The Battery (2007)

The Battery (Yôjirô Takita, 2007)

Japanese Title: Batterî

The meaning of life, as it turns out and according to the logic of Yôjirô Takita's unapologetically sentimental The Battery, can be found in baseball. The film, which tells the story of Takumi Harada (Kento Hayashi), a talented young pitcher who relocates to a rural town for his sickly younger brother, is ostensibly directed towards the youth, with its treatment of persons of authority, from the bumbling parents to the inutile teachers, with manifest naiveté of the driving force of the youth. In that sense, Takita's function as director is nothing more than to provoke empowerment among the youth; that independent of limitations enforced by authoritarian entities yet guided by virtues exemplified in team sportsmanship, one can be triumphant in a chosen field.

That being said, The Battery is a frustratingly close-minded film, typical of the many youth-directed narratives whose singular goal is patronize the faults of the next generation in the guise of some life wisdom fetched from deep within the elusive pertinent virtues of baseball. With hardly any attempt at subtlety from Takita, the films bludgeons its audience to abide by its strange logic and morality, all for the sake of genre and market conventions. Thus, there's an abundance of emotionally manipulative techniques at use here --- from the frequent close-ups to the perpetually smiling mug of best friend Go (Kenta Yamada), who also functions as Takumi's catcher; the predictable musical orchestrations that swell at the most opportune moments in the film; the numerous sidekicks who provide diversion from the sugary best bud plot by being inanely humorous.

The Battery is middlebrow entertainment, at its most efficient, with its unwillingness to be waylaid by any form of ambiguity. Should one survive the arguably impolite and inarguably impractical sweetness that is being rammed down the throats of its audience, the film proves to be surprisingly profound in its observations about baseball. In fashioning Takumi and Go's friendship and sports partnership not unlike a domestic relationship, the film suggests a quasi-conjugal overview of the game where more than manly prowess and skills, the requisite for success is something less physical and more emotional, something more within the arena of conventionally conceived feminine traits. In a sport that is crazed with strength, muscles and steroids, the idea that the possible key to a perfect game is love and harmony is jolting. To see baseball matches where grunts and sweat are replaced with communicated smiles and sticky stares is some sort of unexpected undercurrent in a pastime that has been unduly for years, a test of manhood, at least for the cultures that regard the sport that highly.

At a purely moralistic analysis, The Battery purports to connect family, friendship and character with baseball. However and more than that, The Battery is further proof, along with the girl-y boy bands, the effeminate anime heroes, polka dot clothes, shirts a size or two smaller than normal worn by slender male bodies, and the exaggerated demand for everything bug-eyed, cute, and cuddly, that Japan has perfected the art of advertising androgyny.

United Red Army (2007)

United Red Army (Kôji Wakamatsu, 2007)
Japanese Title: Jitsuroku rengô sekigun: Asama sansô e no michi

Kôji Wakamatsu's United Red Army is a docu-drama (or if you prefer to be academic about it, jitsuroku eiga, the Japanese term for films that mix documentary and fiction elements, prevalent in the seventies, and often about the yakuza and other gangs) about the titular Japanese extremist leftist paramilitary group. In a span of more than three hours, Wakamatsu details several decades of the group's existence. While he breezes through the early history of the group during the first thirty minutes of the film, barraging his viewers with names, faces, and events too plenty and rapidly relayed to realistically remember, there remains a sense of awe as to how dedicatedly all the information has been stringed together and dramatized, all in the rhythm of Jim O'Rourke's catchy music. The prelude sets the stage for what's to happen next, a tensely intimate excursion up the Japanese Alps where the members of the army are mutated by their fundamentalist political beliefs, warped by extreme fanaticism and the lack of human encounter.

Wakamatsu is a former member of the United Red Army (where his links with the terrorist group has prevented him from entering the United States and other territories). His personal dedication to the film is reflected by the mastery and accuracy for which he tells the story. Most intriguing is how he, despite his actual experiences supporting the group and its activities, directs the film with a cool detachedness: unwilling to take any sides, persistent in portraying the events with as much objectivity as possible. The gamble pays off because United Red Army's investment in factual consistency, mixed with Wakamatsu's purposeful emotional ambivalence towards his subject matter and the multitude of characters, creates an atmosphere of alluring unsteadiness, which the film banks on to carry its audience through the three hours.

Atop the mountains, the army, torn apart by political intrigue only to be reformed with a primary objective of strengthening its membership for warfare, holes up in different makeshift bases where the members undergo rigorous training and indoctrination. Prompted probably by their self-imposed alienation from society, among other factors like psychological impulses and human imperfection, the political struggle becomes warped and twisted, with the members being forced into self-assessment, first through demanding physical exertions then through violent punishments, almost often leading to death. Fascism creeps into the group's communist principles, creating an atmosphere of unease and suffocation, which Wakamatsu paints so vividly yet with little or no emotional attachment to his subjects. Wakamatsu objective and journalistic approach relays judgment from filmmaker to the audience, creating a discomforting and challenging burden to the viewers, as humanity is further trivialized to serve the confused, irrational, and often impromptu purposes of their cause.

The film's finale, where a mountain lodge (which in reality is Wakamatsu's own house, which he used and later on demolished for the film) is seized by some desperate members of the group and is later on seized by the police, caps the cinematic madness that Wakamatsu so carefully weaves into an astounding frenzy. The hours of joyless pain and suffering culminate in a subtle revelation of the driving force of both the group's successes and excesses. As the youngest of the group starts exclaiming the most rational piece of dialogue in the film, an awareness arises that a single element brought out this irrationality and their predicament: youth.

Youth, which translates to the adventurism, gullibility, instability, cowardice, open-mindedness and strength they inherently possess, is the prime mover of the group and becomes the rousing centerpiece of Wakamatsu's effort. The film, from being a mere reiteration (although visually and emotionally stirring) of dates, characters, and events, turns into a something else: a compelling and daring commentary of the intrinsic power and the accompanying danger of the youth.

The Machine Girl (2008)

The Machine Girl (Noboru Iguchi, 2008)
Japanese Title: Kataude mashin gâru

The average adult person has around five liters of blood. The average adult person in The Machine Girl has a lot more than five liters. With geysers, fountains, and waterfalls of blood bursting from every possible wound, it can be assumed that human beings, at least for writer-director Noboru Iguchi, are only as useful as the amount of blood they can spill. Iguchi therefore exploits that dehumanizing notion, creatively finding ways of making each and every bloodletting as outrageous and unique as they can be. There's no pretense of depth or meaning as each plot detail, each stylized setting and each introduced character are only there to serve one purpose: to turn gory deaths into laughter-inflicting spectacles. Sure, the movie exists primarily to mine into our collective depravity. However, such being it's only raison d'etre, it accomplishes it with enough careless enthusiasm and verve to make the experience of watching this trashy movie into one memorable ride.

Iguchi doesn't waste time with talky introductions or artsy opening credits as he starts off with Ami (Minase Yashiro) violently blasting through a gang of bullies preying on a nerdy schoolboy. During those first few minutes, we see limbs sliced, heads exploding, and gallons and gallons of blood splattering wherever. "Murderer!" exclaims the rescued schoolboy, and the label prompts Ami to reminisce on how she turned from an athletic college girl into a one-armed machine gunning murderer.

The story is premised on vengeance, or at least a most simplistic and elementary reading of the primal human emotion. Ami's younger brother and his friend have been targets of a gang headed by the son of a yakuza boss. The younger brother and his friend are murdered, forcing Ami to chase each and every person connected to her brother's untimely demise. On the way, her arm gets sliced off, she earns a friend (Asami) out of her brother's pal's grieving mom, and gets a machine gun attached to her armless limb. As it turns out, as Ami kills, she gains more murderous enemies out of the family members of her victims. There might be a commentary on the vicious cycle of violence which revenge causes, but the real value of the growing amount of vengeful persons is for the movie's penultimate battle where Ami and the army of deadly relatives fight it out to the death, using weapons ranging from samurai swords, flying guillotines, and the drill bra.

Of course, The Machine Girl is anything but novel. The idea of a limbless hero has been exploited from Chang Cheh's classic The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and the multiple sequels and spin-offs it inspired, to Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror (2007). The movie espouses dehumanization in favor of the commodification of death and violence, a standard of the genre of direct-to-video trash flicks The Machine Girl belongs to. While Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Shinya Tsukamoto, directors who all worked or are currently working for the ill-reputed genre, might have done wonders both aesthetically and thematically with the material, Iguchi doesn't seek to revitalize the genre or give it some newfound respect. Instead, he purposely and obediently comes up with a product which the film's American funders envisioned: bloody, violent, fun, and funny without the burden of guilt and introspective prodding that most plot and theme-heavy films encourage.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Shohei Imamura, 2001)
Japanese Title: Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu

In one of my morning commutes to work, I inadvertently sat beside this peculiar old man of probably eighty years of age. He smiled at me. I did not return the unspoken morning’s greeting as I was in no mood for weekday pleasantries. When the conductor came to collect our fare, I immediately gave him the correct amount and went on with my business. The old man got two little coins which I knew were not enough to cover his fare and gave it to the conductor. The conductor remarked “Sir, this isn’t enough. Your eyesight must be so bad that you picked up the wrong coins.” While, struggling to remove from his purse the correct fare, the old man retorted with a grandfatherly smile, “I may not be able to see these coins, but I can see a gorgeous woman more than a mile away.” The conductor laughed and received the correct payment. I, however, was more humbled than anything. It would take a quirky old man and his witty retort to make me realize the youth I was wasting away in my intent to flow along the work-a-day world. I finally gave the old man the long-delayed smile he deserved minutes ago.

