The manga of Junji Ito deserves a cinematic adaption, live action or manga, that
does justice to its weird, sometimes disgusting content, firmly making his
reputation as a horror manga author through idiosyncratically strange, comic
horror stories. His reputation for strangeness, from drawing himself in Uzumaki (1998-9) as a spiral obsessed
shell of a man to writing a manga about
raising two pet cats with the same art style of his horror tales begs for an
appropriately abstract movie from the work. Gyo the anime does its best, but it just misses out of being as strange aesthetically as the manga
itself. It replicates the gross weirdness of the material but in style and
structure it's pretty conventional, while doing very well in getting the tone
right, an adaptation like the live action take of Uzumaki from 2000 having a better chance at scrapping into the Abstract List.
The first of (hopefully) many
tie-in to the 1000 Anime blog and
this one, I won't spoil any of the opinions I had and just provide the link to
the review HERE.
From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059829.jpg
#24: Yuki Terai - Secrets (2000)
Based on a original premise
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
Abstract Spectrum: Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None
One of the more obscurer things I've
covered for the 1000 Anime blog, the
only segment of this animated short compilation that is unconventional is The Mirror, about the titular
protagonist being menaced by her mirror reflections, the sort of thing that
could've gotten into the Abstract List
for its tone and style but misses out just because of its dated visual
appearance, without any distinct character to it more significantly, and
missing out of using the premise fully. The rest, which you can read about HERE, is far from abstract and a
curiosity only.
From http://shitcasual.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12 /021_final_fantasy_creatures_de_lesprit_theredlist.jpg
#20: Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within (2001)
Director: Hironobu Sakaguchi
Screenplay: Al Reinert and Jeff
Vintar
Inspired by the videogame series produced by Square Enix
(Voice) Cast: Ming-Na Wen (as
Doctor Aki Ross); Alec Baldwin (as Captain Gray Edwards); Ving Rhames (as
Ryan); Steve Buscemi (as Neil); Peri Gilpin (as Jane); Donald Sutherland (as
Dr. Sid); James Woods (as General Hein)
Viewed with English Dub
Abstract Spectrum: None
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None
Inexplicably the amount of early
anime of the early 2000s to be animated with 3D animation and models I've
covered has been large on 1000 Anime,
and in every case everyone has been tedious, only Malice@Doll (2001) which I've yet to cover an exception to the
rule. Having been old enough to know the hype that was surrounding The Spirits Within before its release,
its comical in hindsight just how much it failed in both being entertaining and
avoiding tanking at the box office. It could be seen as tragic, but if you
follow the link HERE to my full
review, it's not a surprise why a new animation company collapsed immediately
after making this their first production.
From http://cdn.myanimelist.net/s/common/uploaded_files/ 1445329555-d44c2c868b8aa04bb54633157ba0a6e9.jpeg
One of the more notorious,
divisive and yet incredibly popular anime series of the early 2000s, Elfen Lied is one that I first saw
getting into anime and for all its clear flaws I cannot help as my review will
attest to, which you can read HERE,
to still see so many virtues to counter balance the problems. A grim yet
brightly coloured work which schizophrenic tonal shifts, it also however is one
of the few series to really wallow in ideas of trauma and adolescent violence fully
even if it can be utterly tasteless at points.
From http://lehu.pt/attachments/thumb600/tmdb/tt0095715 /poster/xxmkOc9kypgin1sMttV5mgQDXl6.jpg?w=400&h=594
Director: Jan Švankmajer
Screenplay: Jan Švankmajer
Based on the original story by Lewis
Carroll
Cast: Kristýna Kohoutová (as
Alice)
Synopsis: Bored, Alice (Kohoutová)
notices that the taxidermy rabbit in the room she is in starts to move in its
glass case, putting on a jacket and hat, and then dashing off with his eye
continually on the pocket watch he keeps in his sawdust filled chest. The journey
that takes place, following him, leads Alice on a strange trip through
corridors, rooms and various outdoor environments, encountering a sock puppet caterpillar,
a tea party with a Mad Hatter and March Hare, a malicious and decapitation
obsessed Queen of Hearts, and various objects not found in the normal world
such as nails growing out of breads and drinking ink that shrinks a person.
As a card carrying, self
proclaimed surrealist, it isn't a surprise that animator/director/puppeteer Jan
Švankmajer eventually adapted Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) -
a proto-surrealist work, Lewis Carroll's
tale of a young girl named Alice is a series of absurd anecdotes, strange
sights conjured in the mind, and limericks and verses where there is complete
unpredictability in the world of Wonderland. Common objects are reinterpreted,
puns are made and there's a logic of Wonderland's own that has entered common
folklore. What's testament to Carroll's
writing style is that when his work is toned down from the original text, a
mainstream adaptation like the 1972 version with Peter Sellers as the March Hare is still incredibly strange to
watch because of how Wonderland has to depicted in most adaptations. What's
significant with Švankmajer's
adaptation however - while very faithful to the text, down to little touches, barring
some minor changes and pieces like the Mock Turtle segment being removed - is
that it removes the tone of whimsy that is prevalent in the original story. The
story's on the cusp of being mischievous, Alice quite a sarcastic if lovable
and smart figure, a lot of whit in the extensive amount of dialogue and Alice's
internal thoughts she has; Švankmajer
strips most of the dialogue out and almost everything, including other
characters' voices, is spoken by Alice herself in narration.
