The secret of the dark room

Emotionally macabre. The scary thing is how does this film get me to empathize to actually truly feel the sorrow and sadness for these deplorable pathetic irredeemably selfish toxic deranged lost souls?

 

Daguerrotype (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a gothic ghost story through which Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to themes of men with obsessive inabilities to relinquish their chokehold on the past on a woman on their delusional fragile identities lost intwined therein. Who cares right?
     Me. I’m into these loser goth boy crybaby fables. So emo. The dark room is such a great image system in Daguerrotype. It’s STÉPHANE HEGRAY’S troubled psyche. Stéphane has this fixation on daguerreotypes as a figurative manifestation of his paralyzing desire to preserve a foregone past ultimately to the point beyond which it may even have existed. A past where he seeks to objectify immobilize immortalize the women in his life closest to him. And as he’s losing his hold on it he drinks himself away losing his hold on reality on himself on his health on life.
     But this dark room image system also serves a secondary function. JEAN is this young either too lazy or too desperate to earn an honest living drifter type whose morally polluted psyche is just as dark as Stéphane’s. Daguerrotype lays out this whole climate of young men not being able to find any work resorting to drastic means giving up or compromising to survive. Again this unemployment horror is more profoundly disturbing than Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supernatural flourishes but they’re not competing they’re in balance with one another. I just can’t resist stressing how effective they are.
     So in contrast the other image system is MARIE as bright room. In the second half notice how she literally brightens the room with gold light when Jean goes there. But there’s also the contrast between her father Stéphane’s passion hobby this cold inanimate poison antique with hers botany nurturing this living regenerative life giving delicate greenhouse. And of course the outcome of improper disposal of the waste from the mercury.
 
When photographing Marie why does Stéphane build that life size daguerreotype though? The answer probably isn’t worth spelling out. That’s the kind of ambiguity Kiyoshi Kurosawa is master of. Does Stéphane actually see the ghost of Marie? Why doesn’t Jean? Why do we hear her say Dad? Who was the young woman the appraiser sees upstairs? DENISE?
     The tragic irony is in the dark room the master passes down everything to the apprentice. The powerful way it does so is it’s unbeknownst to Jean until it’s too late. And even then he probably never realizes it. Covering it up burying it under his own self-delusion. Psychologically so on point it stays with you the antithesis of beauty. 

motives patterns and continuity

Shochiku. Lavish production values. First of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s late masterpieces. There’s always been something about the police procedural genre of movies that has this familiar cozy nostalgic inviting intellectual sensation of relaxed paced learning where the journey is the reward as much as if not more than the outcome.

     Creepy (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a studio movie. Wall to wall emotional underscoring emphasizes the suspense cuing us when and how to respond. Instantly and thoroughly accessible engaging. Broad. Unabashedly crowd pleasing. Until it isn’t.
 

The procedural makes detectives of us all. At that house in Hino City who were those five bodies? Or for that matter this might be obnoxious of me to ask but if they were vacuum sealed in those body bags why does NOGAMI have that repulsive retch smell reaction in the house? It’s the three Hondas and two Mizutas right? No these questions aren’t important. Aren’t as compelling as.
     What hold does NISHINO have over MIO? When he gives her Nogami’s gun we notice how she doesn’t for a second seem to consider using it on him. How does she still go to school every day?  Why wasn’t SAKI HONDA susceptible to Nishino’s influence even though the rest of her family was? How was she allowed to live? What does she remember? 
     Before I get any further it’s worth mentioning that Creepy isn’t grounded in the verisimilitude of what we might call the real world nor is its logic what we might call accessible. It’s cinematic which is better. Embrace artifice and you won’t be disappointed. The ways the lives of Mio Saki YASUKO and TAKAKURA are affected is what’s relevant here. 
 
