Penance

A fathomless echo chamber in which spiritual confusion and aggression keep turning into each other, and penance comes to sound like a very dark joke.

In many ways, Penance plays like an object lesson in how a graceful sense of spacing and staging within the frame can overcome technical restrictions.

Effectively unnerving on a scene-for-scene basis thanks to writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's preference for ambience over character-driven drama.

While the core concept is unique, it was executed much better in the French Martyrs, released a year earlier, making this film not only feel derivative but also an incredibly pale imitation.