Anti-Clock (1979)

From https://mattystanfield.files.wordpress.com
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Directors: Jane Arden and Jack Bond

Screenplay: Jane Arden

Cast: Sebastian Saville (as Joseph Sapha / Professor J.D. Zanof); Suzan Cameron (as Alanda Clark, Sapha's Mother); Liz Saville (as Sapha's Sister); Louise Temple (as Madame Luisa Aranovitch)

Synopsis: Joseph Sapha (Saville) is a gambler, stage psychic for nightclubs and a former criminal who can see ahead in time but cannot access his own memories. He becomes part of an experiment led by Dr. Zanof (also played by Saville) to correct this, this avant-garde sci-fi work delving into Sapha's and others minds.

Anti-Clock is a film that requires one viewing to see it for the first time, a second to even begin linking the dots together to understand it. Unfortunately this type of film is doomed to accusations of pretention when viewers demand the first viewing to be the most rewarding, something I once fell afoul of when I first saw it years ago. Unfortunately the nature of mainstream cinema viewing is that it requires the first viewing to be sufficient when in reality some of the most rewarding films for me, even cult movies, have required more than one viewing for them to have weight to them. This type of film goes against A-to-B plot structures as well, another taboo if it is broken when it's deemed law to keep a film in a simplistic and repetitive plot structure even for drama.  Something like Anti-Clock now appeals for me because it forces me out of my comfort zone, and what's surprising is that while the structure challenges me the plot is crystal clear and predates the type of genre cinema of the eighties - a man able to exist out of time, in the realm of the "anti-clock" of the title, but with a troubled past made worse by the fact his gift may be responsible for him being unable to access his memories alongside the existing repression.

From https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/408237306_1280x940.jpg

You'll need multiple viewings to get a greater context of what takes place in Anti-Clock, particularly for its technical dialogue that reflects the type of science and paranormal obsessions of the era the film has. However when this hurdle is past, it can be argued that Anti-Clock is the encapsulation of a post-punk sci-fi film at its most coolest. In tone it's like a later, experimental Jean-Luc Godard work especially when  he started using video. Beginning with a television being filmed, the footage on it a tapestry of archival footage of politics and war, the film is as much a sound and audio collage that reflects the environment which its central story is part of, making it a sci-fi work that taps into the mood of the era.  Memories interchange by way of two television screens continually being placed together on screen multiple times like a split screen in someone's mind. Characters are depicted both in front of the camera and on television, predating the material Videodrome (1983) would depict of people being altered by television media, and while this is an experimental film which firmly stays in realism baring its premise, the same notion of the TV being the mind's eye is prevalent here. For Sapha, his life can be depicted in a monochrome haze of a reverse negative image, be in colour,  be mocked reconstructions or halted on a fly or be repeated. In Zanof's conference/experiment, the world is a blue lit hued and claustrophobic space where the most intimate thoughts are on full display.

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In-between this structure scenes stick out which eventually start to connect and paint a portrait of its lead character in more detail: a poker game where Sasha sees the fate of an older player who is losing the game; a comedy performance between him and a woman which ends up biting at gender roles and sexism through slapstick facial mannerism; a flashback near the end of the film at his father's funeral with a bitterness towards his mother; and much more. Anti-Clock does build up a compelling dramatic story alongside its political digressions where Zanof's monologues about perspective of others is voiced in front of clips of baboons or images of nuclear testing explosions, monologues which end up connecting to the personal story in terms of the themes behind Sasha's narrative. The political discussion now have the vibe of depicting a time point at the cusp of the eighties, where the problems of the seventies in Britain such as economic downturn meet what would happen in the eighties as Cold War paranoia would grow again. The post-punk vibe mentioned can be felt in terms of a "coolness" to the tone, still very serious but with an aesthetic richness which feels distant and would be digested into more commercial films in terms of colour, the use of video and the themes.