From http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2015/08/alice-jan-svankmajer.jpg
The other factor is that Švankmajer is paradoxically a legitimate
surrealist who yet depicts his worlds through a grounded reality using everyday
objects and locations. He wanted to make what he felt was a far more accurate
depiction of the story, not a fairy tale as others had but a dream, and this is
both why this is one of the most faithful adaptations in existence and yet it
is entirely his own take at the same time. He is the most tactile filmmaker
ever to exist baring Stan Brakhage and
a few others; even in his last film Surviving
Life (Theory and Practice) (2010), with paper cut-outs, he sculpts his
films with his own hands alongside other animators and technicians, using any
object he could easily have acquired from a tool shed or an antique shop and
bringing their own textures and history with them into his work to create lived
in, unique environments.
As a result of this, the
adaptation is not the fantastical Wonderland of most adaptations, that which is
usually multicoloured and require elaborate costumes and painted sets. Instead Švankmajer's Wonderland is the cellars,
corridors and gardens of everyday life, dust ridden cluttered, old wooden
chairs and drawers given a new life as Alice enters Wonderland not through a
rabbit hole but a study desk drawer lined with rulers and drawing utensils. Every
figure Alice encounters has been built by objects remoulded by Švankmajer, many of which become far
more grotesque as a result; the caterpillar is an actual sock with denture teeth
and big glass eyes, the white rabbit spilling sawdust from his open chest cavity,
and his friends who try to get an overgrown Alice out of his home a bizarre menagerie
of constructions from animal bones and googly eyes. Ordinary objects in Švankmajer's world are inherently made
new and alien even when they're un-tampered with physically - scissors in bulk
collection in a drawer, the rabbit's home built from wooden blocks with a
rabbit hutch interior of wire fencing, Švankmajer's obsession with eating and
food depicted in elaborate detail -
creating a very tactile cinematic environment.
From http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcb45ou6mC1qaxxv7o1_1280.png
Technical Detail:
The animation - having spent two
or so decades in his career making short films, including a take on the Carroll poem Jabberwocky (1971), before he decided to transition into making
feature films - is exceptional from Švankmajer,
but an important factor to his work is that not only are you sometimes asking
how certain scenes were pulled off, amazed by the skill involved, but that anything
obviously faked is part of the aesthetic choices. The obvious handcraft down to
the animation's flaws is as much part of his films' worlds, such as the novel interpretation
of Alice's constant growing and shrinking being depicted by her smaller self
being a stop motion moved Victorian doll. The fragility of many of his
creations, broken and remade, add to their life; that which evokes the
possibilities of imagination when given only the long forgotten objects of an
attic or an antique shop to work from.
Sound is also important to Švankmajer
and easy to neglect with his films. The narration, thus making it easier for
the English dub to exist and be added to the visuals, has an innately ghostly
tone to it as well, particularly as repetition in dialogue alongside certain
Wonderland behaviour is common. Sound effects in general are also as audio
textual as the materials being sewn, chewed, broken or generally manipulated. Rather
than the March Hare merely smearing "the best butter" on the cogs of
a pocket watch, you hear the squelch of butter meeting clockwork in full detail.
The awkward sounds of these stop motion creations as they come to life is
neither ignored in the soundtrack, an entirely constructed world of each twitch
or attempted movement of these beings is as important for an entirely
constructed Wonderland; this as much as the intentionally weird moments such as
a piglet going down a flight of stairs crying like a human baby are important
to the film alongside its visual content.
From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/ film/alice-1988/w1280/alice-1988.jpg
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High
Lewis Carroll's two Alice novels - Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and the neglected Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice
Found There (1871) - are canonical works of literary abstraction and
absurdity, easy to understand and originally written by Carroll to amuse the real Alice
Liddell, a young girl, but majestic in how strange they are, relishing
bizarre verbal pins and digressions, arguments over insignificant details and
incompetence in official figures alongside a heartfelt ode to childhood
imagination. There are so many adaptations - from the silent era to Disney, Hollywood
adaptations to seventies porn, an anime adaptation to a BBC adaptation where
the creatures of Wonderland are depicted by actors without any costumes - that
it's going to be a drastically sliding and varied scale of what each one will
be like in terms of abstraction.
Jan Švankmajer's Alice is likely the most abstract
adaptation and will be difficult to knock off the top of the list in this area.
Not only is there faithfulness to the tone of the story, but the drastic change
in terms of tone that counteracts this, that which is Švankmajer's own
influence, adds to its odd mood perfectly and becomes, in being extremely
different, a more faithful attitude to the material. In comparison to the Quay Brothers, who idolise him, Švankmajer
does not share their dreamlike mood, entirely grounded in a reality even if it's
strange to witness. In contrast to Walerian
Borowczyk, who touched upon the same style of animation in his early career
and kept the same fixation for objects and textures in his later live action films,
they took on different ideological ideals even in how they used and sculpted
objects even if they were both subversives; Borowczyk makes a biscuit box in
the shape of a Bible in one film, Švankmajer would animate the biscuit box into
a sentient creature or have it become a trap door to a whole manner of strange
occupants, whilst Borowczyk was obsessed with performances from actors in
contrast to Švankmajer turning his actors, including himself in cut-out form in
the prologue of his last film, into objects as much as people to manipulate.
There is also a misanthropic vibe
to Švankmajer's work, fitting a surrealist whose other literary adaptations
have included Edgar Allen Poe and the
Marquis de Sade, a more critical view
of the world even next to someone like Borowczyk where anything can be twisted
- like the jar of fruit jam which Alice discovers has drawing pins in it. With Alice, even though its suitable for
children, it's intentionally jarring in look and tone to the innocent fantasy
nature of most interpretations, where you can linger over screenshots and
imagine every splinter in a chair leg or the loose threads of garments, the
brittleness that undercuts the fantasy. His completely unhesitant attitude to
depicting the original story's more black humoured material - the Queen of
Heart's obsession with execution is made more grim because objects don't bleed
when they're decapitated - adds a morbid humour even when not directly tackling
obsessions like his like the repulsive, destructive nature of the act of
eating.
