Satoshi Kon R.I.P

Master animator Satoshi Kon died earlier this week at the age of 47 due to complication with pancreatic cancer. The world has lost a great artist singular in imagination and creativity. His most recent feature film