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 that exists 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.
 

That guy who saw the future in his dreams

The meaning of Bright Future (2002, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is the red jellyfish is a metaphor for this period of time in the development of males somewhere between finishing high school and before maturing turning twenty-five. This same period is also exemplified by Nimura’s dreaming pattern arc. When he was young he used to dream happy dreams a lot. Now he has stopped dreaming. Then finally he is terrified by the dream he shows us on the path that he doesn’t know where it leads. 

     The film’s theme is concerned with intergenerational rifts between men. Bright Future is a proto mumblecore coming of age cosmic ghost feelgood elegiac tale about reconciliation between fathers and sons that celebrates it’s time to move forward.
 

Before I could articulate it I instantly knew was hyped exhilarated thrilled with the ending and before my brain could catch up I just knew those rowdy jd’s with the white shirts out of nowhere sublime this is the ending headscratcher applause inducing long take leading shot with that pop song as the end title credits roll on tell us these are the jellyfish. Of course they are. 
     The irony about the red jellyfish is Mamoru’s dad’s arc at first the dad has no desire interest in them then he develops a caring curiosity fascination so far as he has to go to one which of course is fatal venomous. Cut to he’s now a ghost and has made up with his son Mamoru who neither ever connected bonded with in life now to spend eternity at peace together. That’s some heavy only the Japanese could muster sentiment.
     Why does Mamoru ruin the shrimp brine buckets? I think it’s because foreshadowing the same thing his dad is going to say Nimura needs to face reality. I think it’s kind of this reveal that all along the point was to raise the red jellyfish pet and acclimate it to the freshwater so it could leave home through the canals of Japan to the ocean. Again the three phases motif of the developmental process.
 
Bright Future advocates juvenile delinquency it says the rebellious phase is essential for growth. This is phase two. Temporary. Then you gotta move on or it’s prison or dreaming.Their boss is so lame. The way he wants to ingratiate himself into their lives and hire them on permanent status keep them at that same job evokes an existential dead end. So they each independently of one another spontaneously react by deciding to murder him. We know it’s Mamoru who gets there first and also ends up killing the boss’s daughter. 
     At that café when Arita talks to his other son Mamoru’s brother that kid’s attitude shows why being rebellious running wild rumspringa break is healthy through how this snotty twerp weasel is so unbearably obnoxious the way he talks to his father is more brutal than any murder torture assault scene elsewhere in a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film. It takes a while to get there but the balance in Bright Future is sympathy for the elders as well. The image system at work this time will be the junk in the repair shop. That’s old people in our society. All those lines of dialogue about how they’re not garbage they’re better made than the worthless stuff in stores nowadays. This film is about finding the value in the overlooked youth and elderly lost in modern society. It’s about those with no future and those with a bright future.
     And if I wanna go for one of my patented way out there readings could be what if Mamoru had a plan from the beginning to raise the red jellyfish to get Nimura to mature into a man and to get his father Arita to learn his own value and that same red jellyfish that the dad touches is the same one that Mamoru gave Nimura so that he and his father could acclimate to being able to relate to one another in a meaningful way on the other side. The dad’s arc is appreciating his reality and standing up to Arita. That’s what a father is. That’s what he was lacking. 
 
Okay what about the look of Bright Future. It’s HD I want to guess a CineAlta who else was shooting on that at this time. Episode II – Attack of the Clones (George Lucas) was also shot the same year as Bright Future 2002. Rodriguez. I wanna say parts of Ali (2001, Michael Mann) but definitely Collateral (2004).
     Dude the close-ups of the jellyfish in the aquarium in HD is easily evidence for a strong case of HD over film that level of detail and this is coming from someone who’s a loyalist to film. But also wait what there’s mixed in shots of MiniDV how fun is that. Again I been trying to describe Kurosawa’s shots of urban Japan cramped geometrically intricate compositions with powerlines telephone wires houses streets junk and in this it’s exceptionally well captured with the CineAlta.
     Disorganized tacked on rant this was released the year after Ichi the Killer (2001, Takashi Miike) and how is Tadanobu Asano in both if not the coolest the coolest costumes of any Japanese actor or anywhere else ever. Dude is legend.

It's so easy to hang yourself

If Cure (1997, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) hypnotizes you Pulse (2001, Kurosawa) gets you to do suicide.