From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FwkSDroHT1g/Taxs-k2nZMI/ AAAAAAAABFE/-X_zzz-i7oE/s1600/tumblr_laz3a2nZcj1qdaig4o1_500.png
Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Surreal/Weird
Abstract Traits: Object being brought to life; Stop Motion; Decapitation
and Unexpected Violence; References to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (or
Straight Up Adaptation of); Juxtapositions of Objects that are Strange
Bedfellows; Verbal Puns; Taxidermy Animals; Animal Bones; Grotesque Depictions
of Eating and Food;
From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q9NX7Z1Zu7U/Un65IylVJ9I/ AAAAAAAAMas/9MSZSkdBPHM/s1600/a9.png
Personal Opinion:
As someone who only read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland only a
few years ago, and instantly fell in love with it and its sequel story, my
growing admiration of the story means that I've also developed an obsession
with any other works which directly adapt it or reference it. Already a huge
fan of Švankmajer's films before
this, his take has grown to be even greater knowing its source material very
well, to the point it is one of his best feature films if not the best work of
his alongside a short like Dimensions of
Dialogue (1982). It cannot be stressed enough how it manages to be Švankmajer's own creation yet the most
faithful in terms of attitude to the material, only lacking the whimsy and
replacing it with a world entire built from objects and textures that drags the
viewer as much into Wonderland as Alice herself.
From https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--MG4JJHtn--/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_north,h_358,q_80,w_636/17z8tci2o56oujpg.jpg
As premises go for a short
animated work, pitting two female wrestlers against a conspiracy to inject them
and others with a superhuman serum that may be of alien origins is certainly strange
by anime's standards. Aside from this though, this doesn't mean that the result
is abstract in the slightest, but that it belongs to a catalogue of eighties
and nineties straight-to-video anime that sadly could never be made today;
probably too ridiculous to be considered legitimately good but compelling and
infectious in what it actually succeeds in.
An anime that's grown on me -
while it's the later adaptation - Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000) - that's
seen as the superior take on the light novel character, the original adaptation
does grow on you even when viewed with a less than stellar English dub. Atmospheric
and kind appropriately horrific with some of its character and background
designs, it's exactly in the same wheelhouse as Wanne-Be's baring that this does feel like a legitimate gem despite
its few flaws.
From https://filmovisruba.files.wordpress .com/2011/12/poster23.jpg
Director: Guy Maddin
Screenplay: Guy Maddin and George
Toles
Cast: Jason Patric (as Ulysses
Pick); Isabella Rossellini (as Hyacinth); Udo Kier (as Dr. Lemke); Louis Negin (as
Calypso / Camille); Brooke Palsson (as Denny); Kevin McDonald (as Ogilbe)
Synopsis: A group of gangsters lock themselves from pursuing police
in the family home of their leader Ulysses Pick (Patric). Having had his gang kidnap a young man (David Wontner) and
having brought with him a young woman Denny (Palsson), who is reeling from having drowned and can only hear his
thoughts, Ulysses' intention is to reunite with his estranged wife Hyacinth (Rossellini), setting off with the two
captives and his gang's assistance around the various rooms of the giant home
to find her. Acquiring the objects of his mostly deceased children, Ulysses'
home is haunted by ghosts, a secret passage guarded by a helmeted Cyclops, and his
wife's dead father Calypso (Negin)
chained naked to her bed post and warning Hyacinth of her husband's return. Memories
start to return to Ulysses but so does the animosity of part of his gang, from
Big Ed (Daniel Enright), growing to
the point a bicycle powered electric chair is built in the living room waiting
for him.
From http://filmint.nu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2011_keyhole_012.jpg
Out of his filmography, Keyhole
manages to be one of Guy Maddin's
more elusive films which is a pretty exceptional feat amongst the likes of Careful (1992), his two-strip colour
gothic mountain film, and the ice hockey obsessed psychodrama Cowards Bend The Knees (2003), just two
of many films within a career where most if not all of the films if placed in
another director's filmography would stand out as being strange and
fascinating. It was also his transition to digital cameras after years of using
celluloid, even his archaic style influenced by silent cinema and the
ectoplasmic residue of repertory cinema double bills effected by technological
changes in filmmaking. He has however remained proudly weird and unconventional
regardless of this fact, building from two shorts Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair (2009) with star Isabella Rosselliniand Glorious (2008) and using their
sketched out ideas to build Keyhole,
the hybrid of gangster films and haunted house movies.
The result, strangely, passes the
Quay brothers, who have their own
idiosyncratic style, waving to them and passing notes to each other, the film
having a taste of their work in how it's the claustrophobic interior world of
the Ulysses home shot in monochrome, where each shelf and drawer is a cabinet
of curiosities with each object evoking Ulysses' lost memories. It's unmistakably
Maddin's work nonetheless, balanced
between the poetic and the deliberately crass and strange, but it has its own
unique, disquieting personality next to his previous works, where ghosts of
Ulysses' sons and others such as a maid wander around the rooms, occasionally
screaming, creating an omninous mood. Maddin's
eccentricities appear, such as one of the gang members making the ill-advised
attempt to hump one of the ghosts, but its far and away more vague and moody
than his more elaborate worlds of other films. Geography for the home is vague
baring an outdoor garden built in the centre of the building, a pond there where
the dead are pushed into, a deliberate vagueness to the story even compared to
the other Maddin films where the
supernatural is evoked, the sense that one is in the afterlife feeling
apparent.
