Kagemusha: Film Review

Title: Kagemusha

Director: Akira Kurosawa & Ishiro Honda

Writer: Akira Kurosawa & Masato Ide

Year: 1980

From the explanatory text which opens Kagemusha, to the lengthy single-shot first scene, the pace of this film is decidedly measured.  For those who equate samurai films with supershiny-superfast coolwank, this one probably isn’t for you.  This film is long, slow and marvellous.

A ‘kagemusha’ is an impersonator, a body-double presented instead of a person of influence and importance, in order to protect them.  The titular kagemusha is a thief with a striking resemblance to Shingen Takeda, the daimyo of Kai Province.  He is discovered and saved from crucifixion by Nobukado, Shingen’s brother and erstwhile occasional kagemusha.  It is decided that the thief is to be trained in the ways of kagemushery, and the film follows the difficulties that arise in making this a reality.

Japanese acting is often a tumultuous beast, with subtle understatement sitting alongside some pretty huge performances.  Kagemusha is no exception, but does avoid the grotesques of gurning and mugging which is in abundant use in Japanese humour, which is often used to brilliant effect, but would be out of place here.  The understated/overstated contrast is key to this film, as Tatsuya Nakadai puts in a masterfully schizophrenic performance as both Shingen Takeda and the Kagemusha.  The differences between the two characters, and the subtle advances of the Kagemusha as he learns his imitative art is the backbone of this film, and it is a truly impressive achievement.  The crux of one scene, which is perhaps the most impactful of the film, rests entirely on the Kagemusha changing his posture and expression, and the huge effects these tiny alterations have on those surrounding him.

 There is a less subtle piece of acting which makes the film for me, personally, but I’ll discuss that fully later.

I’ve referred to the music in the notes I made as ‘Zelda music’, but it is perhaps more notable for how very sparsely it is used.  It is a largely orchestral score, but used tastefully, with little in the way of relentless pomp to drown quieter scenes.  At one juncture, a death scene; piercing, shrill flute squeals accompany the action, creating a discomforting, pained experience.  ‘Zelda music’ flags up that I am perhaps not best suited to fully critique the film’s score.

Some very beautiful and striking imagery is on show throughout the film, with one particular sequence focusing on the setting sun, as a seemingly endless line of soldier march past it in silhouette atop a hill, whilst in the foreground, in shadow, officers discuss the campaign.  Oddly for a film which has pitched battles as it’s backdrop, very little, if any, clear ‘fighting’ is shown.  When the Kagemusha finds himself actually on a battlefield, the fighting is portrayed by shouting and clamouring off-camera, with the shot focusing on the Kagemusha himself and those surrounding him.  His confusion, helplessness and terror, as well as that of his vassals, is in the foreground, with the grotty business of actual conflict taking a backseat to the human drama.  These sequences make for difficult viewing, as portrayal of the Kagemusha’s lack of understanding as the battle rages around him translates into the viewer also not understanding the ebb and flow of the, largely unseen, battle.

A wonderful piece of, very understated, repetition occurs, almost bookending the film, in the form of location.  By setting two key scenes in the same setting at the beginning and towards the end of the film, it throws the changes that have been wrought over the course of the piece in sharp relief.  That it is hardly flagged up at all, and I only noticed after multiple viewings, made it a much more rewarding and impactful realisation.

There are a couple of sequences which had less impact on me, and I’m uncertain as to whether this is simply because I lack foreknowledge of the story (which is set in the Warring States period, and uses real historical figures for it’s characters) or of Japanese traditions.  In one scene a soldier is shown at great length filling in a primitive musket and replicating a shot he took the night before.  This is done to prove the veracity of his claim to have shot someone, but the length at which the scene plays out suggests significance which I didn’t grasp.  A burst of Noh theatre and a scene where Nobunaga Oda sings in a throaty chant only succeeded in boggling me, though a surreal / expressionistic dream / nightmare sequence stood out as being markedly, but assuredly, odd.

My favourite performance of the film comes from Hideji Otaki, who portrays Masekage Yamagata, the Fire Battalion Leader / Red Fire Unit Leader.  The character is an influential General in Shingen’s army, and a close friend.  He stands out for his furious telling-off of his leader:

“You are a mountain monkey.  You should be out gathering nuts in the mountains of Kai!”