Technical Detail:

The combination of various forms of media meant that Anti-Clock took considerable time of editing into its final form, only subsequently changed with an alternative cut in 2005 from Jack Bond that makes the narrative more straightforward. The structure of archive footage, staged scenes and caught footage of reality (especially of the city streets and interiors of the time) meld together with real aplomb, give meaning through the continuous narrative. The music as well, some composed and sung by Jane Arden, adds to this but also at times evokes the Howard Shore score for David Cronenberg's Crash (1996) with the metallic guitar chords.

From http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/sites/bfi.org.uk.films-tv
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

While the plot is straight forward the structure of Anti-Clock is amongst the most distinct you could get in terms of depicting memory and thought. Rather than a A-to-B plot, it develops layers like an onion, building depth through stripping the layers around it's protagonist as its own self develops them, revealing the tragic truth of his reality which is confounded by a trauma and possible repressed sexuality depicted in a female figure of his life masturbating in front of him in a bedroom in a dream memory. (That the actress plays two quite different character emphasises this subtext). Instead of letting the plot dictate the course, the scenes carefully put together means that as they connect a plot is built from their juxtapositions that can be free of the restrictions of conventional plot structure. A factor to abstract cinema, even genre movies, is the notion of layers and spectrums of emotion and reality, and as much as the scenes of an multi-ethnic group of scientists talking in scientific monologues can be off-putting to the uninitiated of avant-garde filmmaking with the complicated dialogue, the structure of Anti-Clock is not that far off genre films in presenting its themes by way of tropes one can find in sci-fi and crime stories. The difference is that its willing to push its formal structure to an extreme to emphasise these tropes in its own different way.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SJPsdtGFbEc/hqdefault.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Expressionist/Mind Bender

Abstract Tropes: Unconventional Narrative Structure; Memory Lapse; Incest; Precognition and Psychic Ability; Feminist Critique of Gender; Scientist Monologues; Post-Punk Aesthetic; Use of Multi-Media and Video

Personal Opinion:

A deeply underappreciated work, especially as it was barely seen up to 2009 in its home country of origin. It's also forms a triptych of three films made by Jane Arden and Jack Bond that spans the sixties to a fair prediction of eighties aesthetic - Separation (1968) and The Other Side of Underneath (1972), not to mention a short called Vibration (1974) - which would all be likely candidates for the Abstract List. 

Freeway (1996)

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Director: Matthew Bright

Screenplay: Matthew Bright

Cast: Reese Witherspoon (as Vanessa Lutz); Kiefer Sutherland (as Bob Wolverton); Wolfgang Bodison (as Detective Mike Breer); Dan Hedaya (as Detective Garnet Wallace); Amanda Plummer (as Ramona Lutz); Brooke Shields (as Mimi Wolverton)

Synopsis: When her mother is arrested for soliciting, and her step father is arrested at the same time for drugs and for potentially molesting her, delinquent teenager Vanessa Lutz (Witherspoon) decides to search for her grandmother on her late father's side, hitchhiking when the car she borrows breaks down in the middle of the freeway. The person who picks her up is boys' school councillor  Bob Wolverton (Sutherland), who seems sweet and understanding of her problematic upbringing but starts to reveal a psychotic side to him as the trip continues.

Matthew Bright is certainly a one-off; writing his first script for Forbidden Zone (1980) and starring in it under the pseudonym of Toshiro Boloney as Squeezit the Chicken Boy and his twin sister René Henderson is certainly as unique a debut as you can get and he went on from this in his own offbeat path. Before seeing Freeway, even Forbidden Zone, my first Bright film was Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby (1999), a separate narrative with another actress in the lead memorable for Vincent Gallo playing a transvestite nun. Then there was Tiptoes (2003), a film even if its politically incorrect to say this can only be described as a Life Time melodrama about dwarfism where, considering a talented actor like Peter Dinkledge was in the cast in an early role, Gary Oldman spends the narrative on his knees as the dwarf brother of Matthew McConaughey. Bright in the world of cinema, as well as being completely alien to political correctness, is an apt candidate for the Hunter S. Thompson description of being " too weird to live too rare to die" and the fact that Tiptoes was his last film and, alongside Bundy (2002), only directed four films emphasises this fact.