From http://www.kinonews.ru/insimgs/shotimg/shotimg20072_13.jpg
Technical Detail:
The change to digital is jarring
at first after many of his films being in celluloid; especially as at the time
of writing this only review only The
Forbidden Room (2015) has followed up this film, Maddin's worlds perfectly suited the texture of film celluloid and
the loss of it is something you have to adapt to if you've seen his previous
work. Thankfully he decided to make this his most textural work, cramped
corridors and shots of Ulysses' eye gazing at the viewer through keyholes
bringing a more internal world appropriate for a journey of a man, whose separated
from his wife and had most of his children killed, searching for the harmonious
family life he feels once existed.
There is a brief flash of colour,
an uniquely toned hue similar to a Kenneth
Anger short film from the forties called Puce Moments (1949), interconnected to his only daughter Lota (Tattiawna Jones), whose bared body draped
in jewellery behind a gauze curtain haunts the mother more as her skull had
been planted in the flower pot near her bed. It's all too brief to drastically
change the film's tone into an entire Kodachrome soaked passage within the
narrative but certainly in a film which is fragmented by various memories which
clog up the house's exteriors, this brief flash of literal colour adds a
distinction for the character of Ulysses' daughter and her narrative through
line.
From https://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/KEYHOLE4.jpg
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
The tone of the film as a result
of its plot being about a man searching for his memories is that of images
layering on-top of each other, in cases literally as images are back projected
behind actors as they act out being effected by ghostly forms from afar,
usually a naked old man whipping them in the kinkiest haunted house imagery you
could imagine. Maddin is still appropriately
eccentric - name another film where a prized taxidermy wolverine with a cigar
in its mouth called Crispy is important for the protagonist to lug around - but
it feels more deliberately sombre even with its humour than the other films of
his I've seen, appropriately for a film about a haunted house having the right
haunted vibe.
This is particularly the case
with Louis Negin as Calypso being
such a towering influence on the film's tone, our ghostly and sarcastic
narrator but also brazeningly showing his bared aged body onscreen with only
giant chains as a costume, his graceful inflections adding to the mysterious
nature of the material where apparitions of old memories - conflicts between
Ulysses and Hyacinth to one of his sons appearing in the closest masturbating
catatonically - flash briefly. Ulysses' accomplishes most of the trip is a male
who's revealed to be his only surviving son Manners, the last to be seen in the
film as a bystander to the haunted and isolated rooms, and a woman who slowly
sinks into feeling water in her lungs unless Ulysses keeps forcing her to stay
alert, a waif played with a distance by actress Brooke Palssonthat
isn't aloof but feels like she's been pulled out of the afterlife against her
will. The gangsters feel like the more eccentric inclusion fitting Maddin's genre blending tendencies, most
gladly helping their boss by way of interior decoration whilst others cavort
with their female molls or desire to fry Ulysses for good. It's someone like Udo Kier, suddenly appearing than
suddenly leaving never to be seen again, who's the most normal individual,
playing a doctor whose subplot about his son dying that day, trying to clear a
wasp's nest from the garage, has little effect on the narrative but feels appropriate
for the film's ghostly tone.
From http://filmint.nu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2011_keyhole_008.jpg
This is also Maddin's most sexually explicit and purposely provocative film
giving it the distinction of being the only 18 certificate film in Guy Maddin's career from those released
in the UK. Sex and kink has appeared in his films before - Coward Bends The Knees gets away with fisting as if also whimsical,
and Sissy Boy Slap Party (1995)
crams so many polished male buttocks in its short film length to keep one
energised even if you're heterosexual - but this goes further with full frontal
male and female nudity, female undergarments with crude drawings etched on the
silk proudly worn by Ulysses' cheating moll, who only speaks in un-subtitled
French for additional eerie effect, and by way of super imposition a man
fellating a fake cock sticking out of a wall, toned down from the inspirational
short Glorious which had multiple
fake members of a gangster's many sons sticking out a wall. Maddin's work has always had a subconscious nature to it - oedipal
nightmares next to Technicolor fantasies - so it's natural that sex comes into
play; as one of the most respected figures of Canadian cinema who's given art
grants to make films like this as he grows older, he decided not to mellow but
thankfully become more explicit whilst keeping a tongue firmly in his cheek.
Out of his work in general,
something like Cowards Bend The Knees
is the most abstract of his films - the one-two punch of purposely blending
autobiography into fictional stories which gladly paint himself as a pathetic
geek, with no hesitation in mocking himself or even portraying Guy Maddin as a
terrible human being, and the original format of peep hole cameras which played
chaptered segments when it was first as an art gallery exhibit make it a more
powerfully strange creation. But a lot of Keyhole
by itself is immensely effecting and in a daze in its tone, giving it a
considerable dreamlike style even next of most of his filmography. While he
does create worlds that could only exist in cinema or in a cineaste's pineal
gland, this is one film which eventually becomes more mysterious as it goes
along and presents its most vague content by its ending, which even next to his
other movies is utterly open to interpretation, the only person left being
Manners stuck either between the past and the present, or between reality and
dreams which is entirely up to the viewer to decide.
