Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with yet more coverage from this year's Toronto Film Festival, which from all accounts was a grand slam this year. We have the Crippled Avenger (which one, exactly I'm not sure... I'm partial to the no-legs avenger myself) who wrote up that great South Korea column I posted last night with a new report on some Japanese flicks. Of the below 3 films I have seen ZEBRAMAN (fuckin' weird-o Miike at his best) and GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE (beautiful, beautiful film). I'm very much looking forward to STEAMBOY, especially after reading the below review. Enjoy!
Continuing my Toronto coverage, and staying in East Asia, let's go from South Korea to Japan.
3 from Japan: GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE, STEAMBOY, ZEBRAMAN
GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE (Japan)
How fitting that Sky Captain just came out, because it parallels beautifully GITS2. In both we have entirely CG backgrounds, and the only difference between the two is that while in Sky Captain the foregrounds are live action, in GITS2, they are hand-drawn animation. The geeks have been proclaiming the brilliance of the look of this film ever since reviews starting popping up, and it will be strange if anyone ever contradicts that. Watching this film is a remarkable gift to the eyes of a cineaste. The main way of communicating this to those who have yet to see it is that, when the imagery is only background—that is, only CG—the imagery is photorealistic. There were multiple moments in the beginning of this film where I would have been fully comfortable seeing live action actors walk across the background, and I would scarcely have blinked. The background CG is that photorealistic! It is a beauty to behold, and since its praises have already been sung countless times, let’s switch to another topic.
The other assault on the senses (in a good way) that GHOST gives us is aurally, and it is no less impressive than the visuals. There are two cues in the score in particular, both choral, that are stunning in the way they sweep over your ears. The first is heard in the opening and closing credits, and is an extremely powerful mixture of orchestra and chorus. The second is equally impressive, heard especially in the final act, during the action set pieces. I cannot recall whether the entire score is consistently remarkable, but these two cues are beautiful beyond description.
Multiple reviews posted so far have been critical of the overabundant philosophy in GHOST. I completely disagree, and yet am also critical of the philosophy. My issue is not with the overabundant philosophy at all, but rather with the quality of it. Some reviewers, and one in particular, have gone as far as to state that animators should stop pretending to be philosophers! This horrifies me. My favorite type of film is a mixture of high-brow ideas with down-to-earth, B-movie type conventions that are played with. To suggest that less philosophy is needed in movies in a world with Hollywood’s crap (and to take responsibility, our asking for that crap by continuing to support it) is a shocking statement to me. I completely disagree, and praise the film for its heavy use, and it is abundant, of philosophy.
But the philosophy in INNOCENCE, in my opinion, is rather repetitive, not only of itself, but more damagingly of the original GHOST. The themes in philosophy covered in GHOST (nature of humanity, being on a continuum instead of dichotomous in definition, the theological questions this raises (our role as immoral gods to creations—AI—that we are not mature enough to support beyond initial creation), etc., etc.) were adequately dealt with in that film, and INNOCENCE should have either expanded into new territory or developed entirely new themes and question, in my opinion. Instead, it appears to act as if the question were not dealt with at all in the first film, as if no progress has been made on these issues. While the argument can be made that this is justifiable philosophically (there are no answers, etc.), I would disagree with that argument. For example, Matrix, dealing with the same themes, originally presented AI to the audience as enemies to be defeated, but grew through Reloaded and Revolutions to accept AI as co-existent life-forms in a fragile peace pact, capable of emotions and other supposedly ‘humane’ dimensions. Spielberg/Kubrick’s A.I. took this same positive view of AI, and provided its proposed answers to these questions (the growth of AI to ‘humane’ capabilities). My problem with INNOCENCE is that its philosophy makes no headway (in my opinion) from its predecessor, and is thus, almost by definition, ‘bad’ philosophy.