Nishino is the embodiment of Evil. He only wears black. He only gets others to enact his heinous crimes. Although never called heroin by name he uses so called shots to enslave his victims. This figure through cinema is a symbol of the psychological anomaly in society that makes men evil. 
     But the big twist thematic conceit of the film is what does pure evil really want? To have his own happy family. To live right next door to you. To have the perfect little life we all want. And that’s what’s so scary. Antisocial Personality Disorder psychopath doesn’t fit the profile categories of motives patterns or continuity because he wants to be just like you. 
     As trad as Creepy starts off the second half and into the final act the façade shatters. Just like Nishino. And it will be because he pushes it too far. Just as the narrative does. The narrative transgresses by pushing us too far. It operates on our limits until we can’t take anymore either. It doesn’t play fair. 
 
The circumstances under which we may observe Nishino preying upon Yasuko is sublime. There are two key scenes between just she and he where the color is boosted. The greens of the grass and skintones saturated for a brief moment in this otherwise subdued washed out palette. Why? Even the filmmaking techniques are pushed too far.
 
In closing some movie nerd miscellany. In that trope scene where Nishino and Takagawa see who can get Yasuko to choose between them the cut does this thing I know Kiyoshi Kurosawa does in his later work I have been obsessed with for a while and haven’t spoken with anyone else about or read about in any helpful way but I wanna call it a match reverse.
     Specifically a wide where the perspective although it may contain depth is flat in the sense of frontal geometrically even horizontally. So when it cuts to the reverse each of the bodies of the characters are shown in the exact same size of the previous composition and placement in said previous frame. My guess is they have a video playback person put an overlay on the image to achieve this. I don’t know if I’m even properly describing this. But anyways. 
     Also around the midpoint when Nogami opens that sliding heavy metal door it totally gives The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper) iconic vibes. Even more so because like in that movie he enters without being invited in and no one is around. That hypnotic yellow pinwheel fan spinning. If I said it was reminiscent of the Texas tower windmills I’d be pushing it too far.

Finally a movie that shows how great suicide is

Tender sweet as a marshmallow over a crackling campfire. Childlike innocence imbued picaresque extended sleepovers ghost romance syllabus of spirituality.

 

The profound thesis of Journey to the Shore (2015, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is calm down even though I committed suicide it has nothing to do with you I did it for my own personal reasons I still love you watch me prove it to you. Its themes are how crucial resolution is to our spirit. 
     If Kiyoshi Kurosawa films tend to end with a symbolic or implied sense of where its characters are headed Journey to the Shore would be a sunset. Literally it has a sunset montage. With a dose of sentimental Hollywood-lite rom-com schmaltzy whimsicality indulging fantasy what life could have been playing house potential possibilities that never existed the film is exceedingly beautiful. Broken up into three parts Newspaper followed by Gyoza Maker then Physics Professor each conceals an underlying troublemaker antagonist in need of redemption. 
     The midpoint is when MIDORI gives into this flaw herself. Her insecurity turns to paranoia over TOMOKO which then backfires and turns into a bitterness not of a woman rival but of a woman she envies. The identical composition frontal direct reverse coverage heavy handedly suggests to us these two women are one and the same. But I doubt it’s just me who sees an unspoken spiteful arrogance in Tomoko’s delivery? Ultimately what this brings up is the withering motif Kiyoshi Kurosawa uses.
     How blissful the deterioration of the SHIMAKAGE flower wall is in contrast to Midori’s alarm waking her from her dream into nightmare reality disheveled flat and subtle shock horror of her dying houseplants. This cut erases time. When in commune with our spirit there is no such thing as time. 
 