Otaki was possibly selected for the role due to his ability to release pointed tirades, grand explosions of shouting, and then quickly settle back into restrained dignity.  That, and his inhuman ability to turn a shocking shade of crimson.  He is, after all, the Red Fire Unit Leader.  In council scenes, Masekage takes the floor, addresses his peers in a restrained manner, before building up Cleesian volume, often ending his outbursts with barked, powerful laughter.  Of an enemy officer he declares:

“He scares me.”

Before sidling back to his cushion, throwing his head back 90 degrees and commanding all to laugh by turning himself a deep red with forceful laughter.  Frightening and wonderful.

The film also features palanquins, which is always a good thing.  Say it out loud “palanquin”.  Savour the word.  Palanquin.

The overarching plot of the film is Shingen’s forces fighting the combined threat of Ieyasu Tokagawa and Nobunaga Oda, but it is really a study of a man who is forced into a situation far beyond his knowledge, where he is forced to develop responsibility, and dignity.  A fraught film that needs to be properly engaged with to be really appreciated, but which rewards your engagement fully.

Tokyo Godfathers: Film Review

Title: Tokyo Godfathers

Written by: Satoshi Kon & Keiko Nobumoto

Directed by: Satoshi Kon

Year: 2003

Before we begin, I feel it's probably worth noting that there are probably spoilers in this review.

I wanted the review to go a bit more in depth than just outlining the plot, so it is perhaps unavoidable that some aspects would be revealed in order to explain my points.

If you're reading this review in order to determine whether or not you should watch Tokyo Godfathers, here, in short, is your answer: Yes. It is good.

The review beneath is less critical and more analytical than is usual for reviews I think, but that is, on this occasion, how I rolled.

I will reiterate, slight spoilers below.

*****

I felt since it was Christmas I would do the right thing and make an offering of a Christmassy film as a review. Being a cynical individual, however, I felt it was necessary to stay away from offering that were morkish or twee. I feel I achieved this well.

Set around Christmas and the New Year, Tokyo Godfathers is the story of three homeless people who discover an abandoned baby and proceed to care for it and attempt to return it to its rightful owner. Sorry, to its parents. The three homeless protagonists are: Miyuki, a teenage runaway; Gin, a bearded man in late middle-age and; Hana, a slightly-too-masculine flamboyant transvestite.

The film flies in the face of conventional Christmas fare, as the overtly grim and bleak storyline often deals with neuroses and mental illness, featuring as one of the film's main antagonistic driving forces is a disturbed grieving mother who resorts to kidnap in order to resolve her manic misery. The film also features a raft of characters you likely wouldn't expect in a festive feature: a mafia boss, and by association, the mafia; agressive judgemental drunks; weapon-toting nihilistic youths and; homeless people as the main focus.

The conoisseur of all things Satoshi Kon will know that his stories often run along dark tracks, often with the focus on a mental illness or psychotic behaviour of some description. This is definitely present in Tokyo Godfathers, and while those may sound like awful ingredients for a Christmas film souffle, it is a delightful antidote for the often vapid and cloyingly hollow Christmas offerings. The film is, in places, a satire of the Christmas film genre, for example; in the faux-montage sequences where the characters are travelling around the city, with a relentlessly upbeat and claustrophobically chirpy backing track powering away throughout. This is but one of the ways in which the film is able to engineer an ironically harmless feel to a scene, where the reality of all of the characters is far from the sterile warmth that is suggested. Another technique is to use overblown bombastic gurning during arguments, suggesting a cheesy light-heartedness which the actual subject matter does not conform with.

Throughout the piece there are ludicrous 'magical' or 'miracle' coincidences which drag the story out of the fairly realistic portrayal of other aspects, such as living on the street, rummaging through bins and being treated with suspicion and distaste by the populace at large (for being homeless, and everything that brings with it). These 'miracles', however, often coincide, or are inextricably linked to, horrific and/or fatal goings on. In this way, the often highly improbably good fortune is portrayed in the foreground, while something far darker and gruesome is shown behind. For example: an argument breaks out between an aggressive drunk and the main characters in a shop, the drunks aggressive behaviour driving the group outside. No sooner are they outside than an ambulance careens off the snow-covered road and ploughs headlong into the shop, reducing it to glass and rubble as the group look on from mere yards away, shocked but unharmed. These bizarre episodes lend the film a delightfully offbeat feel, where each scene, as innocuous as it may appear, has a brooding tenseness to it.

