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Film: Into Eternity
Release date: 17th January 2011
Certificate: E
Running time: 75 mins
Director: Michael Madsen
Starring: Timo Äikäs, Carl Reinhold Bråkenhjelm, Mikael Jensen, Berit Lundqvist, Wendla Paile
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Dogwoof
Format: DVD
Country: Denmark/Finland/Sweden/Italy
This is an English-Language release.
Nuclear menace is a topos of 20th century cinema. Catalyst of mutation and apocalypse, the spectre of the mushroom cloud haunts the 1950s b-movie, and emanates far beyond. The initial symptoms were metaphorical, fantastically inflamed. Bugs blew up, men miniaturised, THEY attacked, and galactic visitors delivered sonorous warnings against proliferation. As weapon and technology, the movies enjoy a duplicitous love affair with the nuke; simultaneously fetishising the gleaming accruements of science, whilst despairing their malign fallout. Dwelling on that horrific what if, later productions such as The War Game, Failsafe and The China Syndrome abandoned metaphor, depicting atomic menace in explicit, realist contexts that made the nightmare ever more palpable. Michael Madsen’s provocative new documentary is a potent addition to this cautionary canon.
With fairytale portent, Michael Madsen’s flat voiceover reproaches the trespass of the camera. Deep beneath a frozen forest lays a long, dark tunnel: an illicit realm. “You are now in a place where we have buried something to protect you,” he intones. Unheeding, the curious camera eye presses deeper and deeper into the mysterious recess. Another warning. “You should not have come here.” Too late. We have strayed into to the Onkalo; or ‘hiding place’. A vast bunker corkscrewing into the frigid wilds, the facility is to be the final resting place for Finland’s radioactive junk. Scheduled for completion next century, this 4.2 km long cement intestine will envelop the poison until safe – a mere 100,000 years hence. Madsen explores the implications of this potentially lethal bequest, a lethal time capsule future generations may unknowingly inherit. Interviewing the plan’s architects, it becomes clear that art and myth – rather than science – may be the project’s final sentinels.
Wary audiences may fear this sombre topic proffers the entertainment value of watching uranium deplete. But Madsen’s elegant cinematography renders this an understated, chilly mood piece. Much of the film’s weight is derived from its interviewees, but talking heads comprise only part of a sensuous, imaginative narrative…
Unusually, the scenario Into Eternity presents is one of safety last. Forgoing the clichés of sweaty meltdown scenarios and rogue missiles, Madsen skips to the end of the cycle, and the less visceral, enduring hazard posed by nuclear waste. Eschewing titillating alarmism, the film offers an atmospheric mediation on the consequences of Europe’s power dependency. Billed as “a film for the future,” this grim science faction documents what may be mankind’s ultimate legacy – and, ironically, his most fatal folly.
Rhapsodising bone-white control rooms, mercurial pools and gleaming laboratories, interiors assume a nostalgic, futurist glamour. Peopled by uniformly lab-coated technicians, this flattering montage evokes utopian documentaries of the 1950s, which promised limitless, clean energy. Enthralled by electrified grace, the lens accompanies apparatus as it glides across the polished surfaces of the plant, a silvered cathedral of physics. Kraftwerk’s ambivalent techno hymn, Radioactivity, ebbs from the soundtrack in fittingly ethereal accompaniment. It’s an eerily idyllic vision that subtly decays. Slo-mo camerawork finally estranges the white coated boffins from their creation, rendering them mere ghosts eclipsed by an awesome machine.
Contrasted with this stainless steel utopia is the deserted landscape above the pit. Icy stillness – disturbed only by a grazing reindeer – provides an intense, almost surreal counterpoint. Madsen refers to “forbidden zones” in his voiceover – a reference to Tarkovsky’s Stalker. With a lyricism reminiscent of that work, the wilderness occupies an uncanny role here, hinting at nature’s timelessness – and mankind’s ephemerality.
Beneath ground, the film sensuously explores the interplay of light and darkness, arranging a chiaroscuro of gloom and incandescence. Though corporate video graphics pixellate it into a lurid spiral – something like a Hot-Wheels racetrack – Madsen mines a wealth of visual riches from the forbidding caverns. Worshipfully lingering over imposing drilling gear, the camera virtually caresses the coarse texture of the tunnels, equally captivated by the rock itself. Like the wan scientists and vacant forest, this sooty Hades emphasises human vulnerability, posing workmen against enfolding darkness in a series of stark tableaux. This stylish dialectic is particularly apt, since it embodies another fundamental, and indeed mythic theme at work here – ignorance versus enlightenment.
Madsen’s documentary proves unusually resonant, as his investigations gradually evolve along unexpectedly profound tangents. Rather than assume a purist ‘green’ position, his free-wheeling inquisition also poses head-scratching philosophical questions. Though considered a ‘final solution’, his exposition observes that, for humankind, the 100,000 year lifespan of the Onkalo is an unintelligible duration. We have no way of comprehending how our culture – if it exists – will interpret the site. Comparable in grandeur to a Pharoah’s tomb, could it ultimately be excavated, or regarded as an ancient monument? Whilst the project’s designers seek to preserve its integrity for aeons, might their ‘infallible’ security be breached? A lethal Pandora’s Box, this nuclear graveyard may prove an irresistible lure to inquisitive humans who threaten its sanctity. This is implicit in the design of the film itself – since its initial lines seem addressed to some future intruder.
Invoking the legend of Prometheus, Madsen considers nuclear energy as a dangerous knowledge which imperils those who seize it. Damned by their boundless curiosity, our scientists now seek to deny others their awareness. Ironically, the paternal duty of these learned men is to bestow ignorance on future generations; maintenance of a benign obliviousness: “to remember forever to forget.” The architects face a bleak choice – to ritually mark the pit, erecting obelisks and menacing art as warning signals – or, fearing this would entice, to erase it from history altogether. Perhaps, they muse, the Onkalo might yet endure through folk tales – translated into a fearful cultural memory. The film (and mankind) seems to have travelled full circle: from myth, to science – and back again.
Prying deep, Madsen excavates – and eviscerates – the premises of the Onkalo. Leaving his interviewees with adequate rope to lynch themselves, it gradually becomes clear that, as one scientist announces, “Nobody knows anything at all.”
Mythic allusions detract from the film’s urgency, but elevate it to a grim parable. Offering no resolution, this provocative documentary shatters expedient ‘logic’. Primed with a rhetorical warhead, its grim analysis inflicts an unnerving critique. Regrettably, with a best-before date of 102011, this is one film unlikely to lose its relevance as quickly as one would like. DJO
Series: Naruto Shippuden Box Set 4
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 206 mins
Director: Hayato Date
Starring: Chie Nakamura, Junko Takeuchi, Noriaki Sugiyama, Akira Ishida, Hideo Ishikawa
Genre: Anime
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
One of Japan’s most prolific manga serials, Naruto is a saga that has begotten an empire. Spawning novels, movies, soundtrack CDs, fluffy dolls, games, action figures, cards, cosplay garb and the obligatory fanboy t-shirt, Masashi Kishimoto’s creation is now a multi-tentacled merchandising entity. This, the second TV series based on the property, is still being broadcast, screening weekly in Japan. Thus far, it’s a never-ending story – with the 200th episode scheduled to be aired in February 2011. Joining our heroes mid-quest, this whopping compendium delivers a plethora of distinctively Japanese pleasures. A teen-oriented yarn starring mystical ninjas, the show chronicles one boy’s quest to become Hokage – the baddest of the best.
It’s a tale of nine tails; that is, of the fox demon, which lurks inside our hero, Naruto. Unbeknownst to the plucky shinobi, he’s host to a malign spirit, or ‘chakra’, of devastating potency.
As episode 40 commences, Naruto is embroiled in a tense standoff with reptilian overlord Orochimaru. Attempting to liberate his erstwhile ally, Sasuke, from the auspices of evil, the hot-headed lad pursues his foe to a treacherous mountain pass. Battling across a pendulous rope bridge, Naruto’s anger overwhelms him, rousing the beast within. Stirred from its slumber, will the apparition aid our protagonist, or lure him to his doom?