From https://moonwolves.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/freeway-3.jpg?w=479

Unlike Forbidden Zone, which is a zany musical document of the original version of the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo, Freeway arguably has a political side behind its transgressive personality in how it deals with poverty row working class and a female juvenile delinquent who in a fifties exploitation would be a one dimensional danger to wholesome society. Witherspoon's Vanessa is a very morally grey person, capable of horrific violence and detached from human sympathy to others but also a troubled young woman whose upbringing is tragic, a charismatic and lovable person in spite of her behaviour thanks to a great debut performance from Witherspoon and Bright's script willingly celebrating amorality through the character. This is more so when a far more amoral figure, completely unsympathetic and evil, exists in Sutherland's Bob Wolverton, at first a likable adult who gains Vanessa's trust as he takes her in his car to her destination but is quickly revealed to be a monster who gets off scot-free as a victim, Vanessa viewed as the stereotypical "white trash" criminal sent to juvenile detention as the prosecutor argues she should be in jail for her act of violent self defence against him.

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Stereotypes of the working class in American films are rife and problematic; like rednecks, they are the one group people somehow get away with mocking without consequence, the same vitriol in the jokes that would be homophobic, racist and misogynistic if used at the expense of another group. Freeway's willingness to be distasteful and sordid means you're forced onto the side of Vanessa, who can be remorseless and break another girl's nose when angry but is as much someone who only became that way because of being treated as garbage by society. Discrimination and bigotry is found in the police towards her as much as she can be bigoted to others, and the un-PC dialogue having a depth when characters show layers, such as Vanessa having an African-American boyfriend Cutter (Bokeem Woodbine) who she loves dearly but willingly using racial epilates when a black police detective Detective Mike Breer (Bodison) first calls her a "hooker" and a "trickbaby" during an interrogation. That it's a female protagonist is even more significant. As it's bigoted to mock the working class American, there's as much a deep seated sexism that looks down on working class women more so for their class status - those in films who work in diners, those who are drug addicts in movies, those in juvenile detentions or went to prison, those who are prostitutes in movies or are the children of sex workers. To be gladly on the side of a young woman who, not to spoilt the film, has a history pyromania and shoplifting, is unrepentant in a lot of her behaviour, and escapes juvenile detention by way of an official and a guard being killed within her influence is very subversive. Unlike the cute but ultimately middle class attitude to such a character in Citizen Ruth (1996), where Laura Dern plays a solvent addict who realises she's pregnant and  becomes the object of an ideological tug-of-war, Bright's decision to throw good taste out the window and throw everything including the kitchen sink back in is actually more progressive in hindsight for not getting on its moral high horse about the subject and try to have a blatant satirical message. Effectively, the John Waters attitude of respecting even those on the extreme borders of class and morality, and it wouldn't be a surprise if he loved this film for this and many reasons.

From http://secondclasscinema.com/wp-content/
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It's a grimly humorous film as a result, bordering on an absurd weirdness and yet having a smorgasbord of taboos including a serial killer that forces a viewer into a ringer about what they see. It belongs to a clear subgenre of the nineties, which only existed in that decade with this specific style, of American films (many involving roads or actual road movies) which had very nihilistic or black humoured views of the world, usually with a lot of gore and the nineties aesthetic at their most saturated including in the soundtracks. David Lynch's Wild At Heart predated them at the cusp of 1990 and includes the likes of Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers (1993) and U-Turn (1997)) to Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation (1995)). Freeway is amongst them also showing their habit of casting actors that would become exceptionally popular later on or already had followings - here with a young Renee Witherspoon to a young Rose McGowan in The Doom Generation - and like them they all have the effect of the viewer being spiked with a hallucinogen when watching them, the border between the tasteless and the satirical sharpness blurred as far as possible that it's amazing a few of these films were high budgeted Hollywood productions.