At the very ripe age of 74 and with several outstanding films including two Cannes Palm d’Or winners under his belt, Shohei Imamura crafted Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, a quirky if not entirely whimsical concoction that seems to be dwarfed by the richer and more complex films Imamura made before it. The film tackles the story of Sasano (Koji Yakusho), a retrenched salary man who moves from the riverside tent city in Tokyo to a rural town upon the parting advice of a homeless philosopher named Taro whom he befriended. The philosopher urges him on a treasure hunt but upon arrival in the seaside town, he gets sidetracked when he discovers and eventually falls in love with Saeko (Misa Shimizu), woman with the curious condition of swelling up with immense amount of water that can only be released by the commission of a wicked act such as shoplifting or through sexual intercourse.

Despite the very simplistic if not trite predisposition, the film is still very much underneath the umbrella of the Imamura’s constant artistic interest, the relationship between the marginalized social strata and human sexuality. Here, Imamura again examines the always-reliable downtrodden Japanese corporate slave, pushed away from the norm of the economically successful post-war Japanese individual by forces which are beyond his control. However, instead of furthering such examination of the unlucky impoverished Japanese as composite for a commentary on contemporary Japanese society, Imamura most delightfully steers away from what is expected of him. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge does not have anything drastically important to say about society in general nor does it need to say anything pertinent of the times. Imamura has already spent a long and illustrious career doing exactly that.

Later in his career, Imamura would strive for humanism within the familiar context that he has grown accustomed to. Such humanism finds climax and maybe, near-perfection in Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, where Imamura’s thematic thrusts are inward, very similar to traditional parables and fables where the narrative primarily serves the characters’ growth to their inevitable betterment supposedly to touch on a universal human trait. The inward thematic thrust of Warm Water Under a Red Bridge becomes more apparent when the film is compared to his earlier works where the elaborate storytelling and characterizations are usually evocations of social and cultural situations that are larger than the films themselves, like the anti-American sentiment within a Japanese society that is under the influence of the American victors in Pigs and Battleships (1961), the struggles of the post-war Japanese women living in the fringes of society in The Insect Woman (1963), among plenty other grander themes that most of Imamura’s films apparently allude to. What Warm Water Under a Red Bridge most successfully imparts is the very personal appreciation of the proper pursuit of happiness --- not through the modernized method of financial stability as dictated by modern norms but through the most primitive yet certain representations of human satisfaction: a job that sufficiently provides and more importantly, an always interesting sex life.

In Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, sex symbolizes a bevy of human needs. In a humorous utilization of magic realism, Imamura conceives a woman’s orgasm as life-giving. He meticulously, and with a glorious touch of lyrical humor, paints how Seako’s fluids flow from the wooden panels of her house, down the drain, and into the river where a school of freshwater fishes delightfully feed on the water-bound nutrients. The sudden abundance of catch impresses the group of village fishermen, including the African student who is training there for the Olympics. It’s quite a refreshing tone, especially in a nation whose pornographic offerings consider such abnormality as a prized commodity along with other impractical yet curiously alluring sexual acrobatics. Here, its nothing short of magical, the way a community of men suddenly become under the spells of a particularly special woman, not through her ill-motivated whims but simply because she is created by nature that way.

Above the life-giving metaphor of sex is the overt satisfaction that is derived from letting go of the societal norms that have encaged the salaried Japanese man, and just seeking out true happiness. That is exactly the inevitable course that Sasano finds himself in. It’s a brush of impractical yet kind fate --- the way he becomes entrusted with the secret treasure by Taro, the way he is conveniently pushed out of the marriage by his nagging wife, the way he notices Saeko in a fit of orgasm while shoplifting in a nearby convenience store. Drawn first by the his desire to cure Saeko of her shoplifting ways through thrusting his sexual capabilities as the least immoral method of releasing her overflowing fluids, he eventually finds his place within the simplistic demands of that rural town where his unique schedule provides for him a sense of belongingness that is absent among the impersonal atmosphere of city living. It is the sex that perpetuates his purpose there, and when that is suddenly troubled by an enterprising ex-convict who sees Saeko’s talents as a source of fortune, he comes out the surprising hero, and defends it the way he hasn’t defended anything in his entire life.

The final few scenes in the film are both intriguing and wonderful. Sasano, jealous from the supposed infidelity of Saeko and disappointed because of the sudden depletion of the fluids that has become the source of his satisfaction, confronts his woman in the breakwaters beside the highway. All reason, sorrow, and questions are erased when in a fit of emotional upheaval (similar to Saeko’s being filled with water), he just lets go and makes love with Saeko. It’s probably one of the loveliest sex scenes ever committed to celluloid, where the sex is there not to make a harsh and guilt-ridden commentary on such pleasures but to celebrate it. Imamura’s visual style makes sure that the sex scenes in the film are both tasteful yet interestingly comical, with both of his actors brandishing an unlikely thus surprising indifference of the entire erotic act --- as if the sex only serves that very particular purpose of momentarily curing Saeko’s condition. In that final lovemaking sequence, it’s different. We are suddenly become knowledgeable of the emotional investments both have committed in that previously only sexual relationship. We acknowledge the hurt, the insecurities, the probable disappointments that suddenly blew up a few moments before Sasano lets go and makes love to Saeko. In that scene, the copulation is clearly not to cure Saeko’s condition, but to represent that final vow --- that with or without the fluids, Sasano has committed his entirety to Saeko. Metaphorically, that also represents Sasano’s acceptance of this new type of happiness, this new type of satisfaction that only Saeko and the entire simplicity of that rural town can provide. Imamura, in a stroke of genius, caps that final lovemaking with Saeko bursting her fluids in the air like a geyser exploding. Funnily, affectingly, and beautifully, a rainbow appears from her fluids as the film’s quirky musical score plays in the background.

In one of the film’s flashbacks, Taro reminds Sasano to have fun while he still can, or in the screenplay’s more imaginative terms, while he can still get an erection. Taro continues to say “Drown yourself in a woman's arms, be faithful to your desires without worrying about daily cares.” Taro’s reminders are the indubitable theses of Imamura’s swansong. It is inaccurate to refer to Warm Water Under a Red Bridge as profusely impertinent compared to Imamura’s other works. In fact, it probably is his most revelatory film; wherein the socially-aware artist suddenly steps out of the supposed legacy he is building to create something surprisingly amiable, entertaining, and personal. He generously grants his viewers the same grandfatherly advice the old man in the bus made to me: to live your life how it should be lived thus finding true happiness.

Ringu (1998)

Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
English Title: The Ring

(Warning: Spoilers Ahead)

A decade after its original release in Japan, it is not exactly inaccurate to think that Hideo Nakata's Ringu (The Ring) is important merely for its influence. The film, after all, is the widely-acknowledged precursor (although the Japanese have been making similarly plotted ghost stories decades before this) to the pan-Asian phenomenon that sparked horror film productions in South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Philippines, and elsewhere. The explanation is rather simple: Ringu, apart from being an effective moneymaker in its native Japan, demonstrated capably the commercial viability of horror films as export products when screening and DVD rights of the film were purchased in foreign territories. Eventually, the interest in the film grew to the point of the film being remade in Hollywood. As a result of this unprecedented demand, the commercial clamor for slow-paced but effective ghost stories ballooned giving reason for Ringu's stylistic descendants like Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on (The Grudge, 2000), Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo (Pulse, 2001), The Pang Brothers' The Eye (2002), Nakata's own Dark Water (2004) and Takashi Miike's One Missed Call (2004) to have their own Hollywood reincarnations, for better or for worse. However, to acknowledge Ringu merely for its influence is to unfairly discredit its vast artistic merits.

Apart from its indubitable influence, Ringu is actually great horror. In the film's most famous scene, Sadako, her face covered with imposing locks of long black hair and her body by an ominous white robe, crawls out of the television. Her movements are awkward yet terrifying, pointing out to the hidden frame that is possibly twisted and contorted beyond human imagination. Nakata cuts to Sadako's immobilized victim, clinging desperately to his life in its inevitably grim end. Nakata cuts back to Sadako, this time closing up to her face where she reveals from her long hair what is arguably the film's most shocking moment: an eye, monstrously malformed yet trapped in a malevolent gaze. The gaze is lethal as her victim eventually freezes right in the middle of a hapless scream. The scene actually happens near the very end of the film and is the only time we witness first hand something supernaturally horrific happen. The rest of the film actually dwells in a simmering state of fear, where Nakata meticulously crafts an atmosphere that foretells an ominous and overpowering danger despite the scarcity of actual, visceral, and physical scares.