Abstract Traits: Elderly Male Full Frontal Nudity; Locations with
No Clear Geography; Dreamlike Mood; Textural Content and Fetishisation of
Objects; Melding of Dissonant Film Genres; Sexual Kink; Farcical Jokes;
References to Classic Mythology; Suddenly Switches to Colour; Taxidermy Animals
Personal Opinion:
One of Guy Maddin's more obscure works and a divisive entry in his career
for some, it's yet a testament to his career that rather than sit on his
laurels and churn work out that is repetitive he has made films which all have
their own distinct personalities to them even if they link in terms of style
and trademarks. While his other monochrome works like Archangel (1990) have usually whimsical tones, Keyhole is more
atmospheric in a quiet, elusive way, a mood for its night setting of shadowed
rooms. The illogical moments, such as Ulysses dropping his gang's guns into the
incinerator in the basement without removing the bullets from them, are
swallowed up in a film that feels like a mix of cinema and the Greek tale of
Ulysses concocted in a dream state, his most claustrophobic and internal works
whose logic is its own like his other movies, where the dead are picked out of
the living after a shootout by making them stand up and rested face first
against a wall. Especially in a career that's as idiosyncratic as his, it'd be
easy for films like Keyhole or his
more divisive work Twilight of the Ice Nymphs
(1997) to be ignored but even films like these are very unpredictable, odd
gems with their own internal logics.
[The following will be a tie-in
with my other blog, 1000 Anime,
which you find go to here.]
Synopsis: Two amnesiacs wake up naked near one another in a desert,
a city behind them - one is a man with a television for a head named Retro (Yamaguchi), the other is a woman with a
red patch mark around one eye named Pandy (Honda).
Once they find clothes, they naturally get around to hijacking a car and
terrorising the city streets shooting any cop cars that chases after them. When
they're finally caught they're sent to a prison on what remains of the moon,
ran by a mysterious young woman called Galactica (Mizutani) who lets two mutants, 666 (Iwata) and 777 (Yanada),
run the establishment and torment of the prisoners. As more abilities are
discovered by Retro and Pandy to their own surprise, and the later gains
memories of a greater significance about Galactica, an eventual mass jailbreak
is imminent as they and an entire horde of prisoners have to get passed the
armed guards and Galactica's two henchmen.
While anime enforces the
importance of an entire production crew to make a work, that doesn't mean
distinct voices are non-existent.Imaishi
however is a completely different individual in comparison to a Mamoru Oshii or Satoshi Kon - he's a sugar rush when he's being entertaining, as
mad as a box of frogs at his strangest. One botch and his style could easily
come off as tasteless without purpose or too hyperactive - when the hyper
sexual tone similar in other anime just comes off as crass, and where the pop
culture references cover gaping a charisma and plot vacuum - but he sets a high
bar in terms of the quality of his work both in terms of the animation, unless
he deliberately uses rudimentary animation for effect, and for the quality of
the content of his work. He's unpredictable in an equal opportunity way, and
even when the material is purposely trying to offend the viewer with bodily
fluid jokes like Panty & Stockings
With Garterbelt (2010), his characters are too likable and there's an
incredible energy to everything I've seen within his filmography.
Dead Leaves does stick out in his career though, where it shows the
trajectory he would go to in work like Gurren
Lagann (2007) onwards but is still a directorial debut where his style needed
to be refined. This is as much part of the trend of experimental shorts and
mini-length one-offs for new talent that appeared in the late nineties to the
mid-2000s, from the likes of Cat Soup
(2001) to anything from Studio 4°C
like Noiseman Sound Insect (1997),
very artistically bold works that are in danger of being neglected in this
decade unless someone decided to make them available for download on places
like iTunes, anime which was made
with no target demographic and are usually fascinating in the inventiveness
they have.
From https://i.imgur.com/7srPCSy.jpg
Dead Leaves is a relentless, chaotic forty or so minutes, where
even a series in Imaishi's future
like Panty & Stocking for all
its similar crude jokes and maniac fight scenes is a lot more carefully
structured. The older, shorter work is actually a lot more elaborate in its
narrative than the synopsis above described - quite an elaborate one in fact
involving spies and the cloning of genetically modified mutants, both misshapen
ones and those with superhuman abilities - but alongside its manic tone and the
truncated length to work within, there's a deliberate sense that the plot is
given to the viewer like a relentless barrage that flows over a viewer. Because
of this, the result is as likely to catch hardcore fans of the director
off-guard as it would casual viewers from how frantically paced it is.
It also has no qualms in how purposely
ridiculous and tasteless it is at points. The difference is that even a work
that managed to be more tasteless, Panty
& Stocking, had moments of quiet and tangents that break up the pace of
the material, while Dead Leaves has
no qualms with bullets being wasted and characters being turned into either
Swiss cheese from the bullets or exploded guts in such cartoonish manners its
far from offensive. With logic defying
gun violence and ridiculous background characters, its feels influenced from
videogames as most of the length is an elaborate escape, one where the fact
that the plot manages to get away with a tank being acquired by the prisoners
is far from something to query but establishes the tone further. Alongside this
you get purposely gross or eyebrow raising material based on the basest of
human anatomy, from an unexpected sex scene in a jail cell despite the two
individuals wearing full body straight-jackets that look like sleeping bags to
character designs for the prisoners including a man with a penis head to another
with a drill penis called Chinko (Tobita)
who becomes a prominent side character with the central duo. To find this stuff
inappropriate is pointless when the tone is deliberately off-kilter and absurd,
and Imaishi's style manages the rare
skill of being able to get away with a lot and yet being so infectious that a
person can find it funny even if they find the material disgusting at times or
taking the cake when characters end up having to fight giant robots as in later
in this anime.