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Technical Detail:

Bright's debut film, originally made for television for HBO but built upon for a theatrical release when it gained positive responses, it's solidly made and ultimately more like bathing in the nineties aesthetic than stylish, in itself as much a style that it wears with pride with its plastic flamingos and grey highways. Instead it's the script and personality that stands out more. The score from Danny Elfman adds a great deal as well, stepping out from the stereotype of his work with Tim Burton and leaning towards the weirdness of his Oingo Boingo work, the vibes of Forbidden Zone within it after their first collaboration on that film.

The performances in this film are as much part of its makeup and the biggest aspect of its tone. Renee Witherspoon is exceptional, making the fact that her career has very few films like this that allowed her to subvert the public view of her very disappointing; these nineties films had a lot of great and debut performances from actresses, from Rose McGowan to Rosario Dawson in Kids (1995), who sadly don't get the recognition they deserve in terms of acting ability and charisma, these types of meaty roles in edgier and bolder films the kind they deserve and need more of. The same can be said for Kiefer Sutherland too; already engaging when he's transitioning from a wholesome man to a lunatic, the moment a certain prophetic is given to him he dials up his performances to an even greater height of creepy magnetism. The cast in general is pretty strong - Dan Hedaya and Wolfgang Bodison as two police detectives have a very interesting and argumentative relationship with each other, the characters' conflicting views a standout in terms of the film's tone, as is Brooke Shields in a small role that stops feeling like stunt casting as her narrative path becomes the blackest, hollow humour possible, the kind of humour that you'll feel the need for a cold shower afterwards if you find it completely unfunny and disturbing.

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

This is a case where, rather than strange imagery or a weird plot structure, it's the tone and deliberate provocation which causes it to feel weird. It's a mild form which could be contested on rewatches; it gives the film an unrelenting, sordid edge but whether this would mean it would get on the Abstract List is up to debate. At the point of this review being created, it wouldn't.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque

Abstract Tropes: Teenage Rebellion; Provocative Dialogue; Serial Killer; Facial Disfigurement; Cheering on Amoral Anti-Heroes

Personal Opinion:

An edgy gem. Not for everyone but for those with the stomach for something this dark, this is a neglected and underappreciated film that deserves more attention given to it. 

Paprika (2006)

From https://i.jeded.com/i/paprika.18991.jpg

Director: Satoshi Kon

Screenplay: Seishi Minakam and Satoshi Kon

(Voice) Cast: Megumi Hayashibara (as Doctor Atsuko Chiba/Paprika); Tōru Furuya (as Doctor Kōsaku Tokita); Tōru Emori (as Doctor Seijirō Inui); Katsunosuke Hori (as Doctor Toratarō Shima); Akio Ōtsuka (as Detective Toshimi Konakawa); Kōichi Yamadera (as Doctor Morio Osanai)

A 1000 Anime Crossover

Synopsis: In an alternative Japan, a piece of newly created technology called the DC Mini is created that allows people to enter dreams of other people and recorded them for psychoanalytical purposes. However when the three prototypes are stolen, a series of events start to take place where a dream of madness, represented by giant parade, starts to infect people and leave them in a delirious state that will leave them a hollow shell or unable to protect themselves. Alongside the inventor of the DC Mini, a child in a giant of a man's body called Dr. Kōsaku Tokita (Furuya) and a detective called Toshimi Konakawa (Ōtsuka) stuck on a case which has affected his dreams, a female psychiatrist called Dr. Atsuko Chiba (Hayashibara) is on the path to stop this, her secret persona that of a free spirited nymph of dreams called Paprika who acts like a separate representation of her subconscious.