Debuting with a thrill-primed set-up, Naruto progressively stifles its early promise. Shame, because the symbolic backdrop of the bridge (will Naruto be tempted across to the ‘dark side’?) suggests an action-laden spectacle, propped up by a thoughtful psychological subtext. As the fox-spirit envelops our hero, imagery assumes a garish surrealism; a stylistic tangent later marginalised. Engulfed in bubbling orange heat-haze, Naruto resembles the half-digested victim of a carnivorous lava lamp. Entering inky limbo, this entrapment is presented via teasingly oblique montage, and the awesome, Godzilla-like powers of the nine-tails set a precedent for opulent, OTT carnage. Regrettably, these visceral stopovers in Hades are short-lived, leaving the chakra as a subdued MacGuffin which reprises a familiar theme. ‘With great pow…err…with kick-ass demons comes great responsibility.” So far, so Spider-Man.
Regrettably, the cast are equally generic, comprised of instantly familiar archetypes. Consider Team 7, the elite ninja brigade. There’s Naruto: young, impetuous, and super-powered. A moody teen with supernatural PMT. Sakura: token caring female, a pink-haired dead-ringer for Lazytown’s Stephanie. Lastly, the group’s leader, Yamato: the sage, martially artistic paterfamilias. Plus: the opposition. Two very bad guys. And (ambivalence, at last!): Sai, who could be allied with either side. Or both.
Mulling over friendship and destiny, Naruto’s concerns are clearly relevant to its youthful audience, but are ill served by arthritic rendering. So vast is the series, plot mechanics have stalled. The unwieldy machine that remains blithely meanders on, fuelled by regurgitated mythos. Frequently resorting to flashbacks, plot developments escape in the form of tacky reveals. Invariably, these are heralded with incredulous melodrama: a theatrical gasp, and mandatory close-up of widening eyeballs. Sustaining a meagre drip-drip of back-story to keep an audience thirsty is a common tactic, familiar from long-running series such as Heroes and Lost – but not without risks. Continued indulgence in Byzantine recollect vectors the narrative arc backwards, sacrificing urgency to retrospective detail.
Regrettably, the episodic format of the show enhances the sensation of inertia. Designed in weekly instalments, each episode begins with a comprehensive recap of the previous instalment. Consumed sequentially, this becomes a superfluous bore, with several minutes of each story lost in a pointless, Groundhog Day-like reprise. Ironically, episodes conclude with a parodic trivia quiz, in which our heroes are tested on their knowledge of Naruto lore. Comic blunders mischievously suggest that the intimidating sprawl of this fantasy world may have over-extended itself into obscurity. Such an expansive canvas will enthral the cult in-crowd, but its narcissistic tendencies may well baffle new viewers seeking a foothold.
Visually, the austere, functional appearance of characters and backdrops hints at further limitations. Understandably constrained by deadlines and budget, flat textures and recycled backgrounds tether the fantastical in the moribund. Musical themes also suffer from repetitious overuse. Whilst initially effective – particularly a brooding, monastic chant – any ambiance has expired after their umpteenth recycling. The brash, pop-punk theme – ‘You Are My Friend’ – has a similarly ear grating propensity, and will rapidly instil a Pavlovian chapter-skip reflex in the spectator.
Naruto achieves partial redemption through its exotically outrageous action scenes – if and when they finally materialise. Both factions wield unexpected, visually stunning fighting styles which gratify the patient viewer. Summoning the power of ‘Wood Jutsu’, Yamato conjures uncanny clones, and theatrically sculpts timber into weapons. His nemesis, Orochimaru, counters with volleys of bayonet-tongued snakes, and, when injured, has the gruesome ability to shed his skin and ‘re-birth’. The fall-out from this apocalyptic hocus-pocus is equally spectacular – with the battleground reduced to a vast, Tunguska-like crater in the aftermath of Naruto’s nine-tails duelling Orcohimaru. A mysterious splice of sci-fi mysticism, the show concocts a domain in which magic is a tangible force, but co-exists with advanced technology. Despite modernist trappings, it’s a world largely in thrall to the arcane – reflected by its dialogue. When, in the midst of battle, characters pause to utter such risible invocations as “ninja super beast scroll!” it seems very much in keeping with an absurdly whimsical lineage stretching back to Monty Python, and that most lethal of relics, the Holy Hand Grenade.
Naruto is a coming of age tale that quickly grows old - but never matures. No significant milestones are reached within the duration of this set. Indeed, almost half (two hours!) of its running time is spent dawdling at the crevasse introduced in the premier episode. That this particular cycle begins, and anti-climatically halts mid-confrontation cements the impression of a non-linear, circuitous folly. Enlivened by periodic bouts of action, there’s insufficient visual adrenalin to reanimate the show’s cadaverous pace. Naruto’s sluggish lapping offers viewers the experience of driving a grand prix – at 15 miles per hour, lodged in the hay-scented slipstream of a puttering tractor. DJO
Film: The Undercover War
Release date: 3rd January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 97 mins
Director: Nicolas Steil
Starring: Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Marianne Basler, Judith Davis, Arthur Dupont, Pierre Niney
Genre: Drama/War
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Luxembourg/Switzerland
Cinema is motion. Thriving on the kinetic, its action heroes are proactive do-gooders. But what if they’re impotent, incarcerated, or stripped of devious gadgetry? Then they do the right thing. A dark moral vision, The Undercover War frames ghostly non-combatants, dissenters whose resolute inaction is valorous. Eschewing the TNT-stoked inferno of the battleground, the film plays out life-or-death scenarios in banal surrounds. This is a eulogy to kitchen-sink crusaders; little heroes whose small glories are all but invisible to the annals.
Stark title sequence yields to stark opening shot, which lingers over a debris strewn pathway. Complimenting the tone of austerity, a voiceover grimly orients the camera-eye. Luxembourg, WW2. Young men are being drafted by the Nazis. Their options are to serve, betraying their country, or to find sanctuary, whilst eluding detection. Hide and seek – for mortal stakes.
Youthful student Francois has been sent to Germany to study by his industrialist father but, repelled by his university’s abhorrent ideological agenda, quits, returns home and nobly drops out. Fleeing into the cavernous refuge of a deserted mine, he faces indefinite exile as a so-called “réfractaire.”
Confined with paranoid leftists and his local love rival, it quickly becomes apparent that the most pressing threat to his survival may emerge from the enemy within…
Directorial debut of European producer Nicholas Steil, The Undercover War acts as simultaneous commemoration and history lesson. Whilst he claims that the film’s moral position is noncommittal, and “no sides were being taken” during an interview, it’s obvious where his instinctive loyalties lie. Francois – a probable analogue of the director himself – is a naïve, 20-year-old youth who eventually comes of age in the film, maturing from passivity to active resistant. Shunning the legacy of his compromised paterfamilias, Francois’s faith in the cause is transformative. This powerful credo is announced in the first two words of narration: “War. Commitment.”
Luxembourg was a strategically significant, lossless conquest for the Nazis. Comprising just over 300,000 inhabitants, its policy of neutrality and lack of armed forces proved ineffectual talismans against Hitler’s expansionist blitzkrieg. Capitulating in 1940, the nation endured four tortuous years of occupation. Under the Nazi yoke, a policy of ‘Germanification’ was enforced and national identity progressively erased. Berets were banned, and the French language prohibited as Luxembourg became a clone proxy of the Reich. Steil’s account predictably depicts Nazi brutality, but is most disarming when the violence assumes the form of toxic rhetoric, projected across a classroom.
A lecture at Francois’s university evangelises the regime’s blood-curdling, childlike ideology: “Two worlds face each other. The Aryan and the subhuman . . .” Light vs. night, locked in eternal conflict. Refusing to join the approving clamour of his peers, Francois is already marked as a man alone. Ironically, he will shortly become a literal untermensch or ‘under man’ - confined to a stygian cavern. It’s here that Steil’s moral schematics assume a richer ambiguity. Moving beyond the goodies vs. baddies dynamic of the classic war film (and, indeed, of Nazi ideology), darkness breeds dissent amongst the grimy cabal.