As it turns out, it is that penultimate scare that stuck to the moviegoing public. Ringu's heirs approximate the same visceral quality of that scene, populating their respective films with scares and shocks that may rival Ringu in trite abundance and abhorrence but never in integrity. Only a few successfully incorporated the palpable psychological mindplay that made Ringu invaluably intriguing. The rest concentrated on devising new horror gimmickry, conceptualizing and creating variations of the effective Sadako model and churning out similar long-haired female ghosts with slow yet sure murderous intentions. With a relentless bombardment of gore, shocks, and cheap thrills, the requisite atmosphere of subtle dread so expertly displayed by Nakata in Ringu is eventually neglected.

This atmosphere is perfectly captured in the Ringu's first sequence. Two teenage girls, Tomoko (Yuko Takeuchi)and her friend, indulge in late night stories during their sleepover. The friend fancifully tells the story of a cursed video. The giddy mood transforms into ominosity, as Tomoko declares that she saw a similar video while in vacation with a bunch of friends. She expounds that the screening was followed by a mysterious call, stating that she has exactly a week to live. At that instance, Nakata punctures the safety of a girl's night out with a hint of danger. We learn that it has been exactly a week since Tomoko saw the video tape. The other girl breaks the fearsome silence, forcing Tomoko to admit that she's merely joking. Tomoko succumbs, and both of them continue their discussion on romance, boys, and other juvenilia. We assume safety again, at least for a while until the phone suddenly rings and the girls stop talking and the atmosphere drowns in dread. The two hurry down to answer the call. It turns out to be another friend, and both laugh at the absurdity of their fears. Assured of the impossibility of death by videotape, normalcy happens and the friends excuses herself. Tomoko goes to the kitchen. Nakata frames it in a way that we see Tomoko in the foreground, and in the background is the living room, partially covered by translucent glass. The television mysteriously turns on, its foreboding blue glow apparent through the translucent glass. Tomoko checks the living room out, turns the television off, returns to the kitchen, before her fateful death.

That initial sequence plays out deliberately, with Nakata in complete control of the mental and psychological repercussions of the scene. He blankets the opening sequence with a facade of absolute mundanity and juvenilia, before introducing, in careful trickles, his brilliant masterplan: for the audience to abandon all notions of logic and reality so that his horror, which is suggestive of an alternate universe of otherworldly deadly curses spreading through available technology, may not only be palatable but also effective. In fact, the entire film is enveloped in that same mixture of mundanity and the supernatural. Structured similarly like the first sequence, Ringu stretches allowable logic until it inevitably unhinges, where Nakata commits his masterful centerpiece (Sadako's out-of-the-television attack) which is both ludicrous and powerful, where ordinary notions of reality are completely erased to ease the plausibility of the palpable cap to Nakata's exercise of suggestive terror.

Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) and Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada) are divorced couple who are maximizing their one week to live to figure out a way to cancel the videotape's curse on themselves and their son Yoichi (Rikiya Otaka). While on their time-set quest, their interactions echo their former domestic relations. Such is most evident during the sequence under the vacation cabin where Sadako's well is kept hidden. Ryuji is rushingly filling the pails with dark water, while Reiko is pulling the full pails up to the surface to empty them. Under Ryuji's physical and moral superiority, Reiko becomes subservient and domestic. As Reiko falters under the dictates of time and fatigue and Ryuji is left with the thinking and the working, we become witness to the sudden spark of domestic trouble, where both succumb to the ineptitude of their team work. Nakata never reveals the cause of Reiko and Ryuji's break-up, but we do get a glimpse, forced out by their unlikely predicament, of the perpetual aches of their marital life: a mixture of Ryuji's dominating impertinence and Reiko's servile nature. Ringu becomes something more than a mere ghost story. It starts to resemble a grim family drama, where a previously broken couple discover and rediscover themselves as they raise (or save, in this film's case) their child.

These careful subtleties in both theme and style are what's lacking in Gore Verbinski's technically apt but dry English remake (The Ring, 2002), which concentrated more on the supernatural aspect thus giving due attention to its scary little girl named Samara. Gone is Nakata's discriminating plotting, perfectly sequenced to evoke a consistent dread throughout in preparation for Sadako's memorable haunting; or the minutely flavored family mechanics which is replaced with indiscriminate characterizations of Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson's ex-spouses, spiced up with divorce-resultant indifference and angst, thus unable to open up to more contained and repressed emotions or involuntary reenactments of their former domestic life. It's unfortunate that these clones and remakes seem to have overshadowed Nakata's far more clever work. Ringu simply deserves much more credit than what it is presently given.

The Great Yokai War (2005)

The Great Yokai War (Takashi Miike, 2005)
Japanese Title: Yôkai daisensô

The plot of Takashi Miike's The Great Yokai War is generic: scrawny and frequently bullied little boy finds the courage to battle it out with an apocalyptic force thus saving the world. The little boy is Tadashi (girly boy Ryunosuke Kamiki), a Tokyo-bred kid who is spirited away to his mom's provincial village after his parents' divorce. In one village festival, he gets chosen to be the kirin rider, supposedly the nominal keeper of the peace. The apocalyptic force is Kato (Etsushi Tokokawa) and his dastardly plan is to merge the discarded junk of the city (these metallic trash is said to have a negative energy supposedly out of being thrown away and forgotten) with the so-called yokai or traditional spirits, creating metal monsters that would wreak havoc wherever they go.

Miike obviously has a bigger budget (not nearly as big as the normal budget of a Hollywood flick, though) than usual to play with as The Great Yokai War is mostly a string of spectacles tied together by a flimsy and random plot. The problem is that the film is seldom spectacular. The metal monsters are obviously CGI creations; the yokai are a mixture of puppets, animatronics, or actors in heavy make-up and prosthetics. The computer generated effects aren't very impressive. The puppetry and the make-up, on the other hand, are quite charming in all their cheesy glory. The turtle-like yokai, for example, wears a green-hued rubber suit. His face is made up to include the beak-like choppers of a tortoise, and his extremities bear similar modifications. The rest of the yokai are all delightful creations including a one-eyed, one-legged umbrella, a walking wall, a long-necked woman, and several others. Visually, it's a mixed bag; the CGI doesn't merge well with the prosthetics and the puppetry. Oftentimes, you'd wish Miike had just stuck with traditional effects, had trusted his zany sensibilities, and had given us something that doesn't look half-baked as this.

The themes are unsubtly laid down. It's basically a tale of good versus evil. The good guys are the traditional spirits led to defend their existence by the unlikely hero who is himself a victim of divorce and bullying. The bad guys are the mechanical hybrids, produced from smoke belching factories using depletable resources: yokai tortured and collected by Kato's henchmachines and one yokai desperately in love with the evil mastermind named Agi (Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill fame). Modernity and the unnecessary wastage that it produces are the causes of the impending apocalypse; they are the underlying evils that we are warned against as opposed to the giddy and often amusing antics of the yokai (who are too busy partying to actually wage a war against impending doom). There's also an anti-war message in the end from what seems to be a yokai leader, uncomfortably as an afterthought.

Hayao Miyazaki is a clear inspiration with his works that appropriate the same theme and style (like Nausicaa and the Valley of the Winds (1984), Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2005)). In one scene, Tadashi rides a mysterious bus (reminiscent of Mei and Satsuki's ride on the Cat Bus in My Neighbor Totoro (1988)) where after breezing through a tunnel (brings to mind Chihiro's entry to the spirit world in Spirited Away), the yokai (mostly the creepy-looking ones) start appearing outside the bus windows. Unlike the famous Japanese animator however, you don't feel any real passion or sincerity. Miike is after all a mere hired gun (reminiscent although in this case, he surprisingly shares screenwriter credits), a director with enough international reputation and a bit of talent to bring about a picture bizarre enough to arouse interests worldwide (especially to the many Miike fans) and still be commercially viable domestically (mostly to the children and those who made Miyazaki's Spirited Away a box office hit).

What he lacks in passion and sincerity, he makes up with irreverence, half-hearted and careful though. There are scenes that border being sexually provocative like when the river nymph rescues Tadashi from drowning, we are given a close-up of the kid's hand subtly caressing the nymph's thigh, or when Agi suddenly removes her top (and this is promoted as a children's film), or when Tadashi starts wearing his armor in a bizarre montage (a startling butt crack makes an appearance, totally unwarranted). Miike is quite good when he puts his heart in his work (like in Audition (1999), the film that established Miike as a relentless director of torture porn, or Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006), a homoerotic and far more successful reworking of Lars von Trier's production experiment in Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005)). Sadly, Miike dons mercenary clothes with The Great Yokai War, and the result is far less fruitful than it aims to be.