Although we perish. Our bodies do. One day we will see our final sunset. Journey to the Shore is full of questions for us to ask ourselves like did we take care of everything we needed to while alive? Settle everything with our loved ones? Will they be okay after we’re gone? However many billion years old the Earth the Milky Way are they too will wither away yet the universe has only just begun.
     The third act in this spiritualscape has expanded so vastly with the inclusion of the waterfall cave pathway to the dead. When KAORU falls under scrutiny for coming to town on a bus with YASUKE it is now we who are tested as if are we going to now let ourselves be the ones who have to ruin everything by seeing this all as a lie? Kaoru’s husband is becoming something indescribable something hideous because he’s confused.
     Confusion. That husband foreshadows or confronts Midori with the threat of foreshadowing what can happen to her if she falls into this transcendental existential confusion. I think when she meets the ghost of her father he’s headed there too. All of this poison doom so dangerous becomes nothing though when we pass into the wide of that field with Midori and Yasuke walking and all those children play shooting guns at each other. It’s a paradise moment. And we’re ready for the sunset.
     Journey to the Shore is pretty powerful. Stays with you. It haunts us with our own regrets. If forces us to ask ourselves what we hold onto that we shouldn’t? What should we let go of?

Christie Smith SS26 Fashion Show

Were you apprehensive worried by the trailers that this looks too colorful too chaotic like a Joel Schumacher Batman mess? I was. Don’t worry. It’s not. 

 

I Love Boosters (2026, Boots Riley) is the kind of comedy Hollywood should have been making the whole time since the Golden Age. It’s also unbridled imagination hyperartificial final solution to the what if question. 
     Like Golden Age Screwball the comedy is the delivery system yet it has to be backed up by a character story. Clear as can be CORVETTE is against CHRISTIE SMITH. I Love Boosters is a Keke Palmer vehicle and rightly so. Has Demi Moore ever played a character anything like this? Her delivery elevates the Christie Smith character’s pseudointellectual narcissist powermad psychobabble cultleader influencer innovator disruptor pop messiah dictator hilariously sparklingly endearingly effective.
     The plot structure again like Golden Age screwball is busy. Hawksian screwball onslaught rambunctious fast-paced. But around the midpoint an element is introduced unbeknownst unannounced unexpectedly dynamic creative highly conceptual that it shapes the entire latter half into the stuff of awe dream cartoon and it lands. Call it what’s in the magic bag. But it’s staggeringly sci-fi impact is purposeful practical relevant pays off and far less convoluted oversaturated needlessly complicated as the multiverse trope problem plaguing the franchise houses. And speaking of Hollywood glut mediocre cashgrab comicbook slogs how does I Love Boosters do so much more and so better at half the runtime? 
 
The art direction’s intentionally excessive color palette is more aggressively monochromatic than anything since production designer director Bo Welch’s The Cat in the Hat (2003). But it serves the unified aesthetic of its milieu as extension of its subject matter. Fashion. Low class urban bitches. With all due respect to urban bitches.
     Does the ending work? As far as Corvette’s story yes adequately. About the political messages? There aren’t any silly this is an entertainment. And it’s intelligent. Like the way Hollywood used to be good at.
 
In closing. Random bits. The wall to wall expressionistic aggressive art score fits well. And the LaKeith Stanfield recurring plot device character offering soliciting the answers to the meaning of life’s questions along with accompanying leitmotif acoustic therapeutic escape is just that much more reason as a whole I Love Boosters is evidently every bit and more the comedy I dreamed it’d be.

4/21/2016 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

The holiday resort development is destroying Hikone Island

Sci-fi Freudian potboiler odyssey into unconscious into subconscious repressed trauma mystery romance. Real (2012, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is languid with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ability to maintain a consistent tone of existential dread doom escaping reality self-delusion ominous swirling whirlpool of oblivion in the best possible way.

 

Its tone is everything. Crappy low-budge cgi effects is better than spectacularly hi-tech effects any day. It’s more scary. It’s more fun. The disintegrating before our very eyes ATSUMI swiss cheese moment is more emotionally resonant. The philosophical zombies AI slop is the worst unsettling best way Real traps us in artificial horror.
     The confusing foggy narrative structure aims at conveying the labyrinth of our psychological emotional intrapersonal universe. How do you uncover a mystery that’s built out of fog? Does Atsumi’s dad chiding KOICHI about the irreversibly destructive damage his parents did to this place fifteen years ago have a clear analog irl? Does it need to? Does it matter?
     Also what’s the timeline here? Atsumi and Kiochi are twenty-five and met when they were ten? When all the stuff went down? That’s a lot of baggage. The Kiyoshi Kurosawa sunshine peering through motif recurring in this film tells us their future is bright though. After two hours of toxic sludge excavation what does that say about life though?

