The most I've hooted and hollered at a new film in a theater since I don't know when. I'm interested in the layering of historical time here. The postwar moment is the base, of course, beautifully recreated by Jack Fisk - who reconfirms his status as the greatest production designer in post-Classic Hollywood American film - and conjured up with all the allusions to the Holocaust and the American occupation of Japan. Then on top comes the 80s, most prominently…

The symbolic death of the parent sets off a process of libidinal exploration that is initially thrilling but becomes frightening in its intensity and limitlessness. By personifying his id as a cartoonishly evil criminal, he learns that he can channel his appetite for sadistic violence into the socially sanctioned forms of coercion that secure the patriarchal household. He becomes the man of the house he initially fantasized about removing. A tonally incongruous scene involving a church suggests the possibility of…