Retribution (2006)

Retribution (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2006)
Japanese Title: Sakebi

The murders in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution (Sakebi) have distinct commonalities leading detective Yoshioka (played by Kôji Yakusho) to think that they are linked together, either by a single killer or some bigger and ominous mysterious force. The victims are all drowned in saltwater in a nearly barren urban district in Tokyo which is slowly being reclaimed by the sea by a series of earthquakes. Yoshioka's dilemma deepens when clues start pouring in making it apparent that he might have been involved in the first murder of a woman in a bright red dress who has started appearing to him as a shrieking specter clamoring for attention.

It's set in the typical Kurosawa-esque Japan of generational decay and heightening social alienation. Like in Charisma (1999), where the forest bears the initial scars of the noxious tree, or in Pulse (2001), where an interconnected Japan fails to bridge the separated souls, or in the grandly offbeat Bright Future (2003), where its direction-less teens parade their youthful ennui in a manufactured landscape, where the setting carries the burden of society's ills.

The physical decay we see in Retribution of the remaining apartment buildings and the ones demolished (where the traces of their structures are the skeleton-like concrete pillars and puddles of rising saltwater eagerly grabbing the land stolen from them by the enterprising Japanese) mirrors the creeping decay that is slowly but surely enveloping Yoshioka. His preoccupation with the current series of murders, the daily visits from his crimson dressed wraith, and his girlfriend's less-than-constant visits force Yoshioka to combust internally; and you sense a tremendous fatigue both in his body and in his soul as if every ill memory of the past and the pressures of the present are conspiring to force him to decompose along with his surroundings.

Kurosawa weighs in escape and confrontation as solutions to Yoshioka's psychological torment. Yoshioka should either step out of his conflicted environment or face the so-called voice of truth which is society's primary sin, that of quiet indifference. The sin produces a moldering contempt that a person harbors for a loved one who firmly disassociates because of an unassessed air of self importance or just an innate collective callousness. It leads to the film's fatal dissatisfaction. Kurosawa dissects this dissatisfaction, the so-called contemporary woe (which is most probably not endemic to modern Japanese society). He treats it like an unstoppable tumor, a reason enough for a surprising doomsday scenario, much like the way he treats the collective depression in the riveting conclusion of Pulse. The intriguing irony in this Kurosawa ghost story is that the punishment for the living's ineptitude for the basic requirements of humanity is dealt with by the dead; and quite sarcastically, it is the dead which is most capable of boundless amounts of compassion and care, as shown near the end of the film.

A complaint most critics have with Retribution is that it is a Kurosawa pic that treads too closely to conventional horror narrative, something I really do not mind especially for a sub-genre that is supposedly on its extended death bed. I do not watch a Kurosawa film for the fineries of his storytelling (although his grand minimalism which often turns in awkward directions to ultimately satisfactory results is a Kurosawa trait that is undoubtedly unique only to his ouvre --- the way the intimate (or lacking in intimacy) finite chatters of workmates in Pulse would culminate in apocalypse; or the serial killings in Cure (1997) invite metaphysic musings; or the inward botanical engrossment of the characters in Charisma would end up in a road path to a cityscape on fire) but because of his inherent skill in maximizing mood and atmosphere without trespassing the boundaries of subtle taste (something Takashi Shimizu, sometimes Hideo Nakata, and most Asian horror practitioners tend to forget).

He completes his visual canvass, usually his camera is still as a corpse, and makes most of what he has by painting an entire picture of dread --- a morgue is visually bare yet the incessant swinging of the formalin apparatus forces an also incessant squeak that functions to broaden our already heightened senses; and an interrogation scene uncomfortably thickens when an invisible haunting attaches to the deranged prisoner. Whenever Kurosawa needs to utilize horror tropes (like the creepy long haired lady creeping for her kill), he outrages by going over-the-top: the bright red dress, the Superman flight tactics, the banshee-like shrieking.

If Retribution is an example of Kurosawa going conventional and commercial (the film is produced by the makers of The Grudge and its numerous remakes, both in the Japanese and English languages), then I am all for it. If the sub-genre needs a wake-up call from its brainless repetitiveness, Kurosawa, who is not even in his top form in this film, is the right man to do it.

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This review is my contribution to the Kiyoshi Kurosawa Blog-a-Thon at The Evening Class.

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006)

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (Takashi Miike, 2006)
Japanese Title: 46-okunen no koi

Takashi Miike has more than seventy films under his name. While most of these films are trashy fare, more commonly available in the cheap bins of Japan's DVD stores, others have crossed over to the international festival circuit. Despite his growing fanbase outside Japan, there is still little validation to the aging and prolific director. Films like the Dead or Alive Trilogy (1999, 2000 & 2002), Ichi the Killer (2001), Visitor Q (2001), and Gozu (2003) have given him god status to the quasi-pornographers of America (Eli Roth gave Miike a cameo in his Hostel (2005)), and his venture to J-Horror (the relatively interesting but very popular One Missed Call (2003)) has turned him into master of the genre (enough to give Imprint (2006) the season-ending pimp spot of the first season of the Masters of Horror television series).

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A, Miike's latest film to receive international attention, is caviar compared to his other more famous works, which are mostly delicacies of different yet plebian sorts. It's essentially a murder mystery involving inmates in what seems to be a prison by way of Lars Von Trier's Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005)'s chalk-drawn settings. That's the basic structure but Miike pumps the air with vibrant colors and an unhealthy dose of male pheromones; turning the prison into a literal stage for bloody brawls and homoerotic tension.

The intro has a man (Kenichi Endo) reciting from a book about light years, Earth thousands of years ago and youth, on cue of an onscreen clapper board; the camera placed still outside a room lit and colored with Chris Doyle-lusciousness (by Masahito Kaneko) with the man sitting with a stick of lighted cigarette in his hand.

The victim in Miike's murder mystery is Kazuki (Masanobu Ando), supposedly strangled to death by effeminate Ariyoshi (Ryuhei Matsuda). The two enter the penitentiary together. Their respective fates are entangled by their individual misfortunes, as both are murderers of not so identical motives (Ariyoshi was allegedly raped by his middle-aged gay patron, while Kazuki was brought up to cherish violence by an environment that is not proper in common standards). The investigation accumulates much more than the simple procedural rules of motives and reasons; but instead delivers a backdrop of something deeper; more spiritual and philosophical than mundane.

The literal translation of the Japanese title is "4.6 Billion Years of Love," alluding to the time when everything was space dust that resulted from that primordial explosion in outer space. Miike time travels to that fictional future with his prisoner boys gazing lustfully with each other, while talking about space ships and Mayan pyramids that promise of space travel and heaven, respectively.

With all the billion years of slow creation, the result is their fated attraction, made questionable by their similar sex organs, under the not-so-perfect circumstance of jealous inmates and sadistic guards. Then there's their unattractive pasts --- literal ghosts guarding their every movement. These men are literally having their hearts bleed with this cosmological mistake; the rays of a bright future literally pass through their bodies as if they weren't part of the cumulative space dust that will inevitably meet and turn into matter. And matter turns back into space dust when applied with the potent formula of death; as we see a prisoner (animated) trying to escape burst into dust as he gets electrocuted by the high-voltage wire walls.

Cryptic, overly stylistic and ambitious yet, everything makes perfect sense. Miike was able to connect the metaphysics of the cosmos and the quiet yearnings of his two male characters. With Big Bang Love, Juvenile A, Miike may have made his first true art film, and I'm liking it.

Bullet Ballet (1998)

Bullet Ballet (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1998)

Years after his breakthrough film Tetsuo, you can still smell Shinya Tsukamoto's famous fetish with metal --- this time, with the elusive gun (a rare commodity in Japan since owning one is restricted there). The allure of securing one replaces the love for the girlfriend who killed herself upon gaining access to the prohibited weapon. Cash is exchanged; research is voluminous; and marriage licenses are signed; all in order to secure a gun. Tsukamoto, ever the visualist, creates a montage wherein the gun is played with, quite seductively and lovingly, against the formidable light and creating shadows that somewhat remind you of rock and roll erotica.

The quest for a gun lands Goda (Tsukamoto), the corporate bum, in the middle of a gang war. Youth with pointless ambition are occupying the underbellies of Tokyo with their arsenal of home-made weapons (baseball bats covered with nails, lead tubes, etc.). His professional demeanor, an unsure yet desperate step towards the underground, turns him into the ideal target for their street side bullying. The lone princess of the gang Chisato (Kirina Mano) counters the metal fetish with her own set of irresistible pheromones. It's not exactly the formula for hot and steamy sexual encounters as we're talking about speed-addicted youngsters and Tsukamoto's weird sense of romanticism here. The most we get are artsy moments of ennui shared in quiet, sometimes violent but always dispassionate fashion.