Described by Francois as an “empire of the buried,” the mines are a paradoxical sanctuary-prison, which exaggerates tension between the draft dodgers. With large sections of the film’s duration spent underground, the Germans are a primarily unseen menace, but one that feeds a constant fear, amplifying the paranoid intensity of the men. There’s little resemblance to the derring-do of other resistance adventures, such as Melville’s Army Of The Shadows or Verhoeven’s Soldier Of Orange. Whilst both those filmmakers share Steil’s ennobling fatalism, they also embellish their narratives with conventional generic pleasures: detonations, assassinations, and sporadic action. Ironically, these are the very attractions exploitatively promised by The Undercover War’s DVD cover art, yet almost totally absent from the film.
Despite its calculating negation of one cliché, the film ultimately re-enacts another, familiar from the Vietnam War movie – that “Looking back, we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves - and the enemy was within us” (c.f. Platoon). The entombed inmates are beset by physical tics, illness and periodic bouts of violent mania. It’s a hard cradle for fragile egos. Rival communists despise each other, and, owing to his father’s collaborator status, Francois himself is frequently considered suspect, at one point bound and facing imminent execution at the hand of supposed comrades. Exposing the group as an edgy, vacillating entity, Steil also lays bare its class fault-lines, a perspective rare for the genre. Francois is thus considered a double outsider; a bourgeois interloper incarcerated with bolshy, class conscious proles.
Steil’s protagonist ultimately finds redemption through self definition. Whereas films such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon evoke quasi-religious symbolism, The Undercover War’s low-key heroics seem to embody an existentialist attitude. Often considered as a philosophical response to the moral dilemmas of living under constant oppression, its exponents stressed the power of individual will, and the responsibility of exercising it. Whatever the circumstances, there is always a choice. Jean Paul Sartre, in his famous essay La Republique du Silence explains how, in the face of death from the oppressor, every minor act of resistance was at once a triumph and a mortal pledge:
“Because the Nazi venom seeped even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest. Because an all-powerful police tried to force us to hold our tongues, every word took on the value of a declaration of principles. Because we were hunted down, every one of our gestures had the weight of a solemn commitment.”
A sombre endgame, The Undercover War offers no great escapes. Competent, if lacking in formal dazzle, the film’s reverent drama becomes sedate, lulling to a clammy checkmate. Whilst more downbeat than similar narratives, its predictable trajectory detracts from the realism Steil’s restrained direction seeks to evoke. Slaying, and then substituting a new-old mythos, the narrative itself feels imprisoned by the classic grammar of the combat film. Digestion-smoothing viewing for dozily patriotic Sunday afternoons, this is neo-traditional fare which doesn’t delve quite far enough beneath the shadows. DJO
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| Confessions Of A Dog |
Thursday, 16th – Sunday, 19th December 2010
Curated by Midnight Eye alumnus Jasper Sharp, November’s inaugural Zipangu Fest in London offered UK audiences a cinematic smorgasbord of Japanese rarities. Titled after Marco Polo’s romantic noun for the nation, the festival’s catalogue was imbued with pioneer spirit. Electric and eclectic, its programme compiled genres high and low, unveiling jewels of the east to curious occidental eyes. Documentary, exploitation and art house movies – including several premieres – were showcased, with high profile guests and informative Q&A sessions enhancing the atmosphere of proceedings.
As a satellite extension of the event, Bristol’s waterside arts bastion, Arnolfini, screened six films derived from the parent programme. Delivering a warming glimpse of the rising sun to frigid climes, this was a fleeting opportunity to witness obscure fare often denied provincial exposure. Regretfully, the most guiltily generic of the films - self conscious schlockers such as Big Tits Zombie 3D and Mutant Girls Squad – were excluded, narrowing coverage to a respectable nub. Since neither sage Mr Sharp nor his departed emissaries were on hand to provide introduction, the films stood – and fell - on their own merits, sans context…
Children Of The Beehive – Director: Hiroshi Shimizu (1948)
Purportedly a classic, but little known in the west, the festival’s initial title warrants reappraisal. Shimuzu’s post war indie debut is a compassionate, humanist work, touching on some of the moral and social issues Kurosawa explored in his roughly contemporary noir, Stray Dog. A parabolic expression of Japan’s post-war malaise, this stirring road movie documents the efforts of an un-named soldier to usher a gang of street kids towards a better tomorrow.
With an almost complete absence of war guilt or bitterness, Shimizu’s edifying focus is on the immediate present – survival – and the future. The film’s protagonists are constantly on the move; and there’s rarely time for ennui or entropy to set in. A moving document of the epoch, the film is a rare glimpse of Japan sluggishly emerging from the twilight to enter a new dawn of economic ascension. Nobly, its director righteously endorsed his own rhetoric, adopting the orphans that comprise its cast – and proving that personal intervention can make a difference.
Annyong Yumika – Director: Tetsuaki Matsue (2009)
A fanboy’s threnody to a deceased Japanese adult star, Hayashi Yumika, Matsue’s documentary is more of a narcissistic refraction of its participants’ obsessions than a revelation of its elusive subject. Meeting with fans, critics and colleagues, director-cum-narrator discusses Hayashi’s cultural impact and appeal, embarking on a nostalgic road-trip to follow in her high-heeled footsteps. Researching an obscure entry in her canon, Junko – Tokyo Housewife, the director reassembles its cast and crew for one final act of moving homage.
Painfully overlong, this soporific and cringingly contrived effort provides little insight into Hayashi’s life. With a bare-bones introduction to the Japanese pink scene, there’s no perceptive assessment of her status in the industry, nor her motives for entering it. With scant biographical import, we’re left to speculate about Yumika’s rise (or fall) into porn, with an associate’s banal assertion that she was a “free spirit” typifying the film’s startling inanity. One lonely critic serves some lucid metaphysics, discussing the ephemerality of stardom, and Hayashi’s creation as a commercial imago. Most profound is his observation that, as long as she’s watched – her myth endures. But when the final pixel dims – she dies a second time.
Footed Tadpoles – Director: Tomoya Maeno (2009)
The third film from a precociously youthful writer-director, Maeno’s comic coming-of-age yarn was the most generic of the festival’s offerings. A wry no-mance, it’s a familiar tale of boy meets girl. Or boy surveys girl, at least.
Junior high school pupil Toru (played by the director) has a white-hot crush on bespectacled super-swot, Nanae. Sadly, possessing the suavity of a doorstop, he can only yearningly ogle her from afar. Much to his disdain, Toru learns that Nanae will shortly depart for the prefecture’s elite academy, Joto High. A terminal slacker, this revelation spurs our protagonist into action. Persuading his mother to hire a private tutor, he resolves to correct his underachieving bent and, with the help of some nifty dance steps, moonwalk his way into Nanae’s affections.
An engaging, if predictable romp, Maeno’s film is most satisfying when he combines the tender, awkward flushes of first romance with surreal vignettes.
Toru’s camp tutor instigates much of the absurdity, devising a curriculum which will make him a ‘real man’ by mastering some flamboyant boogie. Convinced his aphrodisiac jiggery will woo Nanae, Toru spontaneously busts into an amateurish, Wacko-Jacko routine for her – to crushing indifference. The godlike powers of prance are finally vindicated when an imperilled Toru strips to his underpants and, with a lusty “OW!”, paralyses his foes with some slick pirouettes. Now that’s bad.
Live Tape - Director: Tetsuaki Matsue (2009)
Matsue’s second entry on the programme is an oblique, ingenious concept. Essentially a one-take concert film, its apparent simplicity belies multiple layers of action, as both its star attraction, members of the public and cast seamlessly interweave. So spontaneously verité is the reactive camerawork, it’s nigh on impossible to gauge at what point reality is subtly augmented by effortlessly naturalistic mise en scene.