From http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a380/dstead/Leaves4.jpg
Technical Detail:
As far as back here, Imaishi's work has a dynamic flash in
presentation, here taking almost a cue from Western comic books in terms of the
framing of scenes and the editing style. Particularly with the film's
exaggerated tone, fed by its adrenalizing music score as all Imaishi anime have, this style is
particularly suitable for the material even if one can find oneself
disorientated by the results at points. Compared to his later work Dead Leaves certainly looks unique even
compared to the later Imaishi work, a
visual style and character design here that cannot help but evoke British
illustrator Jamie Hewlett, the man
who brought to life visually the comic book series Tank Girl and the alter-egos of Damon
Albarn's Gorillaz project. It couldn't be a coincidence - Retro is a side
character from Tank Girl called Tele
- but it's far from a questionable practice on Imaishi's behalf with his collaborators to turn their eyes towards
Western pop culture they clearly love and reference it, as it's something that
he never does to the point of ripping off other material as his work rifts on
its own plotlines. In fact for me Imaishi
feels like one of the first anime directors to blatantly be influenced by
Western pop culture to such an extent barring specific anime like FLCL (2000). He's openly influenced by
Western animation particularly, clearly having fed himself on animated shows
from Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon like Invader Zim (2001-2004) that people like me and many others grew
up with in the nineties onward, and the kinetic nature of those programs
alongside their bold visual styles have influenced him in streamlining his
visuals into candy coloured fireworks.
This is more significant as,
through his work with studio Gainax
and his own studio Trigger
afterwards, he usually has simpler character designs in his work, usually more
cartoonish and even with a work like Gurren
Lagann, which is the most stereotypical anime of his career, having a bold,
easy to remember look to it and its characters. Unlike most anime where detail
especially in character designs is of more important, limiting the amount of
movement in scenes baring key ones as much as possible, Imaishi takes influence from Western animation where it's the
complete opposite, reducing the amount of detail in scenes but increasing the
amount of movement within them, the result of his streamlined style being a
greater kinetic tone which allows him to get away with being more ridiculous
and allow more fluidity in the action scenes.
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low
[Some spoiler warnings in the
following paragraph]
Immediately any work which ends
with the already grown up mutant baby of a character, conceived and given birth
to in only a few hours, fighting another whose turned into an intergalactic, space
caterpillar with Carrot Top red hair
is even strange by the standards anime usually sets. Paradoxically however, while
this is a work where a man with a drill penis gets shafted on the front of a
motorbike intimately to be used as an improvised battering ram, it's pretty sedate however in comparison to other
work. Imaishi even in a more
conventional story like his earnest, chest pumping giant robot show Gurren Lagann is liable to have entire galaxies
used as projectile weapons in a final boss battle, so he's capable of anything
in his stories, to which compared to his later work Dead Leaves is pretty standard and normal. Panty & Stockings may actually be weirder in fact inherently as
much for its more digestible style, like Western cartoons where there are two
mini-episodes which are usually set around sketches, and how it manages to be
the kind of show Cartoon Network
would once show on Saturday mornings perverted for adults. Dead Leaves is
strange but more for its jackhammer tone as a group of strange miscreants -
most designed with over personified body parts or coughing up any form of body
fluid - as the only individuals you can attach to. It's certainly not in the
annuals of more experimental anime like the already mentioned Cat Soup or Mamoru Oshii'sAngel's Egg
(1985), but the result does leave you exhausted in a way after all the
colourful carnage is depicted that does qualify it for the Abstract List.
Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Psychotronic
Abstract Traits: Quick pacing; Deliberate Obscuring of Plot;
Mutation and Body Horror; Emphasis on Bodily Fluids and Sexuality;
Transformation into Monsters; Cartoonish Violence
From http://goshzilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/dead_13.jpg
Personal Opinion:
Wisely, it'll be better to view Dead Leaves only after you've watched
other Imaishi work. This does feel
like a bull charging through a china shop in animated form for most of its
length, reckless and messy as it crashes along through its short running time. Not
surprisingly Dead Leaves was a blank
squib originally, only with Gurren
Lagann immediately afterwards cementing Imaishi's
trip to today with a string of hits and cult favourites. The work itself in
lieu of his career however is incredibly watchable and inspired in terms of
being such a stylish, bold looking action story. While the plot is incredibly
simple, the anime is intelligent enough to not feel overstretched because of
its short length, and what it does depict while incredibly silly is more than
likely more artistically inspired than some anime twice or further longer than
its length. It'll be interesting for me, with Kill la Kill(2013) still
to see and Imaishi helping new talent
in Studio Trigger on work like Inferno Cop (2012) and Ninja Slayer (2015), how his style has
evolved over the decade. His last directorial work was a short part of a series
of exhibition net animation pieces called Japan Animator Expo; his entry Sex & Violence with Machspeed (2015) felt like a hybrid of Dead Leaves and Panty & Stocking which was fun but did show a concern that, far
from the danger of his work being it becoming too crass or ridiculous in his
work, the real danger would be for him to become predictable, precariously
falling into a groove of his own clichés.
Interestingly his latest is a sci-fi
comedy series which has very short episodes, Space Patrol Luluco (2016), which means we'll have to wait for him
to do another full series for a while, (maybe a film one day depending if his
style could transition to the theatrical structure), so this question is up in
the air, but at least it means that he is able to at least juggle different
lengths and tones of his work, confidence
still there that he will remain inventive and entertaining in his work. Particularly
with how successful Kill la Kill is
beyond anime fans, he's far from hitting a creative slump in many a person's
eyes, which is great because it would be depressing if the maniac nature of Hiroyuki Imaishi's work would suddenly
become absent from the anime industry.
