AFTERTHOUGHTS (78)
SATOSHI KON:
BEYOND IMAGINATION

For those of you down New York way, June 27 to July 1, 2008, will see a mid-career retrospective of Satoshi Kon’s anime work.
All four of Kon’s animated feature films (Perfect Blue, Sennen Joyu, Tokyo Godfathers, and Paprika) as well as sections of TV series Moso Dairinin (Paranoia Agent), will be screened at the Walter Reade Theater.

Kon will take part in an onstage conversation with the Lincoln Center’s Film Society program director Richard Peña, following the 6:15PM screening of Paprika on June 27, Friday.
Kon’s artwork will also be on display in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery, adjacent to the Walter Reade Theater lobby, from June 27 through July 15.

Needless to say, I am envious of all you Big Apple Kon die-hards…
You can go here for more details, and to purchase tickets online.

Parting shot: A review of Paprika can be found in the Archive.

(Images courtesy of perfectblue.com; animeshade.com [Millennium Actress]; impawards.com [Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika OS’s]; and paranoiaagent.com.)

INLAND EMPIRE
(Review)

If you are—as I am—a David Lynch devotee, you’ll understand when I say that sometimes, to even attempt a brief synopsis of his films is sheer folly. Well, Inland Empire is one of those times.
The best I can say is, Nikki Grace (Lynch collaborator and co-producer Laura Dern) is an actress poised for a career-defining role, via the project On High in Blue Tomorrows, directed by Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons).

Now, since this is a Lynch film, this is hardly the only thing Inland Empire is about. Lynch’s latest is a three-hour odyssey that twists its way deep into one of the director’s labyrinthine cinematic constructs where the terms “time” and “linear narrative” are meaningless.
All things Lynchian are here: the odd tangents in conversation; characters moving and dancing backwards; the eerie, unsettling soundscapes; the set-up from his bizarre sitcom Rabbits; the dream logic; the strobes; the beautiful women. All these and more keep us company as the film’s narrative slips and slides across the screen in that peculiar, surreal hopscotch way that is vintage Lynch.

Inland Empire is also a chance to spend time with some great performers, from more past Lynch collaborators—Twin Peaks’ Grace Zabriskie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’s Harry Dean Stanton, Mulholland Drive’s Justin Theroux, and Wild At Heart’s Diane Ladd (also Dern’s mother)—to newcomers to the Lynch universe like Cabin Fever’s Jordan Ladd and a nearly unrecognizable Julia Ormond. (There are also some great, but brief cameos that I’ll keep under my hat for your maximum, delighted surprise.)

Additionally, this is, hands down, one of the scariest horror movies I’ve seen in many a moon.
That could be an odd statement, but if you consider that many of Lynch’s feature films function like art house horror movies—they expertly rivet the audience to a place of pure dread and foreboding, without resorting to masked killers, long-haired contortionist ghosts, or psychopathic torturers—I think it’s a fair assessment.
The fact that Inland Empire can, in some sections, both scare and unsettle, while in others, move emotionally, is testament to Lynch’s artistry and genius (and Dern’s amazing turn).

The beauty of a storyteller like David Lynch is that, I know I can give him my hand and my complete trust, certain that no matter how dark things become, no matter how strange and uncertain the turns the tale takes get, that the end point will always be a place where things will make some sort of bizarre sense.
The feeling I get with Lynch is that he will always take my hand and allow my fingers to feel the edges of the narrative, and from there, give me enough to intuit the story he is telling, to feel the tale’s geography so I can fathom it in its entirety and make of it what I will.
As clumsy as my attempts are to convey my feelings of a Lynchian experience, film critic Michael Atkinson puts it in these terms, “[Inland Empire is] one of the rare films that teaches you—obliquely—how to watch it.”
I think Atkinson’s sentiment is the same thing I was talking about, but put in his words, and I think it’s a common characteristic of all of Lynch’s films. It’s all in there, hidden in the shadows of the creepy, surreal bits, all there for us to find, so long as we’re alert, and aware, and willing to look towards the dark for the answers.

Watching Inland Empire is like stepping through a massive cobweb. Walking away, you still feel the strands and shreds clinging to you, and try as you might, your mind still tells you they’re there, on your skin, even after you’ve frantically brushed yourself off.
Actually, the best of Lynch’s ouevre can leave you with that feeling. The fact that Inland Empire is a three-hour mainline of Lynchian sensibilities just makes it stand out all the more.

Now, given that one of Inland Empire’s backdrops is the equally surreal world of Hollywood film-making, it cannot help but recall Mulholland Drive. But there are also elements and flourishes that hearken back to Lost Highway, as well as Satoshi Kon’s brilliant anime mindf*ck, Perfect Blue.
If you loved any (or all) of the above, chances are, you’ll love Inland Empire too.