A devious mesh of art film and music video, this novel effort is perhaps more rewarding as idea than idiom. Inevitably repetitious, star Kenta Maeno’s oeuvre and generic rock star affectations may fail to impress dilettantes, leaving a certain vacuity at the heart of a brilliantly conceived trompe l’oeil. Yet, as its atmospheric finale segues to titles, one is left retrospectively questioning all that they’ve witnessed before. Certainly the most daring movie on the bill, Matsue deserves kudos for this bold, beguiling experiment.
NN-891102 - Director: Go Shibata (1999)
The spectre of the bomb is omnipresent in Japanese popular culture. As implied menace, or explicitly, in Godzilla and anime Barefoot Gen, the nightmare lingers. A modern addition to this fearful canon is Go Shibata’s little heralded NN-891102, a title which connotes the film’s thematic and formal penchant for experiment. Whereas the festival’s earlier post-nuclear entry, Children Of The Beehive, is a primarily corporeal affair, Shibata’s abrasive tour-de-force is an apocalyptic psychodrama, glimpsing the internal reverberations of the bomb. A macabre visual rhapsody, NN-891102 amplifies the ceaseless death-rattle inside one man’s skull.
Like shards of shrapnel, figments of Reichi’s past, present and subconscious collide; transforming the narrative into an ephemeral text comprised of reverie and reminisce.
Using a striking gamut of effects, the film is a sensory tour-de-force, channelling a stream of scarred consciousness. Ravishingly shot, a succession of striking filters – orange, sepia and blue – colour co-ordinate Reichi’s past, accentuating the force of NN-891102’s subjective ellipsis. Bravura editing compliments the director’s visual brilliance, his superb evocation of angst pummelling the viewer in a tsunami of lyrical montage.
Confessions Of A Dog - Director: Gen Takahasi (2005)
Written, directed and edited by indie provocateur Gen Takahashi, Confessions Of A Dog is a searing indictment of police corruption. Billed as a Japanese answer to Serpico, its rhetoric is similar, but the diagnosis: terminal. Sidney Lumet’s classic provides righteous closure, viewing institutionalised graft as a disease to be rooted out. Takahasi’s pessimistic film conceives the entire institution as a monolithic parasite, so inextricably permeating all levels of Japanese society, that the cancer is inviolable. With fatalistic weariness, and only a sliver of triumphalism, this inflammatory epic insists that the biggest yakuza gang of all are the boys in blue.
Offering much intrigue, but little palpable tension throughout its three hour running time, Takahashi’s film is padded with high level connivance that mars its pace. Slowed to a TV-drama torpor, Takeda’s fatalistic collapse assumes the momentum of quicksand. One advantage of this epic, multi-generational range is its depressingly circular trajectory; revealing a new bunch of recruits that succumb to familiar temptations. Regrettably, by the time the film’s combustible finale ignites, this detailed study of the banality of evil has too often consigned itself exclusively to the banal.
Unfortunately, each of the festival’s screenings were sparsely attended, creating a slightly disconcerting vacuum where muttering, sporadic laughter and popcorn rustling should have filled the void. Apparently reserved for a few hardened Japanophiles, this was a tepid response to a bold schedule. Fittingly, the festival served at least one turkey in time for Christmas, but none of its offerings deserved the apathetic welcome they received. At least one of the films – Go Shibata’s edgy, gracefully apocalyptic NN 891102 – approached the realms of the visionary. Cinema such as this is potent enough to concretise nebulous eulogies like ‘visual poetry’. Four people in Bristol now know this.
Meanwhile, across the river, the city’s other alternative cinema – The Watershed – was unrolling a part seasonal programme comprising canonical faves like It’s A Wonderful Life. This was clearly the ‘other cinema’: the different stuff, the far-out stuff, the essence of whatever it is readers of this website hope to experience. Where were you? And what was amiss? Anarchic weather, festive consumerism, poor publicity and erratic content are all culpable. But a post-mortem would be premature. Perhaps running the event earlier, alongside the mother-festival – facilitating occasional guest appearances – might boost its profile next year, eluding the seasonal slowdown. Because this ambitious festival richly deserves a rerun.
Sequels are always inferior to an initial instalment, according to cliché: but hopefully the Zipangu Fest’s second year will defy that maxim. Think Empire Strikes Back rather than Phantom Menace, y’all. DJO
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| Children Of The Beehive |
Series: Soul Eater: Part Four
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 271 mins
Director: Takuya Igarashi
Starring: Chiaki Omigawa, Kouki Uchiyama, Akeno Watanabe, Emiri Katou, Houko Kuwashima
Genre: Anime
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
The Matrix. Bergman, Burton, Dali, Lynch. The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari. X Men. Pokemon. Deposit ingredients into a cartoon cauldron. Stir. Simmer for 51 episodes. Serve with a generous J-pop garnish. Whaddayougot? Soul Eater.
Concluding the series, Part 4 follows a questing band of young bloods from a specialist academy of the arcane: the DWMA.
The Death Meister Weapon Academy – mentored by none other than the reaper himself – tutors the plucky punks, who are divided into fighters – ‘meisters’ – and their partners, who morph into weapons. The curriculum serves fittingly macabre ends. Culling a specified number of souls enhances the weapons, transforming them into a death scythe – traditional armament of their headmaster. Each pupil boasts potent, yet inchoate powers, which must be disciplined until they attain mastery. For their unique abilities may soon be called upon.
Episode 40 depicts a world on the cusp of disaster. Evil witch Arachne plots to amplify the madness of an ancient demon, Asura, submitting the population to his infectious lunacy. Death and the DWMA attempt to intervene, but must also contend with the wiles of Arachne’s devious sister, Medusa.
Hypnotically converting a DWMA tutor, Dr Frank Stein, to her cause, Medusa watches from the sidelines as Arachne and Death’s henchmen enter a grim endgame – poised to conquer the weakened survivors.
Appalled by Death’s apparent pact with the serpentine sorceress, disaffected students Black Star, Death The Kid and Maka threaten to turn against their benefactor. But the bony patriarch has a (cunning) plan and, locating Arachne’s base, press-gangs the malcontents into action. The master’s apprentices offer the last, best hope of salvation, but can they overwhelm the might of Asura, a living god?
Adapted from a hugely successful manga series devised by Atsushi Okubo, Soul Eater is a sprawling opus which exuberantly flaunts its inspiration. Fusing fragments of myth, filmic and literary lore into a rich, dayglo mosaic, this is kleptomaniac post modernism delivered at breathless pace.
Okubo has stated that his primary visual sources are David Lynch and Tim Burton, and it’s the latter’s work that provides the most explicit precedent. Soul Eater’s landscape is a vision of candy-coloured expressionism, summoning the foreboding iconography of Sleepy Hollow, only to repaint it with the garish tint of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Death City (home of the DWMA) is a deranged gothic folly - a skull encrusted fortress bristling with conical towers that would do Jack Skellington proud. With a nod to Magritte, Death’s chamber is surreally vaulted by azure sky, its windows impossibly built into the air itself. Arachne’s lair is equally impressive – a futuristic, cobwebby boudoir cum-Frankenstein’s lab, customised for world domination. Architecture, in this uncanny parallel world, becomes a projection of the self.
Characters are frequently overwhelmed by their mysterious surrounds. Lost in fog shrouded netherworlds, forebodingly gnarled forests, and disoriented by endless corridors, external landscapes bear the imprint of mental trauma. A cracked mirror: for broken minds.
Anarchic and daring, this stylisation is most flamboyant when it enters a totally subjective mode. A succession of unsettling dream sequences brilliantly showcase expressionist technique, Dr Stein’s warped hallucinations and incarceration in a Twin Peaks-esque ‘red room’ notably eerie examples. As he succumbs to Medusa’s evil machinations, Stein’s environs are redrawn, the witch’s control symbolised by an omnipresent arrow motif. Visualising an apparently Freudian, symbolic logic, a lurid nightmare sees him tempted by forbidden fruit, and ending up as the subject of a fatal dissection which will reveal his “true flesh.” Fragmentary glimpses into Asura’s damaged mind – revealing a flickering purgatory of flames and ashen corpses – even seem to glimpse hell itself. But – in line with the offbeat tone – the malevolent gloom is offset by a lysergic palette. Crimson clouds dash overhead, and the screen frequently erupts into iridescent fireworks as its cast engage in spectacular duels.
