaster | Drama | Science Fiction
Most recently watched by sleestakk
Overview
A large earthquake hits Tokyo, which was predicted by a seismologist but was ignored.
Length 126 minutes
Actors
Hiroshi Katsuno | Shuji Otaki | Yoshio Inaba | Eiji Okada | Mizuho Suzuki | Toshiyuki Nagashima | Yumi Takigawa | Shin Saburi | Kayo Matsuo | Tsutomu Yamazaki | Norihei Miki
Viewing History (seen 1 time)
| Date Viewed | Device | Format | Source | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07/02/2020 | Home Theater | Broadcast | Video on Demand | 6 stars |
| (Average) 6 stars |
Viewing Notes
The first half of MAGNITUDE 7.9, AKA DEATHQUAKE (a MUCH cooler title) is a commentary on rigid social rules in academia, governmental blundering and the class structure of Japanese society in general.
As it was made in 1980 there are definitely some gender biases that are just accepted as normal for the time but seem weird and awkward now. For instance, the professor’s research assistant, who suffers from unrequited love for him, serves him hand and foot in a weird, fawning scene between the two of them in her apartment. He just shows up and she serves him beer and noodles. He gulps down his first glass like a fucking pig and just hands it out for a refill; and she obediently pours him more. He pulls out a cigarette and she lights it for him.
Later, in another awkward exchange between the research assistant and her father, he suggests that she become a kept woman and sleep with the professor for money so that she can presumably afford to send him to a health sanatorium in the mountains he wants to go to. WTF?!
And then there are the awkward exchanges between the professor and his son; the professor and his wife; and the professor and his mother-in-law. Seems the professor’s marriage was arranged for purely social advantages so that he could climb the academic ladder and carry on the good name of his wife’s father, who predicted the previous 1923 earthquake.
The wife comes across as cold and hidebound to her family’s honor throughout the first half of the film, henpecked by the domineering grandmother to the point where she gives in to demands to ask for a divorce. And the son has all sorts of issues including constantly wearing disturbingly short shorts throughout the movie (to be fair this was the style in Japan in the ‘70s and early ‘80s for who knows what reason).
The second half of the film is devoted to an amazing amount destruction of Tokyo with the kind of miniatures destruction we’ve all come to love from Japanese sci-fi films. The subway and highrise scenes are jaw-droppingly awesome with gluttonous levels of death and destruction.
One of my favorite scenes though, which is a callback to a testing scene earlier in the film, is the cars being flung off of overpasses; automotive fireballs that explode whenever they smash into the buildings below because in the words of the professor, “cars are the first thing to catch on fire during an earthquake.” WHAT!? But props to them for following through with the fireball Mazdas!
SO fun to watch this movie thanks to DKU-TV because Japanese disaster movies put American disaster movies to shame!
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