Further contrast is to be found as the seemingly invincible cloud that covers the main characters is sometimes punctured, which is dramatically appealing, as there is no excitement in following the story of characters who cannot be harmed. In one sequence Gin, the bearded father-figure of the group, is assaulted by a group of teenagers, who seem to be trawling the area attacking tramps for their own amusement. It is unusual to find such a random occurence in a film, and it is an event which seems to acknowledge that however pressing and important the narrative you believe your are following is, there are often situations that arise that are out of your control. It is also an unusual thing to find in a Christmas film, which further adds to the subversion. I doubt there are many Christmas films where a bloodied and beaten homeless person lies on the cusp of death on bins in an alleyway. I suppose that is probably a good thing though, it is fresh as a change, but if it was a staple of yule offerings it would seem needlessly upsetting.

The messages I felt the film was sending were, despite its atypical nature, were fairly similar to those you'd expect of a Christmas film, albeit from a very extreme angle. The film promotes love and family, particularly working through hardship for your family, although it does acknowledge that the perfect family often depicted on-screen is a ludicrous fabrication. At one juncture the characters are discussing people having started a family, and the shot cuts away to a billboard atop a skyscraper which portrays a beaming pregnant wife with a responsible proud husband standing beside her, hand around her shoulder. In comparison, the main 'family' of the film is the infinitely unconventional unit that consists of homeless father, transvestite (and homeless) male-mother, runaway (and homeless) teenage daughter and abandoned (and therefore homeless) baby.

There is a steep arc of ridiculousness toward the end of the film, where, despite characters often declaring in self-awareness that they aren't action heroes, the plot does veer down an action-packed tangent. Strangely, this works well, and in no way does it undermine the integrity of the piece. It is as though following protagonists who are so cut-off from the world which the viewer inhabits (I am assuming here that the viewer isn't homeless) that turning up the level of surrealism in the film doesn't alter it's credibility. Although eventually the film feels as though it no longer desires your credulity, and is experimenting with extreme grotesques of overblown miracles that feels like a middle-finger-up to the Christmas film bourgeoisie (Home Alone etc).

The film uses Hana, the trampvestite (what?), to excellent use, using his/her tongue-in-cheek bombastic flamboyancy to deliver lines that are slightly too sincere to meld comfortably with the film, in a way which fits perfectly. My personal favourite is: "Being able to speak freely is the lifeblood of love". Suckle on that for a bit.

At the conclusion of the film, SERIOUSLY NOW SPOILERS, the pieces are all in place to allow an all-loose-ends-tied-up/happy-ever-after finale, which it deftly sidesteps by simply presenting the various jigsaw pieces needed, which while it is heavily suggestive, it requires the viewer to assemble them in their own imagination, or not to, as they see fit.

A powerhouse of a film. Funny, too.

A Wind Named Amnesia: Film Review

Title: A Wind Named Amnesia (Kaze no Na wa Amunejia)
Writer: Hideyuki Kikuchi
Director: Kazuo Yamazaki
Year: 1990

If there is a person misanthropic enough to be following all of these reviews, they might have noticed a trend in mine. I tend to be drawn by tales that are of a post-apocalypse setting. A Wind Named Amnesia fits this bill, and while I wasn’t disappointed, neither did I have my mind blown.

The film is set in the distant future, or at the very least in what must have counted for that in 1990. It is strange watching a film which is set in a dystopian future, but a future which is set roughly 10 years ago. Our first experience of the film is a quick gritty gambol around the ruins of San Francisco, 1999. Groups of barbaric humans roam the streets, or flee in terror from a pilotless guardian, a robotic mini-mecha style machine that hunts down humans and kills them. The inhabitants of San Francisco, and indeed the entire world, have been reduced to the state of primitive man by a wind which blew through the planet in 1990, wiping out the memory of almost everyone.