Tsukamoto's black and white palette gives a metallic resonance to the hyper-urban affairs. When his camera is still, it almost evokes Japanese cinema of the 50's and 60's with Oshima's directionless youth and Imamura's angry citizens. Then, Tsukamoto convenes his trademark style of on screen mayhem; always accompanied by tight spaces representative of the iron tubes he has become so fond of. There are always extremes in Tsukamoto's filmmaking; the quiet moments are always disrupted by a sudden burst of violence. He takes it to the next level when he counters a three-way chase in the cramped alleyways of Tokyo with Chisato in an ecstatic moment of high-class fantasy in Goda's fully-furnished apartment; of taking calls and living the affluent life.

The metaphor Tsukamoto plays is one of class discontent. The gang-bangers wants to eke out a future from their unlikely lives yet are bound by the codes of honor their group has. They are disgusted by the corporate whores, yet realize the inevitability of them being whores themselves. It's a futile rebellion that will eventually die. Goda's dilemma is much more novel. His intention is to supplant his corporate lifestyle with the live-free and die-free motto of those street urchins he is trained to loathe (and in a way, adore). Initially, the match-up results in broken bones and bloodied faces but as temperatures ease and the distinctions are revealed as merely nominal, similarities pave a semblance of repressed fondness.

The title tricks you to expecting encounters of John Woo or Ringo Lam-caliber. Bullet Ballet is indeed kinetic, but not in a sense that violence is depicted in an operatic manner. One can probably assume that Tsukamoto's bullet ballet alludes to that elusive romanticism that floats and flickers on the volatile surface of Tsukamoto's art form which is all about steel, blood, and noise. Those silent moments of disconnected near-romantic gazes or dormant ambitions to escape the edgy life are the adagio to the otherwise rust-infested madness of Tsukamoto's urban nightmares.

Kuroneko (1968)

Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindô, 1968)
English Title: Black Cat From the Grove

With Kuroneko (Black Cat From the Grove), director Kaneto Shindô dissects the divide that separates the classes in medieval Japan. The opening scene shows a solitary hut that is enveloped by a bamboo forest. Hordes of samurai warriors appear from the forest, slowly walking towards the hut. Inside the hut are two peasant women quietly eating their lunch. The warriors start grabbing their rice, and unsated, start raping the two women in horrid succession. The warriors leave the two unconscious women and the hut burning.

It's a disquieting introduction. Shindô doesn't emboss the sequence with any musical score, as we only hear the crickets chirping, the stream running, and the few shrieks and grunts by the women and the invading horde. It reinforces the feeling that the samurais arrived, pillaged, and disappeared with hardly anybody noticing and anyone really caring. Later in the film, the samurai leader would defend his class by stating that it is the powerful that rule over the weak; that there's no rationale in hating the samurai class. His statement is of course pure folly as we have witnessed with immense efficiency how the samurai and war can directly affect the comman folk.

Kuroneko is of course a kaidan (ghost story) and the two women resurface as vengeful spirits who roam the night to lure wandering samurai into their abode. After seducing the samurai with gratitude, flattery, cups of warm sake, and sex, the two would finish him off with a violent bite in the neck --- the same way a tame black cat would pounce on his master. The treachery keeps them alive; and it fuels their vendetta against the warmongers who ruined their lives in an unnoticed heartbeat.

The warriors would of course retaliate. Several mighty samurais have died and the samurai lord orders Gintoki (Kichiemon Nakamura), fresh from an unexpected victory against a formidable fighter, to investigate and destroy the spirits. Gintoki turns out to be the husband and the son of the murdered women; yet the twist is that Gintoki is no longer a peasant but a samurai, and thus an appropriate victim to the wraiths' murderous plans. The blurring of these roles are treated with unabashed tenderness --- Gintoki and his wife (Kiwaki Taichi) would thereafter spend several days in romantic bliss, unmindful of each other's missions to destroy each other.

It is obvious that Shindô admires this class-less happiness. He shoots the couple's scenes together in an eroticically gorgeous manner; quite different from the wife's previous seductions wherein the men are ravenous for flesh. The sequence is poignant; coupled with the mother (Nobuko Otowa)'s painful dance (again, different from the more rabid dance performed during their murderous sessions) and the couples' incandescent lovemaking, there's no denying that the class-crossing dilemma is the ultimate heart of the film.

Shindô tells the story with a dutiful eye for detail --- the bamboo grove is made eerie by the fog; the wardrobe and the make-up applied to the two wraiths; the intricate detail that surfaces the amusing stereotypes (the mustache and the body hair of the samurai leader, the transformation of Gintoki from filthy peasant to titled samurai by several buckets of warm water); the perfect lighting (especially inside the wraiths' abode). Kuroneko is simply wonderful cinema. It is scary not because of jarring sound effects or sudden visual stimuli, but because it draws you in into the hapless drama, and the irrevocable damage caused by war and the men whose fortunes are rooted from it.

Tales From Earthsea (2006)

Tales From Earthsea (Goro Miyazaki, 2006)
Japanese Title: Goro Senki

This tale from Earthsea (a fantasy world created by author Ursula Le Guin) starts with a seafaring ship under threat by a violent storm. The darkened skies divide to reveal feuding dragons who masterfully glide over the troubled ship. The film cuts to the capital city where the king is discussing the problems of the land with his ministers. The world seems to be losing its balance, as proved by the appearance of dragons who reside in another plane; the imbalance is the effect of the use of dark magic. The king goes to his chambers and is suddenly stabbed by his son Prince Arren, who steals his magic sword and escapes.

The murder of the king by Arren is of sensational importance, as the director Goro Miyazaki was disallowed by his legendary father, Hayao, from directing films. The younger Miyazaki proved to be insistent in his wishes and helms this adaptation of Le Guin's famous novels. Tales From Earthsea, although a Ghibli production, feels very alien to the animation studio's filmography. In a sense, it smells of subtle rebellion of the younger Miyazaki against his famous patriarch with themes that discuss estrangement between father and son, to the point of overt violence. The film's more pertinent themes are enveloped by this observable conflict, it draws away the interest from Le Guin's original material to the director's subconsciously volunteered personal stakes on his art.

As a stand-alone film, Tales From Earthsea is far from great. It badly needs the assured lightheartedness or the whimsicality of the works of Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata. The material itself is burdened with settled narrative arcs and themes, that it is quite difficult to artistically divert from what is already written and loved by countless of Earthsea fans. It possesses a persistent somber mood that can be likened to dullness or impractical seriousness.

Consistent with the somber quality of the film are the characters: Arren is blank and impenetrable throughout the film, obviously torn between the forces of good and evil; his mentor and travelling companion Haitaka is torn between his mission as an arch-mage and the calling of a simple and mundane life with an ex-witch Tenar; Theru, a mysterious girl adopted by kind-hearted Tenar is also torn between her violent past life and her peaceful life with Tenar. The film lacks a catchy supporting characters (which populates Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata's feature films like Calcifer in Howl's Moving Castle (2004), No-Face in Spirited Away (2001), or Totoro in My Neighbor Totoro (1988)). Instead, Goro Miyazaki settles with the drab personalities as is; mostly insufficiently complemented by the slapstick comedy of the cowardly guard leader.

Visually, the film is stunning. Goro Miyazaki has a gift for details. The metropolis visited by Arren and Haitaku is populated with diverse citizenry --- slaves, dishonest merchants, addicts, and mischievous peddlers. Interestingly, Tales of Earthsea looks more similar to the early works of Isao Takahata than Hayao Miyazaki. An early battle between Arren and a pack of wolves is borrowed from Takahata's pre-Ghibli film The Little Norse Prince (1968), which Miyazaki admits as his most favorite film. The animation here isn't as meticulously crafted as Ghibli's more recent features, but as it is, it is still quite magnificent. The hand-crafted scenery, from the gorgeous vistas, the castles, and the city landscapes, are all exquisite. It mostly reinforces the film's epic scope and unfortunately forces the focus to the flatness of the narrative and the characterization.

Despite its multiple problems, Tales From Earthsea is still a worthwhile picture. Its conflicted roots, Miyazaki's obvious learning curve (he is really not an animator, but a director of the Ghibli Museum, and trained in landscape), and the artistic limits of adaptation, are all ingredients of an interesting and utterly personal film. As mentioned, the film subtly fronts themes of father-son relationships (Arren and his father, Arren with surrogate father Haitaka). The covered yet more pertinent Earthsea themes of balance, the values of life and death, power, and immortality aren't as spelled out as wanted (to author Le Guin's disappointment who admits her books are better, and that Hayao Miyazaki's films are far greater).

Tales From Earthsea isn't the great addition to Ghibli Studio's illustrious filmography. What it is is an interesting start for Goro Miyazaki, who I presume will forever be haunted by his father's grand career. While I think that his decision to make his debut film with an adaptation of a popular novel is unwise, Goro Miyazaki has still provided us with an intriguing film, apparently flawed yet indisputably beautiful.

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This post is my contribution to Joe's Movie Corner: Ghiblog-a-thon.