The passing of director/animator Satoshi Kon at 46 to pancreatic cancer in 2010 was one of the saddest tragedies of anime in the last decade or so. Great and potentially innovative creators with idiosyncratic personalities are thankfully contributing to the anime industry, but Kon existed as one of the most distinct auteurs of it who'd always create something that felt like an event. He was one of the few like Hayao Miyazaki to reach a wider audience outside of anime fandom, and with only four feature films, one short and one thirteen episode television series in his career, alongside staff work as an animator and a writer, and a career before as a manga author, I'd argue he had the perfect career where every film and the sole series is distinct and important to him as an anime creator. Paprika for me  was the one work in his career that felt lesser than the others despite its virtues, unfair considering that his other feature films were Perfect Blue (1997), Millennium Actress (2001) and Tokyo Godfather (2003) but with a lot of expectations after them to follow that effected it. Revisiting it any flaws with what was sadly his last completed production, I can stricken those original concerns of mine away.

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Baring Tokyo Godfather, his most conventional film in tone, Kon's most distinct trademark alongside his realistic character designs is his unique take on dream logic. The fluidity of animation allows for dream logic to mesh greatly, but Kon took it to an aesthetic extreme with his own high quality style. The concept of reality and various forms of unreality exist in other anime as a common theme but Kon in his various takes on it - psychosis, cinema, dreams - viewed the border as being exceptionally thin even next to other anime narratives. Paprika's is more blatant, the absurdity of dreams being taken to its farthest based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui of the same name. In a simple conspiracy plot, one that is dense in exposition but simple in presentation, the film dives head first into some of the most absurd and strange imagery possible for a film on the subject helped further by the fact of it being animated, of a giant parade that infects minds and turns victims' minds to jelly, led by a frog orchestra and marching through anything in its way with so much detail within it that the production would have to use digitally assisted animation because animating it by hand would be impossible.

The film's pleasures exist within being a spectacle unlike some of the director's other work but Kon's characterisations of his films' casts is another great aspect of his work and as strong here. His characters are always interesting, sacrificing the big eyed schoolgirls of other anime in favour of adult men and women who are very realistically depicted even when slapstick is at play in scenes. Philosophical ideas still permeate this film too, in this case through a laid back attitude discussing the ideas of dreams even in the context of a sci-fi action narrative with a potential apocalyptic ending.  None of this ever comes off as navel gazing both because of how alive the film is visually and in plotting, and how the characters are dynamic as they are, even two virtual bartenders for a website (voiced by Satoshi Kon himself and co-screenwriter Seishi Minakam) who exist in a blur of the web and dreams and talk of intellectual ideas in an almost deadpan way to anyone who visits their site.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uQomVnBkydc/maxresdefault.jpg

It's strange however with these virtues in mind that there is one flaw and it's a peculiar, unexpected one - that the villains are possibly all gay with hints made to the fact throughout - one far from a sad homophobic streak but something exceptionally weird in Kon's filmography. It's expectionally weird considering he was very open to ideas sexuality throughout his career including making on the protagonists of Tokyo Godfathers a transvestite. If anything it feels now like a badly fleshed out idea, likely meant to deal with ideas of desire which are subconscious to a lot of Paprika's take on dreams but no way as properly dealt with as it should've, more so as while it's all vague there are plenty of allusions to sexual desire throughout the film that are both honest but also dark, particularly for the later with a character called Dr. Morio Osanai (Yamadera) whose love for Atsuko Chiba becomes more disturbing and leads to one of the most adult scenes in the whole film. There is the likelihood, considering Kon was never black and white in his ideas throughout his work, that there's more complexity to this idea but the abruptness of it does stand out like a bad taste in the film that's above it and smarter everywhere else. Even if it's in the background, sexuality and gender is throughout the film, especially as the ending has a yin yang conflict between the feminine and the masculine to settle the strife, making this one flaw more obvious, more a problem as it spoils a perfect slate in Kon's filmography and goes against a film in Paprika which is as stunning and far more three dimensional to even its villains everywhere else as it is anyway.

From http://www.myfilmviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/apapr2.jpg

Technical Detail:

Paprika is a technical achievement, a testament in how whether hand drawn or animated with assistance with computers you can create lush, imaginative dreamscapes. Of importance is not to downplay the work of the production staff for Kon's projects, all of his work produced by the animation studio Mad House whose high benchmark in quality is matched by having continually produced the work of auteur anime directors like Kon or Yoshiaki Kawajiri in their studio. The results in Paprika are suitably spectacular for a studio, amongst the various teams that would be involved to animate each frame of the film, known for some of the best productions on a technical side.