Can I start all over again?

Claustrophobic somber bleak domestic melodrama. Existential undertow dragging you into the abyss. Dive right in. How did the resolution in Tokyo Sonata (2008, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) make you feel? Cathartic? Exhilarated? Or worst. Life affirming? Okay have fun with that.

 

The mom holds everything together. Tokyo Sonata is about power structures. Dismantling authority. Or keeping up appearances in order to preserve said authority. Or in its nuanced portrait of this nuclear family both.
     The climax Tokyo Sonata builds to is the mother father and youngest son all make an attempt to escape but are unable to as if they have a biological shock collar that prevents them from doing so. The moral paradox society is built on values encompassing family and government yet despite what happens when these are corrosive destructive within they still serve their purpose. And dare I say a greater good. Structurally there’s some fun stuff to delve into.
     The obvious is the contrast between the dad hiding losing his job and the youngest son hiding taking piano lessons. The dad going from salaryman breadwinner to bum is a variation of an anxiety Kiyoshi Kurosawa mines on other occasions. And it remains more unsettling than his supernatural existential horror. But there’s a huge twist here. Just observe where he’s at after that four months later jump and you’ll see what I mean. Anyway the mom seeing the dad at the hobocamp and discovering that the youngest son has been spending his lunch money on piano also feels like she’s in some remote way analogous to the uh USA.
     The mom collects intelligence. How? Unlike the dad she crosses borders. Like the US invading Afghanistan and Iraq she goes into both of their sons’ rooms. This sets up the uproarious irony that she actually succeeds in her campaigns whereas the oldest son literally joining up with the US Army deployed to the Middle East let’s say not so much.
     There’s also somewhat of an ironic twist with the home invasion brigand played by Kôji Yakusho. It’s like out of desperation the mom runs off with him only to be confronted with the harsh truth that he’s a failure at business and impotent so basically her husband. And that he’s a misanthrope and antisocial so basically her youngest son. Fate the architect of what it’s to be for her and there’s no escape. Although this does provide the catalyst for her arc growth assimilation acceptance appreciation.
 
Clearly the moral in the end of Tokyo Sonata is instead of trying to run away out of desperation and start over with a brand new life escaping your miserable old one what you really ought to do is love life and see that each new sunrise is an opportunity to start over by trying to do better. To be better. And how isn’t this life affirming?
     Because it’s too late. The authority has already been undermined. Even for me some of the ultradarkest humor is when the doc bandages up the youngest son the dad pushed down a flight of stairs says he has a concussion but otherwise he’s fine. Talking about a concussion like he skinned his knee falling of a tricycle. Think about it why after the boy’s finished with the recital does no one applaud?
 
Okay yes I guess my dark sense of humor is too morbid but get a load of how the mom has a nightmare of the oldest son coming home from the Middle East PTSD morally shattered because of killing too many people. Then the reality turns out far worse. Irony of ironies the mom reads that letter from the oldest son and the tone could be described as quaint perhaps we find out along with her that he’s doing well after being sent home by the Army.
     Except he instead chooses to join up with Islamic Extremist terrorists in Iraq just to get to learn what it’s like for them. I’m sorry that’s still the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

Little earthquakes

Tender heartwrenching nihilism tragedy. Mark Retribution (2006, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) slowburn burntout police procedural that turns out to be a ghost story whose thesis is boomer deranged psychopath mental asylum patient as the result of gentrification enacts full scale mass murder serial killer plot against the entire city.

