I started to watch this because Netflix suggested it. I used to love to go to the movies and look for good Hollywood material but nowadays it's scarce. This movie (and the ones like it) are the reason why I still believe movies are art.This is a piece that will make you struggle to find out what is actually happening. As other reviewers mentioned, it does have its piece of sex, incest and violence, but it is never the focus. The movie uses those resources to make you understand what the protagonist is going through.It will linger in your mind for several days, and I think that is the greatest compliment a work can get. It starts a little slow, but it gets better... all the way to the end when you actually think it is going too fast. Do yourself a favor and watch this with an open mind. It's like pure oxygen in the middle of Hollywood pollution.

12year old Mitsuko is a student at her Father (Gozos) school. She is also the object of his perverse sexual gratification. Gozo locks her inside a cello case and makes her watch him and her mother during their sexual congress. Eventually, Taeko, the mother is persuaded to trade places; she now watches from within as Gozo rapes his daughter. The abuse continues at home and at the school Mitsuko attends where Gozo is headmaster. The dynamic of this malignant relationship is such that Taeko becomes jealous of her daughter and proceeds to physically abuse her whenever Gozo is away. During one particularly frenzied attack, Taeko slips and falls downstairs breaking her neck. Now Mitsuko is co-opted into the role of wife and, unable to endure the unending cycle of abuse, attempts suicide by jumping from a building. Although she survives the fall, she is now confined to a wheelchair. Gozo now sates his rapacious sexual appetite with a string of prostitutes, openly having sex in front of his paralysed daughter. The veracity Mitsukos horrific ordeal is challenged when, the possibility is raised that these events are fictional; taken from the manuscript of a controversial horror authors latest book. The latter part of this movie confronts the viewer with the questions; Who is the author? Where is Gozo? What has become of Mitsuko? The answers to these questions lie in the damaged and fragmented minds of the players. Ultimately, there is a reckoning, with a cruel vengeance brought upon those responsible. I see this movie as being an allegory of the disintegration of Japanese society. Sion Sono returns to themes of loss of personal and group identity first covered in Suicide Club However, I believe that Norikos Dinner Table is his most coherent treatment of alienation and atomisation driven by westernisation Having watched this movie and having sat through the seemingly never-ending making of documentary (where the director provides no insight into his intention except, (he States in the opaque documentary of the making of this movie) 'to make a beautifully grotesque spectacle', my take is that Sion Sono vision is flawed. I get the allegory, I get the beautiful grotesqueness but I cannot accept the imagery of child sexual abuse as portrayed here. In many peoples minds child abuse is a taboo subject, and, rather like the way that the phrase 911 has become iconic, the subject of child abuse, particularly child sexual abuse has become a metaphor for the most unimaginably awful thing that can happen to a human being. This is of course, not the case. The worst thing that can happen to a human being is death, but, as children we point our finger at a playmate we say Bang! and death has now become a metaphor for Game Over, so now, when a filmmaker reaches into their bag of handy shocks there is little left. except for the depiction of children being used for sexual gratification. In the depiction of the abuse. The sexual abuse of children is surprisingly commonplace. As well as my own experience of abuse, it is a sad fact that as I get older, I discover that many of my friends and loved ones have endured abuse.In reality, children enduring abuse, have voices, they share their fears and hopes with a favourite doll, they cry to their teddy bears, they pray to Harry Potter, They pray to Hello Kitty. This is too raw a nerve to be touched upon by this director, instead, Mitsuko is objectified to little more than an icon; we do not hear her thoughts, we do not bear true witness to the bleakness of her soul. There is some vague voice-over about her home and school being littered with traps but this sounds more like a statement taken from the script notes rather than A genuine voice. I believe that Sion Sono does a great disservice to genuine survivors of abuse when he presents Mitsuko in such a simplified manner. I therefore can not, in all conscience recommend this movie

Sion Sono is much better known for Suicide Club (aka Suicide Circle), but devoted fans are probably well acquainted with this one, too. Coming out within a year before Stranger than Fiction, Strange Circus is a movie about an author writing a story that just so happens to be true... maybe... or not? Is she dreaming, is she getting obsessed with her characters, or is this just a repressed past? With any answer, it's still a great movie. Visually, it's beyond stunning... the wet red walls are enough to give you nightmares all on their own, but Sono also juxtaposes the story with circus imagery that increases the Theatre of the Absyrd feeling to almost delirious proportions.And quick kudos to the acting. Yes, the main character shines... but Issei Ishida as Yuji is probably one of the most singularly beautiful movement actors since The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. The grace and control is better than dancing... a good reflection of the directing, which flows along a track exciting as a roller coaster but smooth as ice-skating.--PolarisDiB

For the first 30 minutes or so of Strange Circus, you might be fooled into thinking you're going to be watching a linear story of child abuse, weird sex, cello cases, and circuses. Then, throughout the next 30 minutes, you wait and wait, hoping that the story of an insane, schizophrenic, handicapped woman who is writing a novel might lead to some compelling connection with the first part of the film. Finally, at the last 30 minutes, you grow frustrated that nothing adds up, nothing makes any sense, and you've just wasted 90 minutes of your life on what feels like a director making up a plot as he goes along.I'm no stranger to this kind of cinema, and I am also familiar with this director's other works, so I kind of knew what to expect going into this. However, as the plot teeters from needlessly complex to just needless, I couldn't help but feel that the director himself didn't know what was happening in this film, throwing in twist after twist near the end for no good reason than to make the film more, um, "strange".This film is loaded with some great imagery such as class rooms filled with bloody walls and a coffin filled with flowers that is set on fire. There are even some disturbing, thought-provoking sequences peppered throughout, and I'm not usually disturbed in the slightest by anything in films. The acting and music are fine all around. The pacing of film can be a bit disorienting, though the hyperkinetic editing won't be shocking to anyone familiar with these types of movies. Basically, without spoiling the plot, I'll say that the film is told in a completely nonlinear fashion, jumping from past to present to future without any regard to the viewer, and it is a deeply convoluted plot involving a) a principal having sex with his daughter and b) the loss of identity.It's definitely worth a watch, though don't expect to walk out of this one understanding anything. I typically hate the term "Lynch-like", but a lot of the film will seem familiar to Lynch fans, as it explores many themes Lynch has been trying to cram down our throats for the past decade. Though whereas Lynch makes nonsense compelling and somehow holds his films together by a thread, the nonsense here is simply that -- nonsensical.Not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination and actually quite compelling for most of the running length. A shame about the final half hour or so, though. I often see this film recommended to fans of challenging cinema -- I dunno, this film didn't really challenge me, it just frustrated me. Worth a look.