The story follows Wataru, who manages to overcome the amnesia and re-learn the ways of the world, thanks to the help of a wheelchair-bound child named Johnny. Wataru first encounters Johnny when he stumbles upon the destroyed remains of an experimental government facility while searching for food. Johnny has escaped the amnesia because of the experiments conducted on him in the facility, experiments to increase his memory. Through extensive teaching, Wataru is able to speak again, and is eventually able to function in a way we would deem ‘normal’. It is Johnny who gives him the name ‘Wataru’, explained as meaning ‘one who travels around’.

The retelling of his back-story takes place as he explains it to Sophia, a stranger who helped him defeat the guardian in San Francisco, an enigmatic platinum-haired woman who has retained her memories and doesn’t wear shoes, in what I would describe as a dangerously impractical affectation, especially given the volatile state of the world. It doesn’t take long for them to agree to travel together, and so begins the hypothetical examination of what a world full of reasonless, animalistic primitive humans would amount to.

On their travels they encounter a crude society which is ruled and driven by a blind fear of their god, named the Smasher-Devourer, whose raw and unsystematic fury can only be sated, so they believe, through a ‘marriage’ to a new wife. It is such a ‘wife’, Sue, that Wataru and Sophia chance across, being pursued by a ragged ensemble due to her fleeing the night before her wedding day. She is eventually saved by the ironically named Little John, a hulking, bearded behemoth of a man, who fights off the others. Bearing in mind these individuals are still in a primitive, pre-language state, it is through the use of Sophia’s unexplained lay-on-hands ability that their names are gleaned. She also discovers that this ‘marriage’ is essentially human sacrifice, to a humungous crane that has been, for lack of a better word, pimped to include weaponry, specifically mechanical limbs of the grabby and crushy varieties. And lasers.

They also come across a, seemingly, utopian super-city in the desert, controlled and protected by a giant, central supercomputer. What initially appears to be a safe haven, whose inhabitants have escaped the amnesia, is, in reality, merely an empty shell. The city’s two inhabitants, whose names may have their origin in satire, are Lisa and Simpson, who seem to be hollow puppets, manipulated by the supercomputer to simulate the previous life of the city, and so they spend their days role-playing the lives of the former inhabitants.

Wataru is also forced to have an iconic and symbolic showdown with the guardian he defeated in San Francisco, which has repaired itself and made weapon-based improvements, and then chased him across most of America.

The events which are observed by Wataru and Sophia are meant to portray, and in some ways answer, the question that is often brought up in the film, which seems to be: “What is the true nature of man?” Quite an ambitious query to set yourself up for, and one that, for me at least, the film doesn’t really deal with adequately, settling for an open-ended conclusion.

But while I was being disappointed with the paucity of the films reply to its own questions, I was also being distracted by my nagging “oh, whose voice is that?” style half-remembrances of the cast. It didn’t take long for me to place Wataru as Kazuki Yao, one of my personal favourite seiyuu, whose standout roles for me where in One Piece (Jango, Bon Clay, Franky) and also in Tenjho Tenge (Bunshichi Tawara). I was embarrassed to have not placed Kappei Yamaguchi as Johnny, as he is a hugely prolific voice actor, and another one of my favourites.

Despite not really answering the questions it set up for itself, A Wind Named Amnesia is an interesting and engaging thought experiment, which is what I want from a post-apocalyptic offering. It is comfortingly vicious and bloody in places, and features some, arguably, justified dramatic nudity and a sex(ual) scene which I’m sure would have pleased my younger self (he was very interested in the artistic use of nudity. ARTISTIC).

Good film.

Roots Search: Film Review

Title: Roots Search: Shokushin Buttai X
Writer: Michiru Shimada
Director: Hisashi Sugai
Year: 1986

Since the beginning of this review blog, I have seen a fair amount of anime, and the quantity I saw beforehand is greater still. In all this time, there aren’t many releases, be they series, film, OVA, manga or live action, that I would dismiss as being of no value whatsoever. There is a large amount of throwaway ecchi rubbish, but if a shows aim is to be throwaway ecchi rubbish, actually slamming it for being so seems redundant, as they are easily avoidable. What we have with Roots Search, however, is a 45 minute release which has pretentions of an intelligent philosophical debate, but fails to live up to any of what we could generously describe as its ‘promise’.