     Such desperation is to be found in the source of the murder impulse here. Specifically the way Psychoghost is prisoner by her own decision in the liminal black soot sanitarium and each of her proxies were passengers on the Bayside Ferry commuters the only albeit distant contact with life outside. And if you put on your thinking cap this is a big outside motif here. As in outside of the awareness of abuse. Outside of mental illness. Outside of social interpersonal connection. You know stuff like that. Yet through a glass darkly in the blink of an eye we see her.

 
The homicidal cue that plagues the instruments of Psychoghost’s homicidal wrath stems from the vulnerability through which it’s channeled. Nobody notices me. So the variety of unsettling Kiyoshi Kurosawa conjures in Retribution is unreliable morality. And the ending is a knockout.
     Psychoghost’s spirit control killings are breadcrumbs to lead detective YOSHIOKA Kôji Yashuko to her. Most J-horror ghost stories much like our modern age of social media just want their voices to be heard. And the resolution we seem to get is that Psychoghost chose the detective because he probably something like morbidly refused to let go of his wife HARUE who as it turns out we didn’t know the whole time was also a ghost. So the super messed up ending is really Harue has to accept that although the detective has finally moved on which means she will no longer have to be his ghostwife he will most definitely be helping with Psychoghost’s killing spree.
     Yet most unsettling of all is we are never told what happened to Harue. That’s a choice. It’s intentional. It’s beyond ambiguous. It’s withheld. The floral dress print remains figure lying face down on the floor of the detective’s flat with the braided hair is most definitely the body of a child. I love that a dark secret can be a dark secret. It doesn’t matter what happened to Harue what matters is what it’s done to the detective. Except something else crazy to think about is Psychoghost probably knows and might even have added to her reasons for choosing him.
 
The other homicides are crucial. To repeat myself yet again it’s to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s strengths of somehow granting importance lived in character dynamic verisimilitude everyday relatability to all of his however small of their role supporting characters. Even though we know the impulse driving them is misguided rantings of a psychopath I still empathize if not condone at least what SAKUMA does.
     The doctor whose kid bullies him how can you not? When that snotty punk rudely asks his doctor dad for a hundred used syringes to pay off an upperclassman at the high school brings the gentrification angle into a parallel for degradation of society class family values. And I feel for the schlub. When schlub dad rams the plunger of anesthetics into the kid I swear the emotional underscoring facilitates relief disavowal approval resolution Retribution.

Midori swamp mummy

Lest my critical reach exceed my grasp Loft (2005, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) doesn’t play by the rules because the male impulse violence towards women doesn’t either. Two archetypes victim and aggressor. The timeworn inability for either of these two to recognize accept avoid or atone for their own accountability in this dynamic is used to foment the confusion we experience as viewer.

     Loft unravels two competing narratives. Is it about a thousand year old mummy who seems to be able to move around on her own when no one’s looking? Or is it about a murdered college girl who’s come back in a black dress in ghost form seeking a reconciliation for the fate she suffered? Think you can figure it out? Because on top of that there’s the impossible to answer question of who killed the college girl? Oh you’ll get answers. The problem is you get one too many.

The only way I can begin to make sense of Loft is if from across a vast distance the opening scene when REIKO coughs up black mud it’s the mummy drawing her to the rapey bnb to expose the tall dark stranger who somehow has to stand trial as being held accused of centuries of male abuse assault denial getting away scot free showing no outward remorse using his looks and charm to elude justice and prolong the cycle ensuring the threat of perpetrating said atrocities on the next victim until he’s stopped. I think the archetypes reappear as familiar patterns because they’re interchangeable between those who are good and evil. The morality is gray. In real life it’s this sense of this happens to all of us not only the other. Or in other words it begs us to relate to these participants more closely.
     Reiko finds that the rapey bnb she boards is where the college girl was housed by Reiko’s publisher KIJIMA who full on first degree MeTooed her we’re talking grooming sexual harassment employer employee power imbalance quid pro quo lucrative advancement dangling sexual assault murder dispose of the body type. And he has designs on pulling the same on Reiko obvi. Easy enough to follow yeah?
     Except the tall dark stranger YOSHIOKA not only sees Kijima murder her which now forces us to question the chronological order of where we thought we were in the timeline but the tall dark stranger after intervening and attempting to save her all of the sudden asks her if she’s the mummy. This sequence I submit as proof citing Loft utilizes these key elements of ambiguity to translate a sense of self denial and how physical romantic attraction and morality abnegate the culpability of the roles of individuals in these schemes.
     Finally my final entry in this line of questioning is the continually reoccurring instances of being misled into false endings. It seems like things are finally okay happily ever after but seldom or in the case of Loft never the case. One particular is so self consciously over the top Hollywood romantic swell score you see it coming a mile away. Good. Someone should for once. 
 