I would also take issue with the way the philosophy is presented in the film, often through quotations of past authors (many, if not most of them European, curiously enough), such as Milton. Quoting long-dead philosophers does not philosophy make. On the other hand, a recent reviewer on AICN has pointed out that with a collective memory that most humans/cyborgs have access to in the GHOST universe, it makes sense that they would quote the masters rather than say it less eloquently themselves.
GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE is an awesome movie, and there is NOT too much philosophy in it. Audiences that want more fight scenes, quicker pacing, and no philosophy have thousands of films, including animated ones, to pick from. Criticizing INNOCENCE for being ‘too philosophical’, is, in my opinion, misinformed and counter-productive. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
STEAMBOY (Japan)
STEAMBOY lacks the glossy, showy sheen of INNOCENCE, but perhaps as a result is more consistent in its imagery, and thus, its world. Irregardless, the animation is beautiful in its own right, fully worthy of much praise. There, it is praised.
What is far greater in STEAMBOY, compared to INNOCENCE, is the score, which is consistently mind-blowing. I will be getting this soundtrack, and this is certainly one of the best scores of the year. There is particularly one long cue in the very long third act of the film that was so good it actually pulled me out of the storyline just so that I could appreciate it for itself (ok, technically that means it wasn’t good, since a score is supposed to support the film and story). The fact that the film was presented at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, a beautiful concert hall modified for films just for the festival, perhaps added to this, since the acoustics were already helping the composer along well enough. The thing I take away from STEAMBOY more than anything else is this wondrous, phenomenal score.
As for the story, it was entertaining to be sure. The three-generation story of grandfather scientist (science for the good of humanity), father scientist (science for war and profit), and the boy, all with the surname Steam, gives us a nice parallel story arc, not to mention a perfect template to explore generational themes, which Otomo successfully takes up with great skill. The film comments often on the role of science, and the time setting for the film, early 20th century, is wonderful for such a discussion. While the character of Scarlett O’Hara (seriously, that’s her name) was designed to be aggravating to the audience, it might have been overdone a bit, at least for me (but then, I really clash with that personality type).
The film flows through its first two acts with nary a bump, but its final, third act, which is for the most part a non-stop battle scene, seemed to me to go on for at least 40 minutes, and perhaps even an hour (I have no idea how long it was, but that’s what it felt like). This might well give STEAMBOY the record for one of the longest sustained battle sequences in cinematic history, and perhaps that’s for a reason. There were two or three times, at least, during this very long, drawn out battle that I felt were good times to cut and wrap up the story, but no, the battle continued, doubling what I thought would have been sufficient to the narrative and themes of the flick. I’ve always wanted my battle sequences longer (Helm’s Deep, etc.), but STEAMBOY has made me realize that PJ and others have kept their battle scenes limited for good reason, after 30-40 minutes of continuous fighting, battles can get very repetitive. I never thought I would say this, but my main complaint here is that the fighting (and the third act) goes on far, far too long.
Nevertheless, the film is far above the norm in both anime and cinema at large. The crowd I was with in particular went nuts for the film, and the screening was definitely a success. As a barometer, it should be noted that I worship Miyazaki but have never really seen the attraction to Otomo’s AKIRA.
ZEBRAMAN (Japan)
All hail Miike!!!! There are the great filmmakers in history, the Fellinis, the Truffauts, the Scorseses and Spielbergs and onwards. But they all take years to complete a film. If the measure of a filmmaker’s natural talent is to be judged in consistently high-quality cinema, than quantity matters too, and so I praise God that my tastes allow me to appreciate the universe of Miike, because this man is arguably the most consistently creative, original, unique filmmaker I have ever discovered. If the masters of cinema had to make as many films as Miike does on an annual basis, I doubt many of their movies would look any better than student films. This man is a god among men, and ZEBRAMAN does nothing to show otherwise.