Ostensibly a fantasy romp, Soul Eater plays fast and loose with the format, abruptly shifting tone as fluidly as its eclectic visual style. Thematics here – establishment vs. anarchy, and necessity of teamwork – are oft trite. Equally, the plot mechanics – comprising separate quests for magical weapons, high level intrigue and spectacular bouts of occult whoop-ass – are unremarkable. Adopting a playfully irreverent disregard for these formalities, Soul Eater frequently goes AWOL on bizarre digressions which jarringly puncture narrative momentum.
Ominous confrontations are dramatically established then undermined, as when Death’s amoral bargaining with Medusa turns into a comic skit about “pumpkin pants.” Characters devolve into super deformed parodies, subverting their brooding with zany absurdity. Despite this, the series maintains a thrilling tempo, masterfully shifting dramatic gears. Plentiful bouts of magical combat punctuate talky scheming, as our battling brats clash with an outrageous gallery of rogues. Lumbering golems, genocidal clown-bots, and a crawling citadel are foes which inventively splice genre motifs into a bizarre magic-mecha fusion.
To placate traditionalists, there’s even an apprentice swordsman, Black Star, whose turbocharged braggadocio culminates in an old school martial showdown with the ronin Mifune. But, even mano-a-mano, there’s always time for cod philosophical discourse. It’s not merely physical supremacy that is asserted – but also an explicit personal code. Black Star’s deadly mastery of the blade is, it seems, pyrrhic, if he wields it angrily, succumbing to the “demon” that lurks within. Needless to say, this is existentialism at the level of The Empire Strikes Back, rather than Sartre.
For all its pyrotechnic razzle-dazzle and glossy irony, Soul Eater is a traditional moral fable, with some alarmingly banal wisdom tucked in the tail. Equally haggard is its knowingly rampant pop-cultural pillage. Little is novel here, but, synthesised with vim and flair, the series makes for a splendidly beguiling jaunt into the beyond. DJO
Film: Shogun Assassin
Release date: 29th November 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 85 mins
Director: Robert Houston
Starring: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Kayo Matsuo, Minoru Oki, Akiji Kobayashi, Shin Kishida
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama
Studio: Eureka!
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Japan/USA
The early-80s. Britain’s video shops are a savage, lawless frontier. Cassettes are exempt from BBFC classification and, unless legally deemed “obscene”, anything goes. Illicit imports such as Mario Bava’s Bay Of Blood (refused release in 1972) are exhumed and unleashed for the first time. A slew of exploitation titles cascade into the marketplace, as distributors ransack back catalogues for product. Mining the exotic, outlandish and sanguinary, outfits like Vipco sought to deliver amoral sleaze to front rooms across the nation. Synthesising this unholy trinity into an intense, borderline surreal concentrate, Shogun Assassin is an exemplar of video nastiness.
Alongside it, nefarious foreign titles such as Possession, Inferno and The Beyond jostled for shelf space, their lurid cover art enticing wide-eyed renters with the promise of deviant thrills a-gogo. It couldn’t last. A self appointed outfit of moral sheriffs – with Mary Whitehouse at their fore – decided to clean up the tide of clamshell-encased filth. Many of the most outrageous titles from this ephemeral boom were withdrawn, denied certification, and cast into exile. But their repression was pyrrhic - since being classified as likely to “corrupt or deprave” was always going to imbue them with malign cool. Thus, a subgenre of forbidden cinema was defined; and, rather than slip disgracefully back into obscurity, the elusiveness of the movies enhanced their aura. And so the repute of Shogun Assassin was born.
Adapted from famed manga serial Lone Wolf and Cub, the film traces the bloodstained flight of the shogun’s decapitator and his infant son, Daigoro.
Wary of his martial prestige, the slightly loopy overlord commands his ninja minions to execute the executioner. And fails. Finding his wife slain, Lone Wolf vows that the perps “will pay. . . with rivers of blood!”
Exile from empire, the disgraced samurai realises that vengeance may be incompatible with single parenthood. Finding his young son unscathed, he places two symbolic props before him, and compels Daigoro to make a choice. Either from intuition or instinct, the barely crawling babe must decide to “choose the sword and join me...or choose the ball and join your mother.” Drawn to the gleaming blade, he lives - and sets off on the road to hell with his father…
Capitalising on James Clavell’s namesake novel, Shogun, the movie dubs and merges two Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub films from the early-70s. Conceived by Japanese culture fiends Robert Houston and David Weisman, the visceral reversioning showcases kick-ass aesthetics whilst effacing cultural differences. In a bold change, Daigoro acts as narrator, providing a humanising counterpoint to the bloodshed with his cutesy expository. Eschewing the original soundtrack, a contemporary minimal synth score is installed. Think John Carpenter channelling orientalist cliché, circa Halloween. As producer Weisman states, “We took out all the material that had generically Japanese historical stuff…and just pared it down to ‘Conan the Barbarian walks the earth.’”
The result: streamlined, relentless spectacle. Diluting context and pruning plot, the recuts inevitably compromise texture. American accented voiceovers – hailing from the venerable “you killed my master!” school of dubbing – consolidate this crude absorption. Like a chicken teriyaki sub, Shogun Assassin envelops the exotic within a palatably occidental framework.
An all-action emphasis radically affects the pacing of the film, which often feels stuttering and episodic. Structurally, Lone Wolf’s quest resembles a side-scrolling hack-em-up video game of yore. Walk. Stop. Kill. Walk (continue for 82 minutes, then roll credits). A succession of baroque and brutal vignettes, the film’s gory flamboyance is its fundamental attraction – and greatest liability.
Shogun Assassin never quite entered the BBFC’s banned list, but, in the fervour of the era, copies were seized and its distributors (unsuccessfully) prosecuted. So – just how nasty is this nasty-by-association? Superlatively billed as “the greatest team in mass slaughter!” during its trailer, the film’s protagonists are murderously prolific. Resembling the grotesquerie of ukiyo-e prints, Lone Wolf’s lethal grace is formalised with morbid reverence. Rotating around him - cynosure of a Danse Macabre (Dance of Death) - foes are inventively decapitated, severed and maimed. Blood assumes the pallor of poster paint. A katana sword is the brush with which he executes frenzied, splattered tableaux; the Jackson Pollock of snuff. Crimson eruptions gush, geyser and spurt with pornographic vigour, as hordes of opponents succumb to the sword.
Ironically, the movie’s visual style evidences an east-west fusion far before any swingeing American edits were inflicted. Original helmer Kenji Misumi’s framing is clearly indebted to Sergio Leone – who, of course, ‘borrowed’ liberally from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Misumi shoots in ultra-widescreen 2:35-1 ratio, frequently alternating between expansive long shots and extreme close-ups. Punctuating combat with instants of bucolic lyricism – swaying grass, scenic waterfalls – Misumi’s action choreography recreates Leone’s famously tense pauses. Stillness, serenity. Then slaughter.
With dialogue pared to a minimum, intimate portraits of his characters’ grimy, haggard faces communicate their emotions. Sharing the spaghetti western’s obsession with gadgetry, Daigoro’s pram becomes a wheeled arsenal, and ingenious ninjas wield a variety of disguised weapons (including daggers concealed in giant daikon carrots!). Like Eastwood’s ‘bounty killer’, Lone Wolf is an ignoble mercenary in a world bereft of honour, who oft plays dirty. Unexpectedly throwing his sword at an opponent in an unthinkable breach of samurai etiquette, archaic codes are clearly redundant for this man become demon. Morality is a luxury. Ultimately, only survival matters. Bestial, lupine logic prevails.