Before I explain why I think the film is a resounding brainsore, I will qualify my criticisms by acceding that 45 minutes is perhaps too short a time to have really gone into the ideas Roots Search proposes in a more challenging way, but I feel the film also fails to compromise successfully and instead makes a hash of everything.

I am no expert when it comes to sci-fi horror, but if horror scenes appear clunky and not at all frightening to someone who isn’t a horror enthusiast, then they are hardly fit for purpose. Bearing in mind that this film is over 20 years old, it is possible that these scenes would’ve appeared less obvious to an audience not used to the epic CGstravaganzas that abound today. Still, the premise isn’t, and wasn’t, a new one, and while I’m sure Roots Search was dismissed by some as an Alien rip-off, it seems a bit unfair that one film should have monopoly on the idea of ‘horror in space’. Roots Search is ‘horror in space’, but the reason that no one can hear them scream is not due to the vacuum of space, but due to the awfulness of the production. It is almost as awful as my analogy for how awful it is.

The horror scenes revolve around the psychic alien creature locating the characters’ guilty pasts and forcing them to relive or face up to them through the use of ‘horrifying’ apparitions. Like A Christmas Carol, except in space, with a lot more blood, and significantly less Yorkshire pudding. The uninspired set up for these scenes are further let down by the spectacularly awful visuals. When I say visuals I am not referring only to the poor quality of the animation, which is more or less forgivable bearing in mind the age of the production, and also that it was likely made on a shoestring budget, something which is also suggested by the oddly short running time. I am referring to the poor ideas behind the design of these scenes; the beginning of the alien’s intervention is always announced by a screen-filling shot of the aliens face (sideways mouth aaargh!), which is then replaced with the face of an individual from the character’s past, which is replaced with the alien, which is replaced by the individual, alien, person, alien, person, eeeeeh! All of this underpinned with the synthy whooshing and whooping of an angry child assaulting a Moog. Sorry, that’s probably not how they were made. It is also conceivable that it was a Yamaha. I can’t tell whether this was passé when it first came out, but by today such a scene is to be considered excruciating cheese, and at a planning meeting a suggestion for such a scene would be met with the relocating of the tantrum-throwing Moog-child into the personal space of the gibberling who had suggested such a thing.

The film is further burdened with ugly character design, which is perhaps a harsh claim that can’t really be substantiated because it is based solely on my taste, rather than an opinion formed (hopefully) rationally. Nevertheless, ugly character design. Have it. Scott, a blonde-haired fop, is modelled on a carrot that has been inflated, and heroic Johnny-come-lately Buzz is a bastardised version of an archetypal old-school anime hero. The female lead, Moira, is tousled and clueless, plodding around with her big puppy eyes and overlong sleeves, plugging away in the ‘helpless damsel’ tradition, looking for all the world like a gender-stereotyping analyst’s wet dream.

Heteronormativity is further pandered to in a scene where, being confronted with a significant amount of gore, Moira buries her face in Scott’s overlarge manly/carrot chest, as he nobly holds her and declares “That’s too gory for a young woman to have to see”. Which to me is a strange line, as it is embedded with the assumption that there is a level of gore that a young woman should have to see, though I imagine the level is ‘not very much gore’, or possible, ‘hardly any gore at all’. A second assumption is also there through contrast, which is that the level of gore is perfectly suitable for viewing by young men. Such as carrot chested Scott and lantern-jawed Buzz.

Gore is an important commodity in Roots Search, as it is used as a substitute for horror. Japanese horror, though this is generalising slightly, is known for its understatement and horror-through-mood approach, which contrasts with the mainstream American ‘holy shit isn’t this stabby man scary?!?!’ approach, which makes Roots Search’s approach even stranger. Not scared by the monster-apparition that’s chasing a crew member? No worries, we are about to impale him with a dozen girders. Through his face. The horror.