What’s scary is how far Reiko goes to accept forgive and forget about all the insanely heinous crap the tall dark stranger has done. He’s like I killed that girl she’s like cool no biggie. Hell in this movie I even almost wanna give the guy a pass. He’s that suave. Even though he lives with a thousand year old corpse he technically’s supposed to not remove from the institute in her environment controlled habitat but he instead sprits her to his home and constantly takes to hacking her up to find out if she’s full of mud.
     Okay so the mud. I wanna say the rich twenty year old hot corpse who while she was alive ingested hundreds of gallons of mud until her stomach and lungs exploded just to preserve her youthful beauty may have an agenda that broadens beyond revenge against abusive men. Not that that isn’t a huge part of it. I just kind of care more about her than any other character. When she’s shown for the first time and she doesn’t have eyes is one of the scariest things I ever seen. It troubles me but also desperately makes me wish someone would have saved her.
     I think the hotttie corpse is a good woman. And the black dress ghost is evil. As a man I want to save the hottie corpse but if a man would want to save black dress ghost she’d scoff at them as she openly declares her motives she wants to take them to hell. Yet each are victims of the same fate. Each perpetrated by a mirror effect good guy and a bad guy to a certain extent. Loft haunts me with the questions is there a difference morally to the fates of the hottie corpse and the black dress ghost? Is the publisher any worse than the tall dark stranger?

Become a bug

Personally there’s one type of horror movie I hold in the highest regard. It’s those that are relatable for me and express something found in my everyday existence but turn it into something extraordinary supernatural sci-fi or occult. The benchmark has always been Trouble Every Day (2001, Claire Denis). 
     Lately I’ve come to realize belatedly Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Stanely Kubrick) is a horror film. That along with Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me (1992, David Lynch) both have this emotional accessibility frightening reality relevance yet separate from what I found in Trouble Every Day. I mean I’m not going to get too personal here gross but Trouble Every Day has some insight into this secret internal woven into the very fabric of my nature portentous confrontational excavation tool at its disposal.
     Where else can I find more of that I’ve kept asking. Just did. In some low budge almost skipped it J-horror little oddity treasure jackpot from the early aughts.

House of Bugs (2005, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) presents two distinct parallel narratives each subjective and contrary to one another. He said she said. And they’re both unreliable. Oh and even better nonlinear. 
     The plot centers around a married couple codependent toxic manipulative creatures through which mutual attraction is depicted as predatory emotionally abusive complete submission control captive prisoners the only way to win is who is able to cut the other from life and prey upon their trapped helpless vegetable lump powerless form in their own sordid little nest of psychological depravity. Seldom have I enjoyed the thrill of finding something as relatable. 
     This vintage J-horror elevated domestic entanglement horror shares its dna with the finest of Golden Age Hollywood screwball comedies. Cinema to express not love not romance but the reality of the dark emotional undercurrents between couples vying for the upper hand. There’s something so crucial cathartic about the exaggeration. Nothing exceeds like excess. Okay chronologically between Golden Age screwball and this also the reason I’m so hyped probably too is I been rewatching this wonderful entry into said canon called The War of the Roses (1989, Danny DeVito).
     It pulls us in begs us to take sides as it does to its peripheral characters. We along with they as in real life are all but pawns currency to gain leverage. If the stakes in screwball are emotional. In The War of the Roses financial. In House of Bugs they’re psychological. And it would be easy to say with Kiyoshi Kurosawa isn’t it always but he has sidestepped into displaying quite the competency when communing with our spirituality in other instances. 
 