If unlikely to “deprave or corrupt” – as all good video nasties ought - Shogun Assassin may be charged with perverting its sources. No critique can besmirch its cult credibility, but Robert Houston’s (commercially imperative) re-write wreaks havoc with the integrity of the original works. Nonetheless, expedient butchery renders this an often jaw-dropping, incessant action extravaganza. Who needs formalities like character development when you’re mere minutes from the next bout of artful carnage? A vital grindhouse artefact, Shogun Assassin will irk those in search of coherence, but should more than appease audiences receptive to the glory of the gory. DJO
Film: Barfuss
Release date: 13th October 2005
Certificate: 15
Running time: 118 mins
Director: Til Schweiger
Starring: Til Schweiger, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Tiller, Michael Mendl, Steffen Wink
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Studio: Touchstone
Format: DVD
Country: Germany
“All you need is love.” opined the Beatles with tuneful utopianism. Sadly, where the rom-com is concerned, that’s not quite enough for cinemagoers; who expect their heartstrings to be tactically tugged, a generous dose of mirth, and a palatable serving of sweet and sour sentiment before reaching an amorous payoff. German actor-director Til Schweiger (recognisable to English audiences as Sergeant Stiglitz from Inglorious Basterds) stars in and helms this 2005 effort, casting himself as half of a decidedly odd couple. Schweiger’s often blackly comic tale accents a typically saccharine format with despair, as his derelict romantics brave depression and stuffy orthodoxy.
Hard drinkin’ womanisin’ ne’r do well Nick Keller – repeatedly dismissed for his anti-authoritarian quirks – is desperate for a job. So desperate that he’ll do anything for an honest Euro, and eagerly accepts a new assignment.
Arriving for his first day dressed to the nines, Nick’s determined to make good – but is aghast to learn that he’s a floor-scrubbing dogsbody, mopping the wards at a mental hospital.
With auto-destructive flair, he quickly arouses the boss’s ire and is sacked – but not before earning a measure of redemption. Voyeuristically espying a patient attempting suicide, he chivalrously intervenes, saving her. This quirky damsel, Leila, forms an unlikely bond with her slacker prince and, with naïf guile, escapes from the hospital, stalking her crush home. Stupefied, Keller threatens to turn her in. But Leila cannily plays the ace of all guilt cards, threatening suicide – forcing Nick to grudgingly offer her sanctuary on his sofa.
The mismatched pair kindle an unlikely (yet eminently predictable) affection, as Keller uses Leila as a pretend girlfriend to impress his affluent parents. His brother is due to get married, at a ceremony which his folks – in chilling corporate-speak – characterise as a “merger.” Nick’s presence is mandatory.
Setting out on a trans-Germanic road trip, fact and fantasy begin to blur as awkward rapport yields to tenderness. But, with the authorities in hot pursuit, no money and a buffet-full of fusty bourgeois obstructing their happiness – bliss is far from assured for these outlaws of lurve…
From the moment our two beauteous protagonists are introduced, it’s evident that the two are fated to intertwine. Both are unfeasibly attractive; adorably moulded, as only silver screen dropouts are. Beautiful losers. Her: sullen, kooky cutie confined to a mental hospital. Him: chiselled, middle class black sheep on the slide. As the narrative intercuts between them and a tepid, MOR instrumental jangles from the soundtrack, the trajectory of the film is preordained. Déjà vu instantaneously ensues.
Barfuss (translated as Barefoot) has been construed as a fable, or fairytale by some; but this merely disguises its innate conservatism. If it possesses any ‘mythic’ resonance, this derives from its slavish adherence to a succession of flaccid Hollywood tropes. The film is certainly accessible; but what may be considered ‘universalism’, from an Anglocentric perspective, merely reflects its similarity to mainstream US product. Dialect aside, there is little here which appears exotic, modernist or distinct. It’s all discomfortingly familiar – a Germanic cultural ventriloquism that just about gratifies our cinema-schooled expectations. The antagonising forces, like the heroes, bear the hallmarks of faded melodrama. Love must combat those timeless, implacable foes: money, authority, outrageous circumstance, patriarchy and tradition.
Despite a smattering of darkly comic wit, gags are often inane, and frequently repetitious. An early scene – in which Leila is mistaken for a prostitute and asked to gratify a leering punter – is an unsettlingly risqué, cruel extension of the ‘fish out of water’ conceit. The tone rapidly brightens thereafter, however, as narrative shifts gear into road-movie mode. Leila’s social ineptitude primes a comedy of errors that simultaneously humiliates Keller, and comically emphasises her outsider status. Watch as Leila walks into the men’s toilet; fumbles with her fork; tells Nick’s stepdad he thinks he’s an old fart, etc. These successive faux pas elicit an embarrassing pathos, as she blunders, childlike, through bourgeois mores. Regrettably, they often feel like a cheap contrivance – frequently provoked by Nick abandoning his charge, with the request that she “stay put for a minute.” She never does.
The film’s cursory rendering of institutional captivity provides a sombre backdrop to Leila’s fragile, photogenic solipsism; but little more. Dido’s presence on the soundtrack consolidates this mood; a maudlin, unrequited melancholy. Predictably, Leila’s former symptoms diminish as her malaise is transferred to a near fatal case of love sickness. Whilst spirited and not without intuitive guile, salvation is thus placed beyond her control. ‘Love’ disenfranchises Leila, rendering the character increasingly dependent on her reformed lothario. Though rewarded with optimism and confidence, she is later diminished to a blubbing, fatalistic damsel awaiting deliverance. Preferable to suicide; but hardly a feminist role model. Love may be the ultimate placebo, but it can only be administered by our hero, Nick the hesitant.
One notable aspect in which the film eschews convention is an almost total absence of...well, the rom in the com. Our characters never kiss; their love is discussed, but the concept never consummated. This curiously chaste, abstract idyll is necessary to prevent tarnishing Nick. Though his stud status is inferred from the outset, Nick’s affection towards Leila is often paternal. An ambiguous romancer-guardian, and clearly the authoritative partner, he acts in a playful, platonic manner, but never interacts with Leila erotically. She, too, is denied a sexual identity – thus assuming an almost childlike unknowing Nick never threatens to rupture. Schweiger plays safe in avoiding the messy complexities this might elicit; instead turning his romance into a perversely pure tale of self denying devotion.
Leila’s habit of walking barefoot (hence the film’s title) can be considered as a crude metaphor for her refusal of constraint and convention. Paradoxically, the movie is overly encumbered by a set of generic binds that warp its early promise. Though it takes superficial pops at profiteering, corporate fat-cats, Barfuss’ bland pleasures embody the machinations of those myopic suits it purports to satirise. Sadly, the results are anodyne and frustratingly tame. Endurable in-flight entertainment. Just. DJO
Series: Moribito: Guardian Of The Spirit - Part 2
Release date: 4th October 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 150 mins
Director: Kenji Kamiyama
Starring: Mabuki Andou, Naoto Adachi, Kouji Tsujitani, Ako Mayama, Rintarou Nishi
Genre: Anime
Studio: MVM
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Something of a multimedia phenomenon in its native Japan, the Moribito (“guardian”) series is a sprawling, ten novel saga which has proliferated in other formats, notably radio, manga and TV. Conceived by author Nahoko Uehashi, the fantasy franchise recounts the derring-do of warriors, wizards and kings in the mystical kingdom of Yogo. This anime adaptation of the premier instalment in the series introduces the epic’s key players, translating the novel into a meaty twenty-seven episodes. MVM’s second 2DVD set contains the latter thirteen chapters - allowing fans left on tenterhooks midway through the series to conclude this engrossing yarn. Comprehensively visualising a mythic world of yore, Moriboto is an anachronistic fable that powerfully resonates with the present – and into the future.
Resuming where episode thirteen, ‘Neither Human Nor Tiger’, halted, we find our motley band of heroes in flight from the imperial army.
Heir to the Shin Yogo throne, Prince Chagum has been mysteriously possessed by the spirit of an ancient water demon, the Nyung Rochanga. Fearing the reincarnation of this mysterious beast, the emperor orders his liquidation. But before the assassination occurs, Chagum’s mother, the empress, intervenes, enabling his escape. Balsa, a lethally proficient female bodyguard – a yojimbo – is enlisted as his mother-protector, pledging to save the young prince.