 

Pulse is a cyber horror depression core chainletter existential plague postmodern postapocalyptic snuff film that makes me feel an overwhelming emotional impact immediately and maybe more so than any other film. That emotion is heavy paralyzing hopeless drowning depression. The thing is irl I am so full of too much surplus of joy excitement energy this kind of thing is like so fun I rewatch Pulse on the reg more than any other Kiyoshi Kurosawa one it’s my jam. Balances me out. Or as Nicole Kidman might say suicidal thoughts feel good in a place like this.
     Okay enough messing around what I care about more than anything is what is going on with Pulse? Let’s try to list analyze its rules. It seems like

•     you log on
•        a ghost in a shroud dials you up and kills itself
•       you see what they call a reflection on your pc monitor that shows you on screen looking at you on screen looking at you on screen 
•        your distorted electronic anguished voice moans the word help
•        you may put on a shroud and kill yourself leave a dark smudge for flashes loved ones can see you
•        someone living seals the door into the spot you offed yourself with red duct tape
•        if someone living enters this forbidden room you can chainletter make them kill themselves too then they will be immortal e-dead loneliness or you can do same online to others as well

Does that seem right? I haven’t searched for any online explanations yet. Just because I love this film and wanted to stubbornly try all by myself. My first biggest obvious question was always what is the purpose meaning behind sealing off the forbidden room with red tape. I think I figured it out as I just described so that means though the midpoint you know that flashback expository sequence with Shô Aikawa is he traps the ghost in that shipping yard office with red tape but when it gets torn down the reveal is it’s like patient zero first to open the circuit using the broadband to travel online and chainletter spread the plague death wants to make everyone immortal through eternal loneliness instead of going to hell worse trapping them in their own isolation. But the red tape could also serve as a warning to the living to stay away from these internet people who have crossed over. Personally I’d to think the red tape doesn’t even trap the e-ghosts at all because they're already so lonely and isolated it doesn’t need to it's only a spiritually condemned warning sign where they reside.

     What about that Harue hug? Who what does she hug? Okay if there is one not laugh but just something I can’t help but always I have a morbid sense of humor when Kawashima is in that computer lab and she overhears comes up to this stranger and is like what was that you said about a website that asks if you want to see a ghost. Just the tonal contrast between her bright chipper demeanor and this dark weird topic.
 

As always with Kurosawa the thing that anchors this drama is the characters. Another thing that makes Pulse so scary is the way it’s the beginning of the internet. The way Kawashima first reads the instructions is so asmr hypnotic sustained suspense and his visits to Harue in the computer lab are perfectly sold as everyday that’s how he gets you everytime. 
     But the score in this thing. Within the first minute when that thing drags you down I instantly want to kill myself give up on life curl up in a ball and hide give up it’s so oppressively aggressively downer misanthropic emotional underscoring. And the glitchy electronic static deteriorating debilitating soundscape concoction wraps its nasty lurking swells around you constricting continually is delight.
     The drab dismal patina and high contrast murky shadows is despair visualized. The narrative arc perfectly follows Shiguéhiko Hasumi design start slow build resolution while being so conducive for the character arc of Harue going subtly from bright and happy optimistic to reveal she had this death depression drive within her the whole time is scary because if you think in real life maybe probably definitely some of the people most affected by depression suicidal self harm you wouldn’t have guessed.
 
My completely esoteric subjective way off not in a million years as usual meta easter egg take is why is the great Kôji Yakusho captain of the ocean liner bookending the narrative? Because all these sad whiny doomed souls are being sucked into the lame internet but his ship is cinema and nothing can stop it and it’s how we will all move forward our hopes our dreams the progress the very future of civilization can count on it.