Parting shot: And if you thought Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko and Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever cast rabbits in a sinister light, well think again…

Parting shot 2: This is the first film Lynch chose to shoot on digital, and the results are just as visually arresting as his previous works.

(Inland Empire OS and UK quad courtesy of impawards.com; DVD cover art of Limited Edition Two-Disc Set courtesy of amazon.com; image courtesy of ifc.com.)

PAPRIKA
(Review)

I will freely admit I am not a big anime freak. In fact, I came to anime by way of my being a film geek (and a gaggle of college friends who were big anime freaks).
Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira opened the doors for me, of course, as it did for so many others. But my anime hero is, hands down, Satoshi Kon.
Even since he blew me away with Perfect Blue, Kon has consistently amazed and impressed me with his work: Sennen Joyu (Millennium Actress), Tokyo Godfathers, and the 13-part Moso Dairinin (Paranoia Agent).
Now he’s back with Paprika, and I’m just now picking my jaw up from off the floor.

Paprika opens with a familiar circus gag: a clown unfolding himself from out of a car that is far too small to have contained him in the first place. This is, of course, a visual cue to one of the film’s themes: how something vast like dreams can be contained in the tiny vessels of our minds.
Paprika is about the DC Mini, a groundbreaking invention that allows two individuals to share a common dream. Much like the scenario posited in Tarsem Singh’s The Cell, one person can enter the subconscious of another, and interact, not just with that person, but with his dreaming mind as well.
While a Detective Konukawa—stumped on a murder case he is investigating—is helped by the eponymous Paprika, who enters his dreams to see whether the problem is rooted there, a number of DC Minis are stolen from the company developing the technology. Soon, dreams are used to invade people’s psyches, trapping them in a waking state of delusion and mad ramblings, a chilling precursor to a more widespread epidemic that will threaten the very fabric of reality.

While in past films like Perfect Blue and Sennen Joyu, Kon has mined the idea of fiction intruding on reality (and vice versa) and utilized it as a narrative device, in Paprika, he takes that theme and places it at the very heart of the work.
There, at the dreaming center of Paprika, that theme plays with the other ideas that bubble beneath its animated skin—the parallels between dreams and the Internet; truth that can spring from fiction; dream as film and film as modern man’s repository of dreams—and produces a brilliant piece of inspired storytelling that is the latest gem in Kon’s dazzling body of work.

As with all of his films, Paprika is a visually arresting piece, the dreamscapes on view utilizing motifs from myth, fairy tales, and film (which, of course, serves the same purpose today that myths and fairy tales used to in the past). Appropriately enough, the dreams we get to see in the film are unsettling and disturbing, and Kon rifles through imagery normally associated with children (circuses and dolls and parades) and extracts their inherent sinister qualities to suit his storytelling purposes.

But above and beyond the visual, what probably draws me to Kon the most is his clear love of film and how he draws on that for his anime.
In Perfect Blue, he brought Hitchcock and giallo to the animated film in a razor-edged mindf*ck that constantly shifted between fiction and reality as a J-pop singer trying to segue into acting becomes embroiled in murder. In Sennen Joyu, an aging film star reminisces about her past, her life and her films intertwining to form one long, shining reel of memory. In Tokyo Godfathers (clearly a play on a cinematic tradition that stretches back to the 1936 Western, Three Godfathers), three of Japan’s homeless find an infant during Christmas and become the child’s unlikely guardians.
In each of these anime, film is either a crucial plot element or an obvious inspiration, and it is partly because of this clear love for the medium that Kon’s works play so differently than those of other anime heavyweights like Otomo or Miyazaki. There is also clearly a postmodern bent to Kon’s storytelling that serves to elevate his work even more above the average anime.
What can I say? I love his stuff.

Of course, one could argue that Paprika is not his best work—and I’d agree. But as it stands, Paprika is nonetheless better than your average anime, and is another excellent masterwork from Kon. Certainly worth a look, even if you aren’t particularly an anime geek.

(Paprika OS courtesy of impawards.com; image courtesy of outnow.ch.)

SHADOWS
ON THE
SHOWER
CURTAIN
(A Psycho
Retrospective)

Dedicated to the memory of Janet Leigh, whose final film role was, appropriately enough, opposite real-life daughter (and fellow Scream Queen) Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween: H20.

Note: This retrospective assumes that the reader has seen either version of Psycho, or is at least familiar with its plot.

“Mother! Oh God! Mother! Blood! Blood!”