Paprika (2006)

Paprika (Satoshi Kon, 2006)

From the realist-humanist comedy of Tokyo Godfathers (2003), anime director Satoshi Kon returns to the subject of weird, of the thin penetratable line that divides reality and dreams, which he explored previously. This time, Kon invades the world's collective nightmare with images that are found in the ordinary, the exotic, and the downright disturbing. Refrigerators containing boomboxes, japanese dolls and musical bands composed of frogs, freaks and creepy monsters --- these are the denizens of Kon's nightmarish dreamworld. Of course, at the center of everything is sprite-ish heroine Paprika who hops from one dream to another to cure the psychologically bothered.

Such is made possible by an invention called the DC-Mini (eerily sounds like the mp3 players being produced by Macintosh, which fascinatingly has similar attributes to the film's dream-sharing implement). Some DC-Mini's, which are still in its initial stages, have been stolen by so-called terrorists. The effects of the theft are tremendous; men are being trapped in a dream-state while still awake. This is caused by the inter-mixing of the dreams in the DC-Mini's master program, which collects all the dreams, supposedly for psychiatric uses.

Middle in the film, an interesting point is made --- that the internet is similar in aspects with the effects of the fictional DC-Mini. The allegations are actually disturbingly true. Through the internet's expansive reaches, ideas (which are basically as limitless as human dreams) are exchanged and molded into one massive and global phenomenon.

It's such a delicious concept --- sci-fi that only the Japanese can tell so perfectly without being drowned by insubstantial logic. To dig into the plot to uncover the glaring lapses in logic and the noticeable leaps in narrative consistency is obviously a disservice to the gargantuan "cool" that Kon serves us. Kon is a director that mixes the absurdism of Lynch with the freak-fetishism of Fellini, spiced up by traditional hentai kinkiness and gonzo science fiction (the same way he took a plot in Tokyo Godfathers that is essentially John Ford, and mixed it with the optimism and sentimentality of Capra, by way of something akin to the comic weirdness of neurotic Allen). Everything should be taken as they are; dream logic reigns supreme; and every scene engrosses and fascinates.

Is Paprika merely that, a delectable confection for the color-starved eyes and the realism-confined mind? Not exactly. There's sound philosophy underneath the gorgeous pandemonium. Pop-culture icon Paprika, described as everybody's dreamgirl, is in reality, a black haired scientist who dons black hair and clinically white lab gowns as opposed to Paprika's striking orange hair and mini-outfits. It is that glaring duality of humanity that becomes the root of the film's conflict --- of the insufficiency of the real world as compared to the boundless possibilities of human dreams; multiply those individual dreams by a thousand and the result are powers of god-like magnitude.

It is such corrupting effects of the limitless possibilities of human dreams that is juxtaposed with the same dreams' curative powers. Dreaming, in Kon's work, is a tool that perverses and mutates humanity the same way as it allows humanity to identify itself. It is that downplay of dualities that resonates as the film's thematic core. Can such dual natures co-exist in the realist frame; can reality allow the penetration of dream logic; can the limitless nature of dream invade the grim, dim, and gloomy inconveniences of real life? By film's end, it seems like Kon is suggesting that it may --- a romantic revelation ends with what feels like a dreamy fairy tale ending; and the film's troubled cop reunites with his cinematic passion.

It is for that reason why I prefer Kon to most of his anime peers (like Katsuhiro Otomo or Mamoru Oshii). Kon is more interested in the human aspect of science fiction (or everyday tales) rather than the obviously visceral or the subconsciously mind-boggling. His films are always rewarding despite the possibility that they might not always make perfect sense. Paprika offers that same kind of comfort --- that underneath the gratuitous excesses of Kon's wild imagination is a distinctly human heart, not mechanical or cartoonic.

Goshu the Cellist (1982)

Goshu the Cellist (Isao Takahata, 1982)
Japanese Title: Sero hiki no Gôshu

The first few scenes that director Isao Takahata allows us to see in Goshu the Cellist are beautiful portraits of nature and pastoral Japan. Takahata's patient eye can be appreciated as Ozu-like, allowing his audience to partake of the beauty of his animated compositions. Against the music of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphony, the scenes suddenly take a more familiar form, similar to those vignettes in Disney's Fantasia (1940) and the much more recent reincarnation Fantasia 2000 (1999).

The visuals follow the rhythm and the escalations of Beethoven's music. Then we see Takahata's orchestra fervently playing Beethoven's symphony. They are merged, flowed, and flown with the rest of the imagery; the orchestra members take part in the "visual storm" their music has produced. Then, the imagery dies down. The conductor tells Goshu, one of the two cello players, that he is not with the orchestra's rhythm. They try again. The conductor again stops the music, but instead of scolding Goshu, scolds another member. Finally, the conductor gives up and again points at Goshu, telling him that he knows the music, but plays it without any emotions. The conductor comedically leaves the room, the rest of the orchestra follows, leaving poor Goshu alone, and obviously bothered by his conductor's comments.

This gem of a film, made by Takahata long before the creation of the now-famous Ghibli Studio, is refreshing in its simplicity and sincerity. The plot, adapted from a novelette by Kenji Miyazawa, flows with admirable grace. Takahata doesn't merely tell the story of Goshu's dreamy involuntary training by several animal neighbors (a cat, a cuckoo, a racoon, and a mouse) but instead savors each unnatural and surprising encounter for all its worth. Goshu's encounter with the cat and the cuckoo are ripe with both overt physical humor and witticism. Goshu's encounter with the naive racoon and the mouse mother and child is gorgeously painted with subtle emotionality and cuteness (a common trait of all encounters).

Seeing Goshu the Cellist gives you a clue as to Takahata's growing talent in portraying humanity through animation. True, the characters aren't lifelike and the scenarios are mixtures of real events and fantasies. However, Takahata never detaches from the truthfulness of every scenario. For example, when Goshu is forced to play a solo piece as an encore in the concert. He doesn't decide to show-off by playing a gorgeous Beethoven tune. Instead, he is swelled by anger and decides to play a melody he used to torture the cat. That by itself betrays the supposed climax of the film but instead it shows that Takahata's characters aren't merely following the guidelines of artificial narratives. Instead, they breath and react like real human beings --- their needs, aspirations and failures in life are therefore given a greater cinematic weight than those produced by the machinations of a plot device.

Takahata of course improves on this much later on. In Grave of the Fireflies (1988), he livens the tale of two youngsters driven by the war to starvation. These youngsters are directed by their stubborn youthfulness and pride to the tragic result. In Pom Poko (1994), he turns mythical racoon creatures into a myriad of human personalities co-existing in a time of change and dire need. The two later films are gratifying exercises of Takahata's understanding of human psychology; all wrapped up in beautifully created imagery.

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This post is my contribution to Joe's Movie Corner: Ghiblog-a-thon.

Pigs and Battleships (1961)

Pigs and Battleships (Shohei Imamura, 1961)
Japanese Title: Buta to Gunkan

Irreverent and unabashedly human, Shohei Imamura's Pigs and Battleships begins with drumrolls that would introduce a rousing rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. However, the rendition is never completed and instead mutates into something entirely different; like a tune rendered as an insult rather than as an anthem. The beautiful day-time vista of a coastal town occupied by American forces with the American flag calmly moving against the sea breeze is transformed into the night-time red-light district of that town --- pimps scrambling for horny Yankee servicemen; whores lined up advertising their bare wares; neon-lights adorning these building that house all sorts of men and women.

Clever Kinta (Hiroyuki Nagato) steals one of the servicemen's caps, luring him to a place where whores are selling their bodies without a sideglance on privacy, decency and honor. Sex is haggled, and performed side by side, in double-decker beds, within thin walls that separate a fully-manned kitchen with the dirty bedroom. Kinta escapes the arresting officers, meets up with his girlfriend Haruko (Jitsuko Yoshimura), and talks about a plan to make money by feeding hogs. It seems that the hog industry has become very lucrative, inviting the remnants of an underground gang and Chinese businessmen to fight over the business. In the midst of the shady dealings and several backstabbings, Kinta and Haruko try to rise above the meager future that the American occupation may provide them.

Imamura's film is a biting satire; not a very funny one, but still genuinely affecting. Although the American occupation is barely seen but distinctly felt; it mostly appears as drunken servicemen roaming the red light districts, or visions of lined-up battleships dotting the ports, or the seedy hands of capitalism inching towards the disappearance of culture and norms. Imamura does not hold back in his savage portrayal of the occupation --- its effects are overtly humiliating with Japanese men becoming subservient to the whims, caprices and lusts of these Yankee soldiers, and women being sold as wives for what seems to be a desperate need to rise above the porttown poverty the war has afflicted the citizenry.