From https://garywarnett.files.wordpress.com /2010/11/dogtoothposter.jpg
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenplay: Yorgos Lanthimos and
Efthymis Filippou
Cast: Christos Stergioglou (as
father); Michelle Valley (as mother); Angeliki Papoulia (as older daughter);
Mary Tsoni (as younger daughter); Christos Passalis (as son); Anna Kalaitzidou
as Christina
Synopsis: An older married couple (Stergioglou and Valley)
keep their adult children - two sisters (Papoulia
and Tsoni) and a son (Passalis) - in complete isolation
completely cut off from the world outside. Having only lived in their world
within the home and garden, the children are taught that only their father can
leave by car into the dangerous outside environment beyond the gates, are
provided a vocabulary each day to learn where a "phone" is a salt shaker
and a "zombie" is a small, yellow flower, and that they have another
brother living over the fence they cannot reach. The parents' decision to bring
in a female security guard from his workplace (Kalaitzidou) to provide sexual favours for their son proves to be
their undoing, bringing a corrupting influence on the older daughter.
Alongside his collaborators
behind the camera (co-screenwriters and production team) and in front of it
(the actors perfectly in tune to depicting the material sincerely), Yorgos Lanthimos is exceptionally
talented in creating a very idiosyncratic oddness in the films I've seen, a
style that can be compared to the original surrealists in France. He at least
learnt the most vital rule of them, that rather than weirdness for weirdness'
sake as that which fails most modern films, as can be witnesses in a work like Vernon Chatman'sFinal Flesh (2009), a film like Dogtooth can make a discussion about something as average as a
spangled headband, and the truth in whether one could glow in the dark, become
like an alien language heard in a dream. The ordinary is enough to create an
odd mood in the viewer as something similar to what they see in their everyday
life can become uncanny when viewed in a skewered lens. The family depicted within this film - who
have no names baring their status within the family - are like any within
Europe, who deal with simple things as pick up groceries that they've ran out
of and the children having to be told off for hitting each other, but the
nature of how their relationships have been built are troubling.
The humour is exceptionally dark,
willing to tackle a great deal of taboos within its simple premise. It evokes
the case depicting in Samira Makhmalbaf'sThe Apple (1998), a real life
incident where parents kept their two young girls locked up in their home away
from the outside world, causing them to develop their own worlds and
communication as a result. In vast contrast however to that film's sympathetic
views of the parents, Dogtooth
presents normalcy of this idea within a more unsettled tone and with the
further issue that the children are clearly adults. Dogtooth's strangest quality is that it managed to be nominated for
the 2010 Academy Awards for Best
Foreign Picture; going between depicting incest to including hardcore sex, both
in a tape the parents watch after a night of intimacy and (possibly real) acts
from the cast, this is very dark movie even with its humour. The innocuous
nature of the family's life, almost entirely set within the home environment
baring the father's workplace, offsets some of the more eyebrow raising
material - videotape to the head, assault of a cat with garden shears - but as
much causing other sequences to crawl under the skin further, usually by
inducing shocked laughter from a viewer as it would induce revulsion and
disgust. The tightrope between humour and shock is a precarious trick the film manages
to pull off in the end and its fits the material more to do this, the act of
adding humour causing the horror of the material to stand out more within the
concept of how absurd it is. The world of the family and its structure furthers
this, where punishment for bad behaviour is to be forced to keep strong
mouthwash within one's mouth until the mother tells that person they can spit
it out. Prizes for following their parents' strict rules and instructions -
chores to lessons such as being able to last longer underwater in the pool -
are the sort one gives little children such as stickers and eventually toy
aeroplanes, the real life ones that cannot be ignored flying above their house
adapted into their world as the toys themselves.
A blatant satire of a patriarchal
family - openly making reference to the training of a dog the family have as
symbolic of this, going further where the father has everyone including the
mother walk on all fours and bark to protect the home from threats like viscous
domesticated cats - it avoids becoming redundant in this concept by depicting
both the family as grounded and ordinary as possible and by filtering this all
through the humour. There is something far and away more unsettling about the
family through how clinical they are rather than the tone of the film being as
completely sedate as its presentation is - the structure of the movie allowing
the absurdity of them to shine through whilst the family itself, with its
obsession with health and medical products, comes uncomfortable close to some
form of perverse inward strength of the family guiding them by not letting the
outside world corrupt them. Unlike Michael
Haneke, while sharing visual aesthetics with him, I don't feel like I being
forced fed heavy handed concepts because the humour provided makes the material
more provocative. The mirrored traits of classic surrealism also make it more
potent in themes, pieces of normalcy becoming mysterious objects or acts within
a new light. A phone is kept hidden in the parents' bedroom, the mother locking
herself in there when she need to phone the father, turning it into a secret
treasure for the children and emphasised by it being a dial-up phone on a cord,
causing it to have an archaic nature to it to add to the mystery. In their
world, it's perfectly natural that the mother could give birth to twins and a
dog for the children, warning she will give birth the twins if the daughters
don't behave better. The use of language as well is perfectly in synch to
surrealist writing, where the unexpected sexual enthusiasm of licking a
"keyboard" has the perverted touch of it whilst the changing of words
for others evokes, for myself anyway, René
Magritte's famous written words "This is not a pipe". Lanthimos' knack, with co-writers, for
intentionally stiff dialogue full of normal conversational pieces being
strangely emphasised is another gift to the film, one which survived the
transition to English for The Lobster
(2015) mainly because, unlike another non-English director who may falter,
it was intentionally awkward and mannered in any language. It even manages, in
an inspired twist, to absorb pop culture into an important plot point, the
viewing of Jaws (1975) and Rocky (1976) being the corrupting influence
on the older sister, drastically altering her language and creating a new vocabulary
of her own as a result onwards.