From the opening title sequence designed by Saul Bass, orchestrated to the screeching violins of Bernard Herrmann, all the way to the final shot of the car being pulled from the swamp, Psycho is a riveting and unforgettable cinematic experience.
By now, nearly 50 years after its initial release, many are aware of it, even if they’ve never actually seen the 1960 original. Some may have seen the color remake by Gus Van Sant, starring Anne Heche, Vince Vaughn, and Viggo Mortensen in his pre-Aragorn days. There may even be some film students out there who’ve studied the editing of the famous shower stabbing frame by frame, and never bothered to watch the entire film. Their loss.
And, barring all of that, you may have just heard Janet Leigh’s immortal shower scream from a nearby cellphone. Ah, the wonders of modern technology.

“We have twelve vacancies. Twelve cabins, twelve vacancies.”

There are very few individuals who may wish to refute, or even debate, the genius of Alfred Hitchcock as a film director. And in handling the suspense thriller, there are even fewer who can come close to his masterful technique and his uncanny ability to keep the audience at the edge of their proverbial seats.
Consider that in the nearly half-century since its release, Psycho has become known as the granddaddy of the slasher film; the daddy, being John Carpenter’s Halloween. But note that Psycho lacks one of the by-now traditional staples of the slasher film: the chase sequence. Nowhere in the film do we see Norman Bates in a cheap wig and his mother’s clothes stalking either of the Crane sisters down the halls and rooms of the Bates house. Think about it, a suspense thriller without a single chase scene.
Instead, what we have is the spectre of pursuit, the feeling of being on the run, as Marion Crane drives down stretches of the American Interstate with nothing for company except the imagined voices of lovers, co-workers, policemen, and used car salesmen, with Bernard Herrmann’s hauntingly insistent string section for musical accompaniment.
Another of Psycho’s brilliant achievements is that it is successful in making the audience identify with a less-than-sterling individual as the apparent main protagonist of the tale. Yes, Marion Crane is no murderer; she is simply a person placed in the barreling way of temptation, and who succumbs, mistakenly thinking that $40,000 can buy off her unhappiness (and her lover’s debts).
Still, this was no Jimmy Stewart, the good man unwittingly pulled into mystery and intrigue and danger (as in Hitchcock’s brilliant Rear Window, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2004). This was not even Tippi Hedren in The Birds. This was a woman who stole $40,000. And she was our heroine.
Until the shower scene.

“It’s not as if she were a maniac. A raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes.”

And here, again, Hitchcock subverts, because, the instant we recover from the shock of Marion Crane’s sudden demise, we realize we are without anyone to identify with.
Then, bizarrely, we find ourselves identifying with Norman, who, after all, is only cleaning up. Only doing what a loving, dutiful son would to protect his mother, regardless of how psychotic she may be. Our breath even hitches, as Norman’s does, when Marion’s car stops sinking into the swamp for a second or two.
It is only once the film is over that we realize, for a certain window of Psycho’s running time, before we are introduced to Lila Crane, that we actually identified with the killer. That, in the end, Hitchcock actually did get us to identify, even if only briefly, with a murderer.

“My mother, uh, what is the phrase? She isn’t quite herself today.”

And of course, there’s the cross-dressing.
Keep in mind, this was 1960. Reportedly, the on-screen toilet flushing was already a big deal. Here, not only did we have a loony stabbing women in the shower, but we had a loony stabbing women in the shower while he was dressed up as his mother!
Thankfully, the psychosexual basis for Norman’s pathology is neatly mapped out in the film’s denouement; in the history of serial killer films, Norman Bates is one of the few whose pathology we are actually privy to.
Additionally, Anthony Perkins’ performance affords Norman Bates a very lonely and fragile vulnerability. We understand the trap he was born in, we sympathize with his predicament, at least until we realize just how disturbed the poor man really is.

“Well, a… a boy’s best friend is his mother.”

It is in Hitchcock’s skilled manipulation and subversion of audience expectations that Psycho finds one of its main strengths, and its influence can be seen in the early giallo of Dario Argento—who, in turn, according to writer Douglas E. Winter, has influenced “more directors of horror films since Hitchcock himself”—as well as more recent works like Satoshi Kon’s razor-edged anime, Perfect Blue, and Takashi Miike’s wildly disturbing Audition (both films also clearly influenced by Argento).
Psycho is a film that holds up well for its age—which is, I suppose, the true definition of the term “classic”—the sort of suspense thriller you can watch repeatedly, even if you already know exactly how it all turns out. According to Steven H. Scheuer’s Movies on TV and Videocassette, it “… broke all of the existing rules for horror films and filmmakers,” and “… set the standard for a generation of new ones,” claims that I can only agree with without reservation.

Author’s note: giallo – moody and violent suspense thriller from the Italian school of horror

(Psycho Italian OS courtesy of movieposterclassics.com and Psycho DVD cover art courtesy of ropeofsilicon.com.)