Banding together with mystic weaver Mistress Torogai and her apprentice, Tanda, this quirky duo must evade the emperor’s minions, whilst divining the truth behind Chagum’s affliction.
As episode fourteen commences, a palace scholar, Shuga, begins an illicit probe into the official archives. To his horror, he learns that the nation’s founding myth – the slaying of a Nyung Rochanga by its founding monarch – is a lie. The fabled monster is actually a sacred water spirit; integral to the well-being of the land. Realising that the prince’s curse may be an obscure blessing, he investigates his assumed demise – ultimately proving that Chagum lives. Aided by the king’s elite guard, Shuga is promptly dispatched with orders to scour the kingdom and return with the youthful aristocrat – and kill his would-be benefactors if necessary…
Director Kenji Kamiyama’s ability to skilfully develop a chimerical premise is convincing. An anime veteran who scripted the much admired Blood: The Last Vampire before graduating to direct cyberpunk opus Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex for television, his restrained, conventional style comfortably embeds the phantastic in a familiar framework.
Easily intelligible, Kamiyama’s two-strand narrative mainly intercuts between pursuers and pursued - rarely extending beyond these nuclei. There’s little technical flamboyance on show, though later incidents where Chagum drifts between two dimensions are pleasingly surreal, composed with uncanny juxtaposition. Action scenes, when they do materialise, are tense and (perhaps due to their rarity) thrilling, particularly a climactic battle against the egg-eating hordes of Rarunga. Such spectacular intermissions are, however, secondary to the inexorable momentum of the plot. Thus relegated, visual flair becomes secondary to strong characterisation – which is where the series truly excels.
This is a powerful ensemble piece, significantly enhanced by its expressive voice cast. Cohering around the possessed Chagum, alpha female Balsa and demure partner Tanda are the ‘parents’ in an improvised, skewed nuclear family. As the series progresses, their backgrounds and convictions are incrementally revealed – resulting in a moving finale. Tanda’s love for Balsa, her soul saving conviction, and Chagum’s rendezvous with destiny are deftly interwoven, retaining a crucially humanistic emphasis amidst a beguiling backdrop of magic and intrigue.
Moriboto’s world is elemental: split between the trinity of fire, earth and water. But, behind this atavistic conceit lurk contemporary concerns which imbue it with modern relevance. Conflicts between duty and desire. and the erosion of cultural traditions are but two of several quintessentially Japanese topics explored. Infused with more than a hint of the nostalgic remorse that is a leitmotif in the works of Studio Ghibli, the series also offers a pensive mediation on man and his relationship with the environment.
Nhaji birds, regrets Torogai, have become much rarer since civilization started “working steel.” Even in its pre-industrial epoch, Moribito’s characters are conscious of environmental decay; a sentiment particularly profound in a Japanese context. Transcending feudalism, industrialising and entering the hi-tech vanguard within a mere 150 years, Japan’s dizzying evolution has irrevocably changed its cultural and material landscape. In Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, the ecology is sustained by a fragile equilibrium between man, nature and the spirit world. Kamiyama’s cosmos is similarly governed by a delicate balance of forces, which man, in his myopic ignorance, imperils. For all their knowledge and expertise, it is clear that his characters are subject to larger forces – environmental and magical – which they cannot comprehend. There is clearly an underlying system, a prophecy and pattern, to its divine machinations – but this remains elusive. Even the most erudite of our protagonists, Torogai and Shuga, are privy to only fragments of the puzzle.
The solution, it seems, may be buried in our past. In a subtle critique of cultural imperialism, the true nature of the water spirit is divulged through the lore of the Yakoo, a people whose traditions are in a terminal state of decay, supplanted by official history. Excavating lost archives, star reader Shuga discovers the orthodox legend to be a cynical manipulation. It is only through archaeology, and the hidden wisdom of folklore, that vital knowledge is gleaned, and redemption delivered. Cultural heterogeneity is vital if we are truly to know – and perhaps redeem – ourselves.
Moriboto is a meticulously paced epic that creeps up on the viewer before enwrapping them in its boa-like grip. Eschewing tawdry cliff hangers, Kenji Kamiyama’s rock-solid direction and moving characterisation ultimately proves compelling. A classical, linear narrative shrewdly counterpoints the exotic backdrop of Shin Yogo – an understatement that renders this touching parable all the more tangible. Whilst lacking the bravura style of visceral classics such as Ninja Scroll, the instantly likeable cast of spirit-guardians rouse an affection that amply compensates. Heroically tackling big – some might suggest timeless - themes, this stimulating, accessible package should enthral die-hards and dilettantes alike. DJO
Film: Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Carlos Aured
Starring: Paul Naschy, Diana Lorys, Eduardo Calvo, Eva León, Inés Morales
Genre: Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Country: Spain
Region 1 release.
The elements that become conventions that become clichés that comprise a genre – we often reduce a film to these fundaments, and file. Guns and horses = western. Reptilian titans gnawing on Tokyo = kaiju. Arnold Schwarzenegger mowing down hordes of haplessly moustached baddies in Commando = comedy. Well... In the case of the giallo, iconography, narrative and formal verve are distilled into a potent, frequently befuddling murder maze. An Italian thoroughbred, the form typically unfolds in a domestic, urban milieu; grubby Milanese alleyways, moonlit palazzos, glinting cathedrals of modernism. Here, then, is a kitsch anomaly that bucks this norm. Whilst aesthetically it seems to be talkin’ Italian, Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll is an entirely Spanish production. Can the stalk-and-slash mythos survive retranslation? Or has director Carlos Aured committed the most heinous crime of all – genre murder: with intent to bore?
Our tale begins as drifter Gilles (horror polymath Paul Naschy – also co-author of the screenplay) fails to thumb a ride out of barren, purgatorial Spanish plains. One despairing montage later, and his luck changes - for the worse.
Dropped in a minor town, the itinerant stranger is rebuffed by glacially indifferent locals and decides to move on. But fate intervenes in the form of an enigmatic benefactor, Claude, who delivers him to her ancestral mansion, and promptly contracts him as its caretaker.
Beneath this grand façade bubbles a cocktail of neuroses; for this is the unhappiest of families: a warped trinity of three sisters. Claude, maimed in a vague ‘accident’, wields a prosthetic hand; a deformity she considers abhorrent. Sex-kitten sibling Nicole is isolated and stifled, and hits on men with perverse abandon. Eldest sister Yvette is wheelchair bound, paralysed by psycho-somatic trauma. Into this dysfunctional haven swaggers our hero apparent – a man, it transpires, with his own soul-gnawing burden. And when a black-gloved assassin begins to slay beautiful blondes – before ritualistically extracting their eyeballs – he’s quickly dropped into the frame as prime suspect. Of course, in patented giallo style, all is not quite as it seems.
So whodunnit? And why? The clue’s in the title; but it’ll take you ninety-odd minutes of chills and sanguine spills to unravel the psychotic conundrum. Thankfully, it’s an entertaining jaunt…
Initially, the film plays like a campy re-imagining of Don Siegel’s The Beguiled. Muscular Gilles (often stripped to the waist) is the singular male at the house, and quickly becomes embroiled in a tug of lust between Nicole and Claude. Reaching the twenty-minute mark, a kinky couplet of sex scenes begins to evaporate the aura of intrigue. You’ll likely reach for the DVD case at this instant, to verify that this isn’t actually “Confessions Of A Spanish Caretaker”. But persevere. This sizzling sub-plot only occupies the first third of the movie and, amidst covert trysts and cow-milking interludes, introduces us to the malaise of the cast.
Aured underscores the fleshy melodrama with a subtle undercurrent of menace, incorporating haunted house clichés to sustain the eerie ambiance. As night falls, ominous smudges of cloud envelop the house in gloom, and deafening thunder-cracks voice the muted loathing of its occupants. In accordance with murder mystery convention, each character is exposed as damaged or duplicitous, and harbours an esoteric mystery - is suspiciously evasive about their past/uses a double identity/experiences shoestring expressionist nightmares.