Technical Quality:
The style of Dogtooth - sedate, minimal camera movement - is one I'm not
particularly fond of in most cases. It became common in a lot of the world art
films I watched made in the 2000s and grew more when the "Slow Cinema"
movement developed later in that decade in the films I than saw. Unless it's
pure bad luck to see a lot of the more staler examples of this aesthetic style
- single, still shots; modest editing which doesn't bring attention to itself;
naturalistic and even muted colour palettes - this style has unfortunately
cleansed away a lot of the unique, idiosyncratic voices you'd find in world
cinema decades before, more so especially as digital camera have become more
common. There are of course exceptions when the style is used well, and Yorgos Lanthimos uses it as his own
trademark, the stillness alongside a muted colour palette adding to the mundanely
of this family's own private world. He also uses it, with the use of cuts to
the next image within the same scene, to both create a greater shock from some
images but also, in the prolonged deadpan nature of some moments, a bigger
punch line for the humour.
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
It was an absolute guarantee that
this would be added to the list, placed entirely within a world (both of Lanthimos' and the central family) that
is familiar to the viewer with recognisable interactions and objects but
completely alien at the same time. The other factor is that, while there is a
narrative trajectory, it's a slight one completely open ended where it's the
character interactions themselves and the minor details in their lives that
become more important; perversely the same kind of material one can find in social
realist drama but found here within intentionally abstract dialogue and
behaviour. This didn't lose its teeth when it came to The Lobster either, becoming as strange with known actors as it
does with the commendable cast here.
Within a narrative where the only
possible escape for the children is when their juvenile dogteeth fall out,
allowing them to enter the outside world as adults in a perverted form of
reaching adulthood, it's as much the performances in this case that are as
important for the abstract tone to work. Angeliki
Papoulia particularly as the older sister stands out, as the one who
becomes more rebellious and independent as the film progresses - stabbing her
brother in the hand for having a toy aeroplane and later in a memorable moment
dancing wildly at the parent's wedding university in a spasm against their will
- but everyone has to make the world credible even if its humorous. It's funny,
to emphasis to his children that the outside world is fraught with killer
animals to keep them within the home, that to get a toy plane from beyond the
gate the father has to get into the car and drive a few inches, pick the toy
up, and then drive back into the home environment, but to make this work with
some credibility the muted performances are done seriously rather than acted
out as silly. The grimness of the material alongside its humour is enforced by
this, adding to the weirdness of the piece, more so when the outsider Christina
decides to take advantage of the children for her own desires, adding a macabre
nature to the material where there is no definite good or bad person in the
narrative, only individuals who act both like the viewer but also strangely. Again,
when you get to Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in The Lobster acting the same way, the strangest of the material they
had is reflected both in them rather than unknowns in the roles but also the
style Lanthimos has created over the
films. This also adds to the transgressive nature of the material as, acting
like children in adult bodies, aspects of the trio of children's' behaviour in
terms of violence and sexuality become much more provocative, from the
brother's almost slow witted naivety to the younger sister's instinctive
curiosity; it's not that far removed from the aforementioned film The Apple, which dealt with girls in
the Middle East who were less than ten years old, un-matured for children their
age kept from adapting to an outside world beyond their door, transported here
by the younger casts' memorable performances exactly by with more uncomfortable
consequences as a result of their ages and the things they feel as stunted
adults.
Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Surreal/Weird
Abstract Themes: Real Sex; Sexual
Kink; Language Manipulation; Adults as Children; Violence Against Animals;
Unexpected References To Pop Culture; Oppressive Suburban Environments; Incest;
Restricted and Closed-In Environments
Personal Opinion:
Between this and The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos is revealing himself already to be a completely
unique individual, one who could always prove to be interesting in the films he
makes over the next few years. Lanthimos
stands out more so out of directors I look to with interest, and could join as
a personal favourite, because while it can be toe-curling and transgressive he
is deliberately humorous in his work, not merely able to spice films with dark
humour like a Lars von Trier would
but clearly making a comedy here with Dogtooth
as he is a satire. I tend to neglect comedy, not because I am a lifeless
cynic but because comedy springs usually in a twisted way from some of the
directors I already like; again, Lanthimos
is pretty bleak with the humour in a film like Dogtooth but he's clearly entrenched in comedy as a genre more than
with other directors even if some may be appalled by the jokes he is telling.
He also emphasises that Greek
cinema, in what I've seen, is a place unexpected in its willingness to deal
with un-naturalistic tones and styles to depict real issues in their society. For
a country that has dealt with a military dictatorship and economic collapse
amongst many other things, their cinema which gets acclaimed is provocative
and/or willing to use anything from magic realism to pastiche to make a point. The
late Theo Angelopoulos had little qualms with his dramas touching upon dream
sequences or very strange imagery, whilst the late Nikos Nikolaidis was willing to be controversial in the couple of
films I've managed to see of his, his Singapore
Sling (1990) as blood brother of Dogtooth
but one that decided to go for the same tonal interests by way of a perverse
film noir parody. Lanthimos is one of
a few directors within the recent decade, films I still need to see, who've
desired to break from any form of modesty and politeness in the films they are
making and, considering the history and social background I don't have that a
person from Greece would, it would be just as interesting to see what Greeks
think of these films and how a film like Dogtooth
would hit them. Would it be a strange movie or would it hit harder for
someone who spoke the same language?