The pacing of the piece seems rushed, which is again to be expected and is likely evidence of an epic idea squashed into too short a slot, which still doesn’t excuse some of the blunders. Early on in the piece, the alien declares: “I will kill you all within two hours”, which is an oddly time-conscious outburst from a monster, and suggests an intelligence which is absent from the horrors he decides to visit. Further dialogue sillies come roughly a quarter of an hour into the piece, as Moira suddenly changes the topic of conversation apropos of nothing to discuss the reason of human existence. This conversation needs to occur in order to set up the alien’s story, but it is a grinding shift of focus from the rest of the piece up until that point. Harsh contrasts can be an effective dramatic technique, but in this instance it comes across as half-arsed and clunky. Characters also have a tendency to say each others names too often, which is slightly annoying and needless in such a short piece. Whether this is to engender empathy from the viewer or just a consequence of poor writing is unclear, though it fails to make me sympathise with Moira, Scott, Norman, Marcus or Buzz.

There’s no epilepsy warning at the beginning of the piece, but I’d suggest there should be, as the creators of the film certainly subscribe to the idea that there is nothing quite as terrifying as viciously flashing backgrounds. Gone are the days when TV and films were allowed to literally send viewers into fits. Far be it from me to trivialise epilepsy but seizures may be the only way of disguising Roots Search’s many faults.

The film is capped off wonderfully with a dated awful synth-based thoughtless soundtrack, which is coming from someone who is an avid supporter of synth-based offerings. There are better ways of creating mood than simply thrusting both hands onto the keyboard when the monster appears suddenly on screen.

Towards the end of the film, a character is aggressively blinded, and if I were the sort of person who would make light of blindness, I would suggest that it would be preferable to having seen the film. But I won’t do that, obviously.

When the film started I thought that it would be an underground favourite with people who might watch it ironically and find brilliance in its awfulness, like finding a rich seam of gold whilst excavating the cavity of Nick Griffin’s melty eye, but alas, it is just a melty eye. I mean, a bad film. Naughty film! Rub its nose in it!

Mushishi: Film Review

Title: Mushishi

Director: Katsuhiro Otomo

Author: Yuki Urushibara (comic) Sadayuki Murai (screenplay)

Year: 2006

There is a penchant in Japanese media (anime/manga/film particularly) to hang onto a successful story and milk it for absolutely every last drop of sustenance, and then continue sucking. A prime example of this would be the novel Battle Royale, which was then adapted for manga, then made into a film, which also spawned a sequel. The problem with this process is, often, aspects of the piece will go missing, stories will change and the artistic vision of the original piece will often be altered or watered down.

Mushishi began its life as a manga, which I have not read, but according to Wikipedia:

“The Mushishi manga won an Excellence Prize at the 2003 Japan Media Arts Festival and the 2006 Kodansha Manga Award.”

So its original incarnation won critical acclaim. I first encountered Mushishi in its anime form, and was blown away by its engrossing measured pace and, to my trusting young eyes at least, unique style. For reasons I cannot remember, I never got more than a few episodes into Mushishi, though its standout opening track (The Sore Feet Song – Ally Kerr) and unnerving brand of unusual visceral horror branded itself into my brain.

The series wasn’t linked, as far as I had seen, by any more than its main character, silver-haired Ginko, the titular mushishi (bug master), as he travelled around ancient Japan curing those suffering from mushi-related plague like a ancient-Japanese silver-haired Jesus. Each episode followed a standalone plot, and I was interested to discover how these unlinked tales would be strung together over the length of an entire film.

Answer: they aren’t. Apart from one introductory tale, which I recognised from what little I’d viewed from the series beforehand, which is used to contextualise and introduce the role of the mushishi to the audience, the mini-stories are dropped, focusing more on the past of Ginko, following that ark as it comes full circle to the story’s present time. The lack of the unattached stories in the film is dramatically a good thing, as the plot would likely seem fractured and stuttered without the presence of the narrative ark. Having the past of Ginko explored also enables the audience to care more about the character, where if Ginko was merely a device in order to explore a number of mini-stories, he would seem hollow and 2D. The downside of not being able to include many of the side-plots is that people who are already fans of Mushishi will inevitably pine the lack of their personal favourite tale. This was certainly the case with me, despite having seen few episodes. The defining moment of my relationship with Mushishi in its anime incarnation was a scene where a character blinded by mushi that live in eyes, stood in complete darkness with a river of undulating silver unguent gushing skyward from his/her eyeballs. Moments such as that are few and far between, said the silly young man, wiping a tear from his eye.

