No Longer Human (2019) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Beau Welch ★★★★ 2

  Things that happen in this movie include:
  -Dazai goes over to have an affair and the minute he arrives at the woman's house he puts his briefcase on the table and starts pulling out tins of spam
  -Dazai and Yukio Mishima have an authorial showdown in a bar where Mishima calls out Dazai for being a douchebag and not masculine enough for being obsessed w death but not process. To show his masculinity Dazai autoasphyxiates and collapses it's hilarious
  -A lot of Blade Runner 2049 rolling around in the snow HE'S JUST LIKE MEEE
  -Dazai hallucinating children screaming at him and a lot of quality anti child moments
  -the best ever 'you're probably wondering how I ended up in this…

• Review by Invincible Asia ★½ 1

  While it looks great in many parts it's still a waste of director Mika Ninagawa's talents.
  The story of the "male genius who just happens to also be a womanising, manipulating and abusive arsehole, but it's okay because ART!" really has to piss off, based on a real author be damned. It's just so tedious and boring seeing these cinematic excuses for tossers, especially when there's hundreds of them.

• Review by The Clyde ★★★★

  "Man was born for love and revolution."

  Solid biopic by Mika Ninagawa in which she shows the life of Osamu Dazai, fantastically played by Shun Oguri, one of Japan's most renowed novelists, a great artist and a piece of shit of a person. Ninagawa's style is palpable throughout the whole film, in which she casts not one, but two of the most Kawaii actresses in the world: Erika Sawajiri and Fumi Nikaido. I also really liked to see Tatsuya Fujiwara, from her terrific Diner, again as one of Osamu's rivals. Mika is kind of a naughty director and I can see why she chose this particular writer with so many love affairs to make a picture. And what can I…

• Review by Callisto ★★★★ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  TW: suicide, depression/mental illness, drugs

  Since the trigger warning itself spoils the movie if you don't know anything about it, I figured I'd go a little more in depth with its themes, which all relate to the trigger warning. My review will basically go from talking about the author's real life, the novel, and the film.

  After reading the novel for about two hours today and finishing it, I decided to rewatch this immediately to see how it holds up. A quick little summary of the background of the novel and this film: the novel is biographical but changes names of real people. This film doesn't go through the entire book but rather the a point in the author's life,…

• Review by Jeffery Tan ★★★

  The conflicting nature of my thoughts on this movie depend on my love-hate relationship with Osamu Dazai.

  Very misleading title because it's not about the novel 'no longer human' at all but about the author's scandals and his reputations (historically-accurate or not) that perpetuated him to eventually wrote the novel and then threw himself into a river.

  I really like how the film frames the unstable and corrupted mind of the author prior to the production of the novel, which sets up the right tone to understand the thoughts going on behind his last-seconds life decision. However though, he appears to be such a bastard in this film that I wish that he can at least provide some insights into…

• Review by Laura ★★★ 2

  So, Osamu Dazai and Yukio Mishima walk into a bar...

• Review by Niels Matthijs (Onderhond) ★★★★

  No Longer Human is somewhat new territory for Ninagawa. It's not that here earlier films were pure genre efforts, they've always had multiple layers in them, but the balance between drama and genre has tilted in favor of drama here. As a result, the film is stylistically slightly more subdued compared to Ninagawa's other work, but all her core qualities are still very much present and No Longer Human is all the more interesting for it. It's another worthy entry in Ninagawa's oeuvre, who is quickly establishing herself as one of the most talented directors working in Japan today.

  Full review:
  www.onderhond.com/blog/no-longer-human-review-mika-ninagawa

• Review by Baron de Charlus ★

  Pochitude absolue romantico-insupportable. À mort ce genre de récit faisant doublement l'impasse sur l'intérêt littéraire d'une oeuvre et la mise en perspective historique de son éclosion. À mort cette absence de problématisation des créateurs terriblement autodestructeurs qui font des enfants aux femmes qui les adulent.

  Ma fascination pour Osamu Dazai reste, mais je la remise au rancart de mes propres pérégrinations dans la littérature nippone, et de la lecture de sa géniale fille, Tsushima Yûko dont le "Vous, rêves nombreux, toi lumière !" m'avait fait l'effet d'une pluie fraîche sur un été sec et covidien.

• Review by Lao ★★★

  I'd rate it lower but it was too pretty.

• Review by Natalie

  I think like Diner, this was a bit of a confused mess because Ninagawa was going in through the story of Osamu Dazai, and trying to frame his story against the lives of the three women in his life, and while she showed great interest in them, she ultimately struggled in fleshing them out because of the need to balance Dazai's story with theirs. And while you quickly realise he's not an antihero, just a destructive, alcoholic, selfish mess incapable of care or love, there is not more nuance in which this is explored.

  The most interesting storyline was that involving Erika Sawajiri's character of Shizuko Ota, a fan, mistress and writer of her own whose diary served as "inspiration"…

• Review by nisemono_ ★★½

  Dazai in the book still be the best for me
  but I really hope to see good/best film adaptation from his novel.
  Gonna be D A R K and D E P R E S S E D

• Review by Alex ★★★½

  A biopic that is not so much about Osamu Dazai as it is about three beautiful women.
  I never understood why so many were captivated by No Longer Human or Osamu Dazais life.
  The only interesting thing to me were the women in his life, theirbeauty, sexuality and unfortunate fates.
  That’s why I found this to be a really interesting watch even though we follow the life of a man who doesn’t understand the women around him at all and has so much hatered for them.
  I can’t wait to see what Mika Ninagawa does next she surprised me with everything that she made up to this point!