However, Imamura doesn't stop there. He also casts Japanese society in a bad light. He puts the spotlight to the honor-less desperation the defeat has brought upon Japan. It is a town wherein mothers and sisters wouldn't be bothered in prostituting their relatives to men they barely know or understand. It is a town wherein the narrow paths to a wealthy future force the men to cheat, swindle, and parasitically rely on other people's weaknesses and poverty. It is a society that can be likened to a pig pen; the citizens forcedly filling the spaces and whatever path opens is rushed upon with lethal abandon, not caring whether a living creature is mangled and stepped upon along the way.

It's uncomfortable as it is enduringly lighthearted. Imamura, through his immature male protagonist and endlessly optimistic female protagonist, bathes the scenes with a comical and oftentimes inconveniently detached atmosphere. He successfully levels the audience's attraction to the characters to a bare minimum; just enough to get us angry when a girl is gang-raped and thenafter punished for stealing some dollars, but not enough for such character inconveniences to overshadow the irreverence and satirical thematics Imamura is forwarding.

The film's climax involving thousands of hogs occupying the redlight district summarizes the entire feature. In one scene wherein a couple of gangsters involuntarily land down the sea of pigs, Imamura comically captures their faces being squeezed against moving hog flesh and is later on joined by another pig's head. It's supposed to be a tragic disaster; one that would cause the abrupt disappearance of the dreams of the female protagonist. However, the climax bursts as a cruel metaphor. The pigs have occupied the town the same way America has occupied Japan. Japanese men die and get mixed up in the stampede of hogs, the same way that the Japanese have strangled each other to gain an upper hand. Lastly, these pigs roam the red light district the same way as Japanese women have roamed the district to seduce an American man into marrying her and thus, salvaging her family. In Imamura's eyes, the world has been reduced into a world of pigs and battleships.

Lady Snowblood (1973)

Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
Japanese Title: Shurayukihime

To claim that Toshiya Fujita's Lady Snowblood is artful cinema, while not totally impossible, is verging on the absurd. The film cannot hide its true ambitions with Fujita's over-the-top visuals and methods. Exploitative as it may seem with its plentiful geysers of blood, Lady Snowblood provides a deep and understanding portrait of a woman whose existence on Earth has been predestined by oppression and violence. Forgo of the usual trappings of samurai cinema of its usually disrespected sort, and you'll discover that the film is quite good --- and deserves better attention than just a mere footnote in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films (2003-2004).

Adapted from manga books written by Kazuo Koike (of Lone Wolf and Cub fame), the film starts off with a scene inside a women's prison. A prisoner is suffering through a difficult labor; the irony of the scene is that when the baby is finally released to the world, there is not a notion of happiness or festivity in the air (for sure, even in a women's prison, the miracle of childbirth will cause a stir in the melancholy of the setting and situation). We later learn why the childbirth is no cause for celebration: the baby, named Yuki, has been tasked to continue her mother's mission of vengeance against those who have oppressed her. She was designed, planned, and created for that singular mission, hence, her being called a child of the netherworlds.

Fujita cuts to Yuki, now grown up to be a fine-looking lady (played by Meiko Kaji), donning an immaculate white kimono and holding a purple parasol while walking in an alley. A carriage carrying an important-looking fellow, and guarded by several men, try to get past her. Yuki reveals a samurai blade from her parasol and cuts her way through the bodyguards, then finally, assassinating the boss with a blood-bursting and far-too-easy thrust of her sword. The action is quick (perhaps too quick to be deliciously enjoyed), but very graphic. Fountains of blood spring every time a limb is severed or a body part is punctured. Yuki remains silent and stern; her blade does her talking.

Divided into chapters, with occasional narration by an off-screen presence (who turns out to be a journalist; who somewhat becomes a love interest for the vengeful lady), Lady Snowblood has a literary feel that provides a level of predictability to the exercise: each chapter concerns an inevitable victim of Yuki's vengeance; all culminating in eye-popping bloodbath. Each chapter however contributes an internal strife, an emotional weight to Yuki's inherent burden.

Time has changed her mother's oppressors --- her first victim is now a mere petty gambler; harmless, pitiful, and with a kindly suffering daughter; her final victim is an integral part of her journalist-friend's life. Each vengeful act, each final killing separates her more from humanity --- yet, it is through those dastardly acts that she may achieve atonement and redemption. Yuki's complicated existence on earth, and her predestination as her mother's continued existence for vengeance can only be removed by completing that task, no matter what the consequences may be. Her suffering is quite great, I think --- she has been hypnotized and educated into believing that she belongs to the netherworlds yet in each step through her mission, she realizes her humanity; which makes that final showdown a difficult mental struggle (witness Yuki's unusual lack of lightning fast killing skills in the scene above the party --- there's that moment of remorse, of the possibility of choosing to not go through her task).

The film's end sequence is a telling and very potent scene of cinematic redemption: wounded Yuki (after being stabbed helplessly by the daughter of her first victim) falls into the snowy ground. She cups a handful of snow and puts it in her face which causes her to weep; the sun rises in the background. She finally can feel; she feels that snow (that same snow that was falling when she was born into a life for vengeance) is actually cold, and harsh. Vengeance too, has left her cold, alone, and dying.

******
This post is my contribution to The Bleeding Tree: The Trashy Movie Celebration Blog-A-Thon.

It's Only Talk (2005)

It's Only Talk (Ryuichi Hiroki, 2005)
Japanese Title: Yawarakai seikatsu

A pervading and depressing sense of temporariness envelopes the psyche of the main character of Ryuichi Hiroki's It's Only Talk. Played with heartbreaking sincerity by Shinobu Terajima (who displayed an engrossing vulnerability in her debut film as the writer in director Hiroki's breakthrough film Vibrator (2003) --- although Hiroki has been making soft core pornographic films before), Yuko is a 35 year old manic-depressive. She keeps a website where she posts pictures of choice places and events she has visited --- one of the places we see is a playground made of rubber tires; the playground's centerpiece is a tall and handsome replica of Godzilla made entirely of truck tires. Her first interaction in the film is with K (Tomorowo Taguchi), a pervert she supposedly met in the net. He takes her to Kamada (he explains that he prefers taking his mistresses to out-of-town excursions); She loves the place and decides to stay there, living off the insurance money she has gathered from her parents' death.

In Kamada, she re-unites with a former classmate Honma (Shinsuke Matsuoka), now an active politician. Honma suffers from erectile dysfunction; he claims that an antidote to his embarrassing situation is to bed a girl he's in love with --- it turns out that manic-depressive Yuko isn't the panacea to his woes, also to her dissatisfaction. Through her website, she eye-balls with fellow manic-depressive Noboru (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a young yakuza, married and with child. She shows him the rubber tire playground; we learn that Noboru harbors a childhood fondness of the elusive site and repays Yuko with friendship for re-uniting him with his past. The fourth man in Yuko's life (or at least as shown in the film) is her cousin Shoichi (Etsushi Toyokawa). Shoichi moves to Kamada to be with his mistress, after separating from his wife and child. The mistress dumps him and he is forced to move into Yuko's apartment.

There's an engrossing dynamism to Hiroki's film. Midway through the feature, Yuko suddenly wakes up, switching from her jolly nature to the depressive one as her psychological disease promises. Instead of leaving the point of view to the near immobile Yuko, Hiroki shifts interests to Shoichi, giving us a grasp as to the psyche of the men affected by Yuko and a maintained cinematic tempo. It seems (and Hiroki, in the Q&A after the film screening confirms; Hiroki wanted a happy ending to his film, injecting a memorable sound bit to the penultimate scene in the bath house) that the cinematic goal is optimistic (with bright colors and movement), probably to lessen the impact of the fact that the film is ultimately a downer.

Yuko is used to the temporary nature of her life. She's manic one day, and wakes up morose the next. Her life is a series of depressing events --- her parents died (she claims from a famous earthquake), her boyfriend perished (from the subway gas attacks), a dear friend died (from the 9/11 terrorist attack), during the pendency of the film, another important figure in her life would meet the same fate. The same way, the men of her life carry the same fate. Their lives are as volatile as their temporary encounters with Yuko. K's life, like his name, is blanketed with anonymity; most probably to protect his non-pervert facade and his family. Honma has yet to meet the woman to cure him. Noboru's profession keeps his life a mercurial matter. Shoichi's fickle-mindedness in relationships force him back to Yuko whom he previously had an intimate relationship with.

Like the effects of her bipolar nature, like the men whom she can never be with, like the interesting places that dot the Kamada neighborhood, it seems to be the fate of poor Yuko that her life be denied of comforting permanence. Her only escape is to take photographs (of the places she has visited, among other things) with her digital camera, to provide a semblance of permanence in life's grueling surprises.