Having spent an unjustifiably long time pontificating on what is not in the film, its probably time to tell you what is, for there is plenty there to be pleased with.

The film opens with slow, atmospheric shots of foggy mountainous woodland, distant prolonged shots where the ominous and mysterious nature of a non-industrialised natural world is fully accentuated. The subtitles appear to inform us this is turn of the century Japan, although which century is either not made clear, or I was too engrossed in the misty forestscape to notice. Suffice to say, this is the pseudo-surreal landscape of the none-too-recent past, with characters clad in tabi and sandals, conical straw hats etc. I found the style utterly true to the anime adaptation, which is a fantastically good thing indeed, the world created by Mushishi is utterly engrossing despite the fantastical nature of the tales. It is certainly the style that is most notable of the series, with the eeriness of the landscapes together with the aged, graininess of the footage and the deliberate slow pace of the storytelling transporting you into the story with ease.

The fantastical nature of the stories, centring as they do around ephemeral magic bugs (mushi), means that at times the story may be difficult to follow, especially since there is no time in the film for the sort of explicit explanations that occur in the series, but I would argue that this is a good thing, as the mystery of not knowing the exact nature of the creature adds to the overall ambience of the piece, as it thrives on oddness.

Despite omitting many mini-stories, the film still goes on for a fair old length, which may seem a hollow gripe, but since it is my only real complaint, I will have to follow through with it. Now I am a fan of lengthy works, although sometimes an abundance of material is simply evidence that the writers were utilising a ‘throwing-shit-against-the-wall’ technique, and this certainly isn’t the case with Mushishi, the problem is simply that there is too much good material to comfortably fit in. On the other hand had I known it was going to be something of a monolith before I’d pressed play, I might not have become shifty and agitated in the middle, wondering whether it would come to an end soon.

Sitting there actively wanting a film to end is never a good thing, but it is certainly the length of it, rather than a discrepancy in quality of content that places the ants in my pants on this occasion.

The film is also guilty of being accidentally funny, though again I can’t be sure whether this is simply my highly tuned comedy eye or my rampant de-sensitivity when it comes to the odd, but there were a few incredibly strange scenes that were perhaps meant to be taken seriously, where I couldn’t help but laugh.

Mushishi is a good example of strange and slow creepy horror, the sort which makes you twitch and clench your jaw rather than make you jump, the storyline has been honed to a fine art over its several incarnations, meaning that the film is a fantastic rendition of the story, rather than a heavily watered down version. If you are planning on watching it, however, bed down comfortably, get your snacks and your drinks in at the start, and attach the catheter, it’s gonna be a long one.

Tony Takitani: Film Review

Title: Tony Takitani

Director: Jun Ichikawa

Year: 2005

Based on the short story written by: Haruki Murakami.

The usual focus of reviews on this site is anime and manga, but with flagrant disregard for form I have decided to take a leave from this, by providing my take on the film Tony Takitani. There’s no real need to justify this choice, the products of the of Far Eastern cinema (Japan and South Korea especially) are within our broad scope, if only tangentially.

I first became aware of, and enthralled by, the work of Haruki Murakami when I picked up the novel Dance Dance Dance in an airport, and ever since, I have been systematically acquiring his other works. Alongside his novels, Murakami also releases collections of short stories, and it is within the collection entitled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman that I first read Tony Takitani. It is the story of a man who, as a child, spends most of his time alone, as his mother died shortly after childbirth, his father was a gigging trombonist, and Tony was often left alone by other children, due to his American / English / foreign name, which summoned up negative connotations in post-war Japan. He continues to distance himself from others well into his adult life, until he eventually encounters a woman for whom he departs from his socially distant attitude. It is a short story, then, that is a soft melancholic microcosm of an existence that can, at times, be incredibly lonely.

