Film: Fish Story
Release date: 26th July 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 112 mins
Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura
Starring: Atsushi Ito, Kengo Kora, Mikako Tabe, Gaku Hamada, Mirai Moriyama
Genre: Comedy
Studio: Third Window
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Based on a novel by Isaka Kotaro, Fish story is a film that’s divided into several specific time periods, following the lives of various individuals whose actions are interwoven through the years, seemingly unconnected.
The film opens in the year 2012 in a deserted city that will soon be hit by a very large comet, which we see looming in the sky above. Here we find a lone stranger riding the empty streets on his mobility scooter (although he can walk easily), knocking bicycles over along the way, and generally coming across as very odd – and seemingly the only man left.
He happens across a music store which, much to his bafflement is open and running for business as usual. He walks in, curious about what he might find, and inside are two of its employees who seem completely unconcerned by the city’s impending disaster - laughing and joking as if it were just another ordinary day.
As the stranger attempts to shock them with a dose of Armageddon like reality, the store owner plays a punk song entitled ‘Fish Story’ by The Gekerin, and proclaims it to be “the song that will save the earth.”
Events then jump to the year 1975, where an unknown band called The Gekerin are recoding their final track ‘Fish Story’ before they part company - Japan is apparently not a fan of the band that seems way ahead of its time. Their final song, however, may prove to have profound effects on future events that affect the entire world...
The story continues to jump timelines, introducing us to new characters and new stories, each one as odd as the last. Mixing genres such as comedy, drama, sci-fi and even martial arts, it’s hard to place Fish Story into a specific category. It’s refuses to cater for the conventional masses, and echoes the works of director Richard Kelly.
The acting performances throughout are fine, with Nao Omori particularly impressing as ‘Vibrator’. If there is a weak link, it is Mikako Tabe in a smaller role (she mostly cries, unconvincingly). Atsushi and Kengo are strong as the Vicious and Rotten of Japan, and though clearly not rock stars, they're convincing enough to carry their share of the film, and impress when singing the film’s title song - a fantastically hummable tune that will swim around in your mind.
Director Yoshihiro Nakamura crafts some expertly handled and atmospheric moments. The opening alone is eerily effective, with its empty streets and the looming meteor threatening global destruction. He also manages to create a well executed fight scene in the latter half, as some impressive martial arts action momentarily gets the pulse going again.
The film has a bright, shiny color palette with unfussy camera movements that doesn't distract from the complicated story, a wise move under the circumstances - to say the time manipulations are jarring is an understatement (there are five distinct eras where the action unfolds).
If the story sounds baffling, then rest assured that the final ten minutes does succeed in making sense of it all, condensing the timeline into one comprehensive chain of events. However, the journey to this point is often so perplexing, and often at a snail’s pace, that you may not care. The film places all its aces on the conclusion, but forgets to make the journey an entertaining one, rendering the conclusion superfluous.
Nakamura has created an intricate tale but it’s almost two hour running time is all a bit of a drag. You yearn for something plausible to happen, something that will make sense of the events you’ve just witnessed. It’s all a bit too uninvolving and, unfortunately, it doesn’t gel as a whole. Long segments of the film are verging on boring, with its mix of genres making you feel like you’re watching a medley of different films all edited together to create a confusing whole.
Coming across as a sort of High Fidelty meets Donnie Darko, Fish Story is an admirable oddity that sadly lacks any emotional involvement, and becomes a patience tester that only fans who like their films heavy on the unconventional side will appreciate. GY