Best of all you can’t trust either of them. Nor can anyone else. Nor can they trust each other. There’s well trodden cliché tradition of a lying is necessary in a marriage yet I’ve never seen thusfar a film that satirizes that to such extremes before. That’s what’s so scary about this. And why Kiyoshi Kurosawa is so good at having it be the engine that he runs this suspense horror with. 

I'm offering to help you accomplish what you can't on your own

 Remember MiniDV. You know. Camcorder verité.

• The Celebration (1998, Thomas Vinterberg)

• Julien Donkey-Boy (1999, Harmony Korine)

• Dancer in the Dark (2000, Lars von Trier) 

• Chuck & Buck (2000, Miguel Arteta)

• The Original Kings of Comedy (2000, Spike Lee)

• Bamboozled (2000, Spike Lee)

• 28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle)

• Personal Velocity (2002, Rebecca Miller)

• 24 Hour Party People (2002, Michael Winterbottom)

• Party Monster (2002)

• Visitor Q (2002, Takashi Miike)

• Scarlet Diva (2002, Asia Argento)

• Full Frontal (2002, Steven Soderbergh)

• Doppelganger (2003, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

• The Girl from Monday (2003, Hal Hartley)

• Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)

What an exclusive group. Worth delving further into are which of these were shot on what were distinctly referred to as either prosumer or consumer models. The prosumer rigs typically either Sony or Canon. Maybe some Panasonic?

Doppelganger is a prosumer MiniDV shot psychological thriller comedy tech espionage internal conflict predestined meaning of life road movie. Its tone may seem light for a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film but it’s never disappointing. If you think about the characters that populate the world of this film they’re all petty miserable nobodies stuck in intractable pursuits of capitalist mutually exploitative accomplishments for all the wrong reasons. Which is you know fun cause it’s exactly like real life. 

     An underlying theme in Doppelganger could be individualism vs conformity. We’re misdirected by everyone else treating the Double as if he’s despicable. But he’s adaptable. Hayasaki is inflexible. The narrative interrogates which way our perceptions lean in which of these two characters we identify with sympathize with empathize with root for.
     And what about Yuka? That first time the Double puts the moves on her I thought he was Hayasaki. Pretty sure the narrative wanted me to too. How do you feel about the way he comes onto her? What about that she comes back? What about how she seems to linger then recoil from Hayasaki’s subsequent advance? What do you think she means when she tells him It’s hard to tell if [he’s] a warm person or a cold person? What does Yuka mean by warm? Which is which?

     Third act break. Seventy minutes in. HAYASAKI has completed the Artificial Body. He smokes a cigarette. But we know Hayasaki doesn’t smoke only his Double does. Then Hayasaki wielding a boulder bludgeons his Double. We know it’s his double lying there bloody because the Double whistles that tune but Hayasaki doesn’t.   

Later Hayasaki pushes Kimishima over a cliff and afterwards when he gets in the van he whistles the tune. Hayasaki gets run over by a truck and dies. The Double rescues YUKA and tells her Forget about the past no revenge no memories which all makes perfect sense if you remember early in the film Yuka talking about her brother says if you see your exact double then you die. 

     Is it just me or did you expect Hayasaki to figure out a way to get rid of his Double? Is it because that’s what usually happens in movies of this genre? Is it because I thought embracing your Jungian shadow meant then you get rid of it? Is it because that’s what happens to the Palahniuk Fincher narrative device figment of Jack’s imagination? 
     That’s the dark twist in Doppelganger (2003, Kiyoshi Kurosawa). The self doesn’t integrate the shadow. The shadow integrates the self. Everything I thought I knew about my own morality flushed down the drain. This kind of genre subversion is everything.