I am generally worried when I discover film adaptations of written works, as for every Lord of the Rings quality adaption, there are a hundred million Legend of the Seeker abominations. Rumours of a feature length Atlas Shrugged starring Angelina Jolie cause my body to malfunction and spurt acid into my cranium. Huge novels are not suited to make the leap to film, which is why Lord of the Rings takes place over three, and they have such gargantuan running times and an overwhelming amount of deleted scenes. A short story, then, is perhaps more suited to this sort of reimagining, and films bearing the wreaths of film festivals, as Tony Takitani does, have a special attraction to a certain kind of viewer, for instance, me. The cover was festooned with more quality reviews and quotes than I was able to shake my cynical stick at, and I was also able to pick it up for a stupidly low price. Go me.

The film is one of the most true adaptations I have ever come across, which I, personally, feel is a hugely important thing, especially when the original piece is of such high quality. It captures the mood of the short story fantastically, which is an extremely difficult thing when dealing with two mediums that are so far removed from each other. It must be nearly impossible to successfully and honestly recreate the same bleak sense of loneliness which came originally from only the written word, this time having to factor in every visual and audio factor, from angle to duration of shots, from the soundtrack to the lack of one. The makers must have understood that completely, and have done a masterful job.

Colour is of huge importance to the film, and the scope of colours in the film are largely drawn from a lacklustre pastel pallet, which with a few tweaks up the brightness scale could render the scheme overly bright and cheerful, but instead it is kept relatively dull. This helps to project the clean cut and sterile nature of the existence of Tony Takitani, meaning that though he wants for nothing in purely material terms, the colours are a constant reminder of his extended malaise.

The film is minimalistic, with dialogue chosen frugally and implemented beautifully, again reinforcing the social non-entity that Tony had developed into. Scenes play out at great length, with very little physical activity to lend the scenes a focus of action, as the life of Tony Takitani is one of profound emptiness. These drawn out scenes are decorated magnificently by frequent narration, which lends the film the feel of the short story, as it has the intimacy of a story literally being told, rather than merely having you experience the tale passively. The idea of having the story specifically being ‘told’ occurs repeatedly in the film, as often the flow of the narrator's monologue will leak out into the scene as it unfolds, where a character will continue the gist of the narration, despite physically being set in the story. I felt this was a powerful technique, as the story then felt as though it was being bequeathed from the characters themselves, as an insight into a life that would otherwise never have been experienced.

The soundtrack is wonderfully apt, with a simple recurring piano piece as its backbone. Perhaps more important, though, is the occasional lack of backing track. These breaks in the music are used to great effect, leaving certain scenes bare and bleak, again returning to one of the running themes of the story.

An iconic scene features Tony lying motionless on the floor of an empty room, and it is incredible that a scene where literally nothing is happening can be so moving. I am not a huge fan of seemingly “that’s so true” revelations in any medium, but it is likely that a proportion of everyone’s life is spent lying on the floor of an empty room, even if only metaphorically. If you would disagree with the last statement, you should probably give the film a miss, as the twice removed sensation of lying on a bed watching a film where a man is lying on the floor of an empty room would probably be considered by you a waste of valuable time, where you could be doing something pro-active, like fishing or bashing your head repeatedly against a wall. I don’t begrudge you your fishing, you can at least have the decency not to begrudge me my pastel-bleak ennui, thank you very much.

The entire film is tinged with an artistic soft touch, suggesting and trusting the viewer to make of it what they will, rather than bluntly presenting you with the conclusions you are intended to make, as modern yarns are wont to do. It is refreshing to have such a film, where the ending is not the crashing crescendo of manufactured and measured elation, but a fade out that suggests a continuation of life, as life does go on (unless, of course, you are dead), heedless of the lack of a Hollywood happy ending. The film ends in such a way as to suggest that the stage curtain has not been closed, that the story continues on without the audience. For what are any of our lives if not an experimental artsy film playing out in a theatre devoid of an audience? A string of self-referential blog entries containing hugely pretentious metaphors as their conclusion? Fuck you, then.

Tony Takitani is a delightfully unconventional film, which I would recommend to anyone with a brain and a haunting cello number playing the soundtrack to their lives. The film is probably best served dampened with the tears of the lonely, preferably in the midst of a particularly enjoyable bout of disheartening gloom.