ZEBRAMAN, like almost all Miike, however, has one ‘caveat’ to its brilliance—it needs to be seen in a crowd (with the right crowd), not alone at home, and it needs to be seen late at night, after a full day of sampling other films. Unlike any other director I know (ok, Leone), Miike’s films thrive on energy and fuel of cinema as a whole, so that all of his films ‘taste’ best after at least drinking one film, and preferably a bunch of films earlier that day. If I were a director, I would be terrified to show my work right after a Miike film, but I think any film actually becomes better in the memory of an audience when it is followed by Miike, because his over-pouring love of the moving image is so infectious it works backwards through time to support everything that came before it. Looking around the theater, I saw with the young crowd a whole bunch of older, regal, arty, white-haired men and women laughing along with the rest of us, with the gleeful smile that one can always see on other people’s faces watching Miike at work. How awesome that despite his censorship-fucking tastes, Miike’s cinematic punch is so strong that cineastes that would otherwise not be caught dead in a film like ZEBRAMAN so easily get charmed into his universe—and how remarkable that one can speak of the ‘charm’ of Miike, given his Ichi the Killer universe.
Enough about the miracle that is Miike. ZEBRAMAN in particular is light-hearted fare, a comedy on all levels. Occurring in the Miike universe, the film starts off in what appears to be the real world, but at any moment, it would not upset the balance of the film at all if say, a green CG alien suddenly walked across the screen. Oh wait, that does happen, and with his universe so deftly created, no one questions it in the slightest. ZEBRAMAN made me particularly aware of the sympathy and respect Miike has for his characters. Zebraman himself, who in the real world would be a freak and a laughing stock, in Miike’s universe is a hero right from the beginning, even in his mild-mannered daily teacher alias form, when he is stepped on by his peers and his students. When we first see him trying on his zebra costume, he practices his moves, ‘Zebra back-kick!’, announcing their names as he executes them, but he is clumsy and the moves are harmless. Likewise his foes, wearing Power Rangers quality uniforms (a man wearing a polystyrene crab mask, for example), are straight from the ‘70’s Japanese TV shows Miike is having fun with, but it is never mocking them, because we see the humanity behind these people. We sympathize with them and even root for them, since they look like they’re having so much fun in their own little worlds. Then, when the Zebra back-kick is all of a sudden the real thing, dangerous and lethal, it is the most natural thing in the world, as if it is no big deal that a transition has been made.
The Coen Brothers could take a lot of lessons from Miike. I think that what they’ve been trying and achieving only sometimes in their careers is continuously and effortlessly achieved by Miike. ZEBRAMAN is like the dream of the Coen Brothers—the film they imagine and try, succeeding 90% of the way, to realize on celluloid. In THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, the UFO that suddenly appears out of nowhere is the essence of the Miike universe, but in Miike’s hands, it is so accepted and normal for such interruptions of normal reality to occur that its natural and lacks the artifice of much of the Coen Brothers similar attempts (THE BIG LEBOWSKI being their greatest achievement and closest realization of occupying, simultaneously, the real and the cinematic-fantasy world).
ZEBRAMAN is hilarious, a comedy that works on every level, including satire and a constant assault of small, subtle in-jokes (of which I only caught a minute fraction, I’m sure), it’s also among the most kid-friendly of his films yet, and a liberal family unafraid of showing risky stuff to their kids would do well to open the minds of their little ones with this flick. ZEBRAMAN works so well, I think, because of Miike’s underrated and underappreciated focus and sympathy with his characters, who truly are fleshed out, developed people. Like Stephen King in literature (pre-90’s), Miike’s reputation is for shock and quirkiness, while his far-above-average mastery of character development and realistic, human direction goes unappreciated. He is one of our best, and I hope he never slows down.
See ZEBRAMAN. I guarantee, even if you’ve hated every Miike film you’ve seen before, that you’ll love it (try to see it with a crowd if possible).
Next up:
3 from China: THROWDOWN, BREAKING NEWS, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS
--Crippled Avenger