Added to this cauldron of despair is an unhealthy dollop of classic Freudian angst, expounded by a bearded shrink who diagnoses the girls as mentally “sick.” The miasma of decay is palpable. Thus, when the corpses begin to stack up, we’re acutely aware of the underlying corruption that rots away at the habitants of the house; each appears a feasible suspect. It’s the task of the (characteristically ineffectual) town cop to hunt him down – but not before a succession of set-piece slayings have satiated the audience.
Impeccably stylish executions are an integral part of the genre, and these are realised with some skill here. Scenic locations are atmospherically lit on night-time shoots; transformed into angular vistas of light choked and dissected by vectors of shadow. Skittish victims are nimbly trailed by the prowling camera, as an ominous soundtrack primes us for an imminent coup de main.
Composer Juan Carlos Calderón’s mischievous score is a splendid accompaniment to this exploito-aesthetic - efficiently careering twixt muzak (seductively undulating bass, teasing flute) and sombre discord. Like a sick mash-up of Herb Alpert and Goblin, his themes commence as jaunty lounge ditties, only to morph into malign, mellotron accented dirges that echo the progressive rock so vital to Italian film hits like Suspiria. Another unsettling trick – perhaps borrowed from Argento’s Profondo Rosso – is the subversion of a nursery-time melody, which becomes synonymous with the killer. French standard Frère Jaques provides this deathly lullaby, unsettlingly juxtaposing childhood innocence with murderous degeneration.
Colour is dexterously woven into these sadistic tableaux. Red is subtly employed as a foreboding motif; wine, pig’s blood and a scarlet mac are all associated with victims before their demise. Gore is sparingly rationed, but brutally served - lacing the fromage with effective shocks. A grisly throat slitting and flamboyant rake murder (blood spurting across the frame) are grand guignol intervals which thrillingly punctuate the procedural bumbling of the authorities, proving Aured a canny orchestrator of horror theatrics.
Pioneered by gore auteurs Mario Bava and Dario Argento, the giallo is often considered a uniquely Italian confection, but this able Spanish effort proves that the genre is sufficiently robust to withstand relocation. Pulpy, crowd pleasing fare, the film offers a cornucopia of trashy pleasures. Failing to supersede the malign artistry of its antecedents, Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll is nonetheless too well constructed to callously dismiss. Best served with a generous garnish of irony, this accomplished pastiche should prove a treat for giallo fans, and those keen to explore the seamier side of Spanish genre cinema. DJO
Film: Revolver
Running time: 111 mins
Director: Sergio Sollima
Starring: Oliver Reed, Fabio Testi, Paola Pitagora, Agostina Belli, Frédéric de Pasquale
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Country: Italy/France/West Germany
Region 1 release.
A labyrinth of gritty intrigue, Sergio Sollima’s Euro crime opus Revolver is an often beguiling synergy of tough-guy tropes. Italian genre star Fabio Testi is paired with British icon Oliver Reed in this pessimistic ‘70s thriller which imbues the form with a characteristically Italian élan. Loyalties are tested and torn out on the mean streets, where the last and loudest word is a silenced bullet – but will our heroes live long enough to find out why?
An elegiac prologue sees thief Milo (Italian hunk Testi) tenderly burying his mortally wounded accomplice, as Ennio Morricone’s lugubrious title theme heralds the dawn. Anticipation of a doomed underworld bromance is punctured by the next scene, however, which ditches sentiment for calculating brutality. A politician is brutally slain in a choreographed daylight hit; a genre shift that dumps us on the shadowy, blood-stained boulevards of the political thriller. The last part of this head-scratching triptych unfolds when Oliver Reed’s bad-ass prison governor, Vito, returns home to find his wife missing – and a mysterious voice on the end of the phone demanding the release of Milo (now ensconced in Vito’s gaol) – or else.
Reluctantly going rogue, cop springs criminal, intent on apprehending the blackmailers. But events spiral out of control in a way neither man could have foreseen – and they must forge an uneasy alliance to untangle a murderous conspiracy which threatens to devour them both . . .
An oblique and unusual entry in the early-70s Italian poliziotteschi (crime thriller) cycle, Revolver (1973) is an intriguing melange of classic crime motifs, enlivened by some good ol’ fashioned buddy/baddy bonding, and a malign helter-skelter of plot twists. Whilst it lacks the relentless action and explosive denouement many fans may demand, this stylish, thoughtful work crafts empathetic characters and culminates in a resonant payoff far more effective than the dispatch Godfather: roll credits approach typified by much of the competition. And! It also includes a cameo role by an Italian pop icon wielding surely the most outrageously virile moniker in cop movie history: Daniel Beretta!
Oliver Reed’s alternately anguished/brutal performance here recalls a similar role in the superb and little heralded British thriller Sitting Target. A bullish, imposing physical presence and quasi-fascistic approach to law enforcement (and his frequent threats to “rip your f**kin’ guts out!”) are tempered by moments of pained introversion and – in a harrowing climax – moral turbulence, as Ollie’s true creed is revealed. There’s certainly a lot more going on here than a gratuitous Dirty Harry facsimile, though Reed’s interrogation techniques seem to frequently result in his charges “falling down the stairs.” Sollima competently moulds (or should that be restrains?) this exuberant lead performance, pulling off a dexterous balancing act which ensures the relationship between his two stars remains at the core of the movie – even when the complexities of the plot become near baffling.
Sollima’s rich script explores reversals of status between his leads, a classic theme which bears similarities to his earlier spaghetti westerns, which use mis-matched doubles to explore the complexities of human ‘nature’. In The Big Gundown and Face To Face, the anticipated moral polarities of ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ are undermined. Here, the criminal gains tragic nobility, whilst our hero is ultimately rendered impotent through chilling pragmatism. Reed is even lobbed into jail at one point; his raving accusations blithely dismissed by the authorities. At the outset of the film, Reed coldly subdues a ‘crazy’ inmate, and it’s a frighteningly effective parallel – ‘sanity’ is clearly arbitrated by those in power. And who’s to watch those watchmen?
Us. But are you going to stand up and be counted? Revolver scathingly depicts murder as a tool of authority, a bureaucratic adjustment: a blameless act of self-defence. As a cog in the almighty System, it’s this profound realisation – the crumbling edifice he’s shoring up is a murderous sham – that gives Vito’s character another degree of pathos, as his hubristic righteousness implodes. It’s where he ultimately stands – in what is revealed as practically a neo-fascist state – that precipitates the ultimate moral dilemma of the film, and also provides an unexpectedly sombre slant to proceedings
Morricone’s sumptuous score also deserves plaudits. Married to image, it proves irresistibly moving. The mournful central theme potently amplifies the downbeat mood, and other incidentals deftly shift in tone and style to counterpoint action and intrigue. Where necessary, the sonic aesthetics get innovatively down and dirty, unleashing discordant, oscillating eddies of music concrete and lacerating riffs of fuzz guitar. Revolver offers excellent examples of the composer’s dynamic scoring of (to paraphrase the title of a fine compilation) crime with dissonance.
The film does include a few forgivable inconsistencies, however. Reed’s peculiar dub is perhaps the most glaring. Voicing the role with an American accent that seems dramatically inexplicable: this seems motivated purely by commercial considerations. Another glaring incongruity is the actual weapon brandished by Vito throughout the movie. A stylish silhouette of this is prominent in the trailer, and it’s, well, a magazine loaded piece: certainly not the firearm one might expect, given context. What gives? Did someone consider ‘pistol’ to be a less enticingly exploitative title? Well, this relates to a key line of dialogue in the film; one which candidly underlines its savage expose of realpolitik: “Society has many ways of protecting itself. Red tape…prison bars…and the revolver.”
Low expectations of cops, robbers and a de rigeur chase scene with Fiats were rewardingly surpassed by this spaghetti flavoured shoot ‘em up. In its good ol’ fashioned emphasis on human drama, coupled with bracingly gloomy cynicism, Revolver is an ambitious and gripping film that ultimately transcends the clichés of its genre. If you enjoy stylish, intriguing fare such as The Conformist and Investigation Of A Citizen Under Suspicion, but prefer a little more pulp in your fiction, you’ll dig this! DJO