The other factor of great importance is the music of Susumu Hirasawa which, in honesty, is the best thing about Paprika even above everything else. With the help of the film's wide release and the soundtrack being available as an album, the eerie and beautiful synth songs of musician/composer Hirasawa could be appreciated further and reach a wider audience. It's clear since Hirasawa started composing scores since Millennium Actress onwards that his distinct contributions have been as much a part of the director's DNA and his worlds, melding world music (especially with the vocal chanting in the dream parade's theme) with the music of the future, Paprika's score he first use Vocaloid artificial voices.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/O-QpfLV8dQw/maxresdefault.jpg

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Narratively, Paprika is very simple and straightforward. The imagery to tell it however is what stands out and makes the film as it is. Anything from a pink elephant pushing an albino alligator in a wheelchair to a chorus line of schoolgirls with camera phones for heads in a street is possible for the film. Adding to these bizarre images is Kon's trademark style of how small the membrane is between reality and this, blurring as much from the characters' psyches and memories as it is by the DC Minis in this film, where characters in Paprika can be pulled into dreams while awake and peoples' dreams mix with other peoples' dreams. Kon rather than merely bleeding the two side between each other used it to depict the mental states of the characters even if the internal had escaped into existence, the best example found in his sole TV series Paranoia Agent (2004) where an older male police detective traps himself purposely in a nostalgic world of innocent bygone days, having to be dragged out of it literally when he warms to the cure, two dimensional streets and paper toy people who are not affected by the grimness of reality.

Kon's films used this to deal with issues of identity to sexuality. The medium of cinema itself has been frequently referenced as part of a person's psyche as much as anything else that illicit emotions in his work, explicitly talked of through Konakawa's dream therapy and a huge part of the film's content. Based on a youthful passion for cinema he represses, it becomes a huge part of Konakawa's sub plot of picking himself up during a difficult case, and dealing with a deep seated regret in his past, denying that he likes films as a result despite his dreams being filled with billboard marquees for movies like Tarzan to Roman Holiday (1953) with Audrey Hepburn. The use of symbolism for each character - robots for Tokita, dolls for the elusive Kei Himuro (Daisuke Sakaguchi) who may have stolen a DC Mini for nefarious purposes etc. - is as much as adding to their characters as their dialogue and behaviour does. Everything is so well woven into the film, baring the one flaw mentioned paragraphs above, as with many Kon works that you end up picking up new details upon each viewing.

The realistic character designs Kon used throughout his career against such surreal imagery also adds to Paprika and his films' general oddness. Sometimes he would exaggerate a character design, like the exceedingly overweight but lovable Tokita, but the realism he had not only negates stereotypes of anime, gladly depicting men and women of all ages and sizes, but also provides a bridge to gauge viewers with the worlds depicted. When the films have a normalcy it means that the moment it's invaded by the unreal had a greater impact.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Mindbender/Psychotronic/Surrealism/Weird

Abstract Tropes: Dreams; Dual Personalities; Dreams Against Reality; Bizarre Dialogue; Pink Elephants; Subconscious Sexuality; Subjective Reality; Too Many Tropes to Count

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Personal Opinion:

Despite its one flaw, Paprika does ultimately become a rewarding end for Satoshi Kon's career. Sadly Kon's last project, fittingly named The Dream Machine, about two robots on a road trip, was never finished and will likely never exist beyond some images, but it's hard to deny Paprika is still a beautiful, weird and poignant career finish for someone who should still be alive and had many more ideas left in him. Aptly the last image of his last directorial work is a character going to a cinema and buying a ticket, maybe a little indulgent but for a film about dreams, from a director-writer who specialised in dreams and the subconscious through animation, it's an appropriate tip to the hat of the medium also called the dream machine he was obsessed with.