The Insect Woman (1963)

The Insect Woman (Shohei Imamura, 1963)
Japanese Title: Nippon konchuki

A beetle crawls through a patch of soil, climbing a minuscule hill with much effort. That is the central metaphor Shohei Imamura is going for with The Insect Woman for a woman who lives life through a Japanese society that is quickly changing into modernity. Imamura chronicles the life of Tome (Sachiko Hidari) starting from the moment of her birth. After the opening shots of the struggling beetle, Imamura opens the film proper with a woman similarly struggling through a snowy landscape to visit Tome's mother giving birth to her. Tome was born with questionable paternity (her mother is so loose that she has turned into a joke within the community), but despite that, Chuji (Kazuo Kitamura), her father in legal papers, has treated her with love and perhaps sexual affection. Imamura proficiently depicts the uncomfortable lines between sexual propriety and incest (curiously, it isn't clear if Chuji and Tome are indeed blood relatives, the same way Tome's daughter is not related by blood with Tome's lover in the future).

Tome starts working for a mill, but is called home to marry the third son of a poor landowner (still way above the class status of Tome's tenant family). Chuji disagrees but because of a previous loan of ten yen, Tome is forced to start working for the mill again, turning into a union leader romantically involved with one of the supervisors (who would break off the relationship when he ascends into a mangerial position). Her union activities lead to her retrenchment, forcing her to move to Tokyo and serve as a maid for Midori (Masumi Harukawa), a mistress of an American soldier. After an accident, Tome joins a religious sect wherein she meets inn-owner who seduces her to prostitution, and later on, to start pimping out women, herself.

Imamura tells the story in episodes. He ends an episode with a folksong being sung, tangentially related to the events that have ensued. If anything, The Insect Woman is a notable feature that depicts the struggles of a lowly woman to survive through the fastly changing times. The almost sudden change in setting amounts to confusion, which quickly fades as Imamura has a distinct understanding that his narrative comprises decades yet despite that, he doesn't rush into cramming everything in coarsely edited portions. Imamura immerses you into the situation. The raging sexual energies in pre-war feudal Japan where men quickly acknowledge sexual needs with the least of passions mostly populate the first few scenes. The women seem more like receptacles rather than human beings --- when Tome is giving birth and it is learned that her offspring is a female, a short debate of whether she has to be given up since she is another useless mouth to feed erupts. In other words, women are merely bargaining utilities to raise one's class level through marriage, and the chances for that are slim as the environment is filled with sex-crazed men who's never think twice in seduction.

Imamura delineates rural and urban, pre-war and post-war Japan. When Tome gets a taste of Tokyo, she never gets an opportunity to go back to her mountains (except when Chuji dies, but that visit led to her last downfall). In Tokyo, Tome's worth increases. Her line of business dictates that her womanhood has value, and the fact that she can send money to her family back home enunciates her distinction. Post-war Japan and the other historical events that ensue (Korean war, anti-government protests) has invited new ideas --- Midori turns from an American's witness to the wife of a Korean slacker, Tome is no longer restricted from using cunning and slyness in survival.

The ending of The Insect Woman is hauntingly similar to its opening sequence featuring the struggling beetle. Tome goes to visit her daughter in the farmland she is developing. Disgusted by the lack of development in rural Japan, Tome struggles through the soil, the rocks, and the pebbles that characterize the dirt road leading to the farm. She trips and her wooden slipper gets broken, and Imamura suddenly freezes the scene and ends his film. Interestingly, the idea that Imamura chronicles a life of a person from birth would somehow lead you to think that the chronicle would end with the person's death. Imamura seems to deny her character the benefit of death, the same way he gave that reward to Chuji's character, the sacrificing and doting patriarch who never truly adapts to society's changes. Like the insects and the roaches who an old saying says would inherit the world, Imamura seems to prophesy that the same goes for women like Tome, her daughter, and the countless others marginalized by culture and society

Haze (2005)

Haze (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2005)

A man (Shinya Tsukamoto) wakes up in a dark and cramped space. Unable to recall any of the events that preceded his being trapped mysteriously, he starts to make up scenarios to explain his predicament: a war broke out and he has been taken prisoner, a rich man has trapped him as a disgusting fetish. Moments later, he gets dragged (or in my sense, falls) into a spike causing him to bleed profusely; for sure he is not dreaming. After forcing and squeezing himself through the narrow passageways of the torturous maze, he meets another survivor (Kaori Fujii) lying almost lifelessly amidst the visible remains of other human beings. After a desperate chat in which both try to determine what has just happened to them, they try to find their way out of the cruel maze.

Tsukamoto's 50-minute film (I am hesitant to label the film a short film since Tsukamoto's feature films are only ten to twenty minutes longer than this) is definitely an exercise for the director to test his mettle in visceral horror. He begins in absolute claustrophobia. His camera is focused on the sweaty and nervous face of the trapped man. The only sounds audible are those caused by him (tapping; heavy breathing; moans) or mysterious clanging noises from the unknown beyond. Voice overs dictate his psychological standing; a mixture of confusion, desperation, and hopelessness. Truly, the first twenty minutes of Haze is absolutely grating and is an absolute test of your limitations in film viewing. There's not much to see as the film (shot in digital video) is draped in darkness, but what's there to see is an absolute threat to your visual senses. The visual claustrophobia is enunciated by sound effects that further the cinematic torture (most probably enjoyed by those who savored films like Saw (James Wan, 2004) and Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)).

It seems senseless at first and believe it or not, Haze does work best when it loses you in absolute confusion and induced paranoia. Tsukamoto's cinema is mostly visceral. Despite his being labeled as Japan's Cronenberg, his films doesn't quite reach an extent that surpasses his wild imagery. His later films (A Snake of June (2002), and Vital (2004)) try to encompass his visual energy with depth and narrative sensibility to a certain degree. Haze doesn't quite work when it tries to overcome its visceral side by trying to provide an explanation to the maddening insanity that is depicted. It seems that Tsukamoto is aiming for a metaphor but merely succeeds in compounding the film with conventionality it doesn't need.

Haze, at least after the first twenty minutes that was purely horror, with none of the fatty excesses of gratuitous narrative, goes downhill to art film pretentiousness. It's too bad because I thought Haze could've shown a thing or two how visceral horror films should be done, but instead of treading the road less traveled, makes a U-turn to needless explanation and narrative revelations. It's still worth watching, I suppose. It is after all merely fifty minutes long, and while it lasted, is a heart-pounding, eye-straining, and mind boggling labyrinthine "masturbatory" feat by Japanese auteur Shinya Tsukamoto.

Imprint (2006)

Imprint (Takashi Miike, 2006)

Imprint, Takashi Miike's contribution to the television series Masters of Horror suffered a fate of not being in television due to its content. Instead, Imprint, carrying the acclaim of its prolific helmer, has landed a spot in many film festivals and has finally reached its audience with the release of its DVD. It's typical gross Miike (the Miike of Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001)), just a bit more glossy and with all its actors and actresses speaking English (even if they're not supposed to). Of course, it's understandable. The target audience of the segment are middlebrow Americans who would probably turn off their television sets once it occurred to them that they are required to read subtitles. The problem here is that the English spoken is accompanied by a thick and almost ununderstandable accent, resulting to a jarring viewing experience.

The plot is probably the richest among the other segments in the television series' first season (although John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns is my favorite of the batch). An American tourist (Billy Drago) travels to an island to find Komomo (Michie Ito), a sweetheart he left behind but promised to bring back to the United States. He visits the whorehouses of the island, determined to find her golden haired Japanese girlfriend, but is only successful in hooking up with a prostitute (Youki Kudoh) with a gruesomely malformed face and an even more gruesomely mysterious past. It seems that the prostitute has some knowledge of what happened to Komomo, and in a series of flashbacks, tells the American the fate of his love.

There's a rich visual style Miike makes use of here. He turns the unidentified era of Japan into a time wherein whores are equated with freaks, monsters, and demons. Miike paints his film with bright colors, which to a certain extent disservices what he aims for. The result is mightily fantastical, and at times, abusively eye-straining especially when scenes of gratuitous violence is draped with bright eerie reds. More interesting is Miike's choice of turning his characters into anti-social outcasts. The American is blanketed with a mysterious past, and is played by Drago with a curiously hysterical tone, turning his love search into an absurdist nightmare. Komomo, who is described by the prostitute, as golden hearted, is portrayed as having a bit of insanity accompanying her fiery red hair (she insists that she's a princess in the midst of the fact that she prostitutes herself for meager coins). The most intricately designed character however is the prostitute --- her face divided into two halves (a normal one and one that is curiously monstrous); her hair is much too big for her meager frame; her dispassionate voice concealing a horrific story.

Imprint also has Miike's faults. Miike tends to have no restraint, turning his film into carnival fare instead of compelling cinema. Imprint is the most carnival of fares. Miike's desire to create something absurdly beautiful out of what is inherently disgusting and abrasive turns the film into a grandiose confusion. The prostitute describes her hometown as the most impoverished community in her province, but that doesn't stop her poor mother in putting up brightly hued windmills each time she performs her odd business. The images resulting from Miike's incoherence provide for an atmosphere of odd dread that the Brothers Grimm achieved with their fairy tales. Miike is a compulsive filmmaker, leaning more towards what looks horrific, violent, and shocking, thus sacrificing basic concepts of logic, and common sense.