Expansion of the unconscious self

How does Kiyoshi Kurosawa always manage to make the characters so believable? The worlds they inhabit seem so authentic familiar practical found. The homes the cramped Japanese urban environs rural green splendor. The way invariably a married couple share a meal and split a beer with each other. This is the cornerstone of suspense. 
     Séance (2000, Kurosawa) stands out at this point chronologically going through the director’s filmography for being standard genre. Suspense. Don’t get me wrong I revere his transcendental formally experimental monumental wholly unique unto himself abstract doom existential art films but every time I watch Séance it’s like oh the one I don’t really have to think about what it all means.
     The engine that drives the narrative JUNCO the quintessential Kurosawa protagonist upper middle class citizen who hits the ceiling midlife crisis turns existential isolation crisis depression that in Séance huge moral disaster she tries to capitalize on exploit a child ghost for professional gain you can guess how that ends. Great touch here at the narrative midpoint there’s this two-shot facing on Junco and her husband where he’s in the foreground and she’s slightly beyond him in the background he in focus she out of focus soft on a different plane that says exactly what the film’s theme is visually. 
     The simplicity of ghost design in Séance is so rad. To begin with the costume design in this world only ghosts are allowed to wear primary colors. The rude arrogant businessman dining whose ghost mistress appears in that red dress with her eyes blurred and the almost laughable low budge greenscreened out legs dolly floating works because it’s uncanny how little it tries to in spite of nay because of the notion we get for the first time Kurosawa has vfx and is playing around. And the way the narrative takes its time with the eight year old kidnapping girl ghost for so long not anything too over the top horror she just won’t leave them alone.
     The point I keep returning to in Kurosawa it’s horror but what is truly unsettling gets under my skin is the stuff that terror of the ordinary real world creeping into my mind. In the case of Séance how Junco wants be famous so bad her own life loses all value to her. It’s so pathetic tragic relatable empathy inducing slight gigantic morally modest profound. But yeah also so fun the ghost synth traditional classic horror scary and all the wind howling thunderstorm effects the punch is above all how effective the domestic drama foundation conducive to everything proves.
     The deluge that follows the denouement of Séance we’re left to figure out is an example of what I consider the most effective kind. Like a Greek tragedy. Like balancing an algebraic equation. That twist. Faustian comeuppance through domestic melodrama couched in a genre flick. Because Junco wants too desperately to be a famous medium she is possessed by the kidnapping girl ghost who forces her as a vessel to what we are not shown confess to the police. And we know that means the husband is probably going to prison or worse I don’t know if Japan has the death penalty but also Junco herself obviously. So she’ll get the notoriety she wants from the gods the wrong kind. Man this stuff is what I live for.

Office space

You can’t wake up if you don’t go to sleep. What’s up with this movie though for real? Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s secret weapon is he hypnotizes you while simultaneously placing you in a world that demands you to wonder what’s happened? Why do his films feel this way? Somewhere between what they mean to our spirit mind emotions and senses sense of humor sense of cinema sense of narrative lies the little candy.

 

Barren Illusion (1999, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) just might be his slowest film and that’s saying a lot. In fact that’s likely its most distinctive feature it’s an example of slow cinema if you consider that a thing. It’s also so far as I can tell the only Kurosawa movie without a score. 
     Speaking of sound design though it does utilize his characteristic drone mesmerizing technique. The bar with ominous ambient repetitive mechanized duct construct sound aurally supports a general repetition motif to be found throughout Barren Illusion. You know the way in the first few minutes the stranger girl being hit on in the bar tells the stranger guy to disappear then the safe thieves scene they tell the guy to disappear then the guy in his flat scene he disappears. 
     The girl in this thing has definitely got this I don’t know crinkle ASMR leitmotif. Right? When she’s in the music rehearsal space flat the way the sound effect foley of her eating each chip slowly flows into the way the sound of her taking that recycling out similarly crinkles the way she opens the parcel with the dried leaves same.
 
Barren Illusion feels otherworldly because the guy and girl seem like they’re in purgatory and it does everything it can formally to enhance this troubling premonitorily uneasy abstraction cinematically through its form so well because Kurosawa manipulates each element of his toolkit with everything at his disposal he’s mastered so well. When they disappear it’s as though they’re visually physically stuck between this world and the next. When the girl confronts the barrier we don’t see because before the camera flips to reveal her pov and talks about going over to the other side when we are shown it’s the beach and that skeleton corpse shores up says it all. Also when she tries to buy a plane ticket to get out they ignore her because she can’t leave here.
     My favorite sequence that tells me what Barren Illusion is essentially is when the girl plays with that slice of bread in bed then cut to she’s a jumper match cut to toast pop but wait the dust spores outside her window link to the following shot with the guy and the dust becoming this midpoint whole big part of the film. My point is on top of being purgatory Barren Illusion is experimental.
     That’s why I’m so obsessed with Kiyoshi Kurosawa that elusive what every filmgoer filmmaker seeks. Doing something with the cinematic language we haven’t seen yet. Nor heard nor felt for that matter. Maybe I’m wrong but I like calling this one purgatory. Because why else when the girl goes jumper or she gets Rodney Kingged does she seemingly reset? Speaking of purgatory she’s a postal worker what other shorthand in our modern society is there for purgatory? 
     Is that a ten minute scene of them bouncing a ball back and forth or does it just feel that long? Also something I don’t think other slow cinema films do or have done yet that Barren Illusion does is it plays out as a silent film. Oh and yeah this is probably a throw away idea I’ll reconsider useless later but for now could the couple in this be ghosts? Because of the scene where the couple get a dog then later on there’s a quick scene with the dog catchers outside taking it to the pound and the guy standing there can’t do anything about it. Or maybe it’s just another purgatory thing. They feel like ghosts. Or as part of this loose disaffected youth trilogy the question returns to haunt us did I ever exist?

Restore the rules of the world

How can one think about Charisma (1999, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) without trying to decipher its meaning? Let’s start with some basics. Kôji Yakusho plays YABUIKE. What do we know about Yabuike?

     He’s a cop who’s so over his workload he just sits alone in an empty room avoiding it. Then there’s this standoff between a gunman and his hostage a parliament member. Yabuike arrives on the scene only to walk away from it because of his conflicting morals. Then the guy shoots the hostage and the cops rain down on him with gunfire. Yabuike walking away shows us he didn’t want either to have to die. But specifically why would someone have to shoot and kill the other guy because the hostage holds a post in the government.
     Charisma literally from the Greek means God’s grace. At the end of Charisma the poacher puts a gun to JINBO’s head and Yabuike is so over it he raises his weapon to shoot the guy who even starts to say something like if you do you’re gonna make me kill the hostage but Yabuike doesn’t hesitate for a second. And both the hostage and because it was a nonlethal wound the poacher live. This is the crucial final test of Yabuike’s character after all he’s gone through. And the moral discussion throughout Charisma is despite the reality that nature is made up of forces that want to live and forces that want to kill is it possible through the grace of God to allow both to exist? I’ll let you think about Yabuike’s conclusion.

But really the big question what’s up with the tree? On another level I think the tree could be charisma along the lines of winning hearts and minds charm wisdom someone adept at rhetoric persuasion politics cunning. A leader. Which is why we see two sides battling over it. And the way it’s told through these characterizations is what’s so wonderful.
     First there’s bureaucracy. They work in the forest and I guess rig the tree with speedrail. Then there’s the zealot who they all know violently protects the tree. The zealot or protector KIRIYAMA funny we learn was a patient in a now defunct sanatorium in the forest. And the way Yabuike wanders into the abandoned sanitarium unbeknownst to him to sleep there and in the middle of the night Kiriyama returns his gun and badge he mutters he’s taking Yabuike’s soul. I don’t think there are any throw away lines in this film. Think about that later. 
     The opposing side is the ecology professor Jinbo. She tells Yabuike the guy who used to run the sanitarium brought Charisma the tree from the continent and it’s not what everyone thinks it produces a harmful toxin and is killing all the other trees in the forest. Of course we later find out it’s actually she who’s poisoning the forest as a means to make her claims credible. 
     What happens next I take as none of this matters because a stronger force armed invade and kill the tree. No one can stop them. And what’s the image resulting from the aftermath? Mushroom cloud. Nuclear holocaust. 
 
But despite neither Kiriyama nor Jinbo believing him Yabuike begins nursing a new Charisma. The final act of the narrative. As fate would have it through chance events Kiriyama absconds with stolen cash so he doesn’t care about the tree at all anymore or the forest for that matter. In a scathing portrayal he even tries to buy his way into the poachers.
     When the leader of the poachers takes control of the new Charisma everything is in place to set up the standoff mentioned earlier. I see the ending as Yabuike giving up on thinking he can single handedly end highest levels of political corruption all he can do is be average and do his average job so he gives the sprout to Jinbo while admitting he really doesn’t care what she does with it. 
     So everything’s settled. Tied up in a bow for us. We got our answer. Don’t even try to get involved when it comes to high stakes politically motivated action. Right. That’s what Yabuike did and in the end it was what’s right for him. Now he can go back to being a cop. Oh except for what follows is the end of civilization as we know it into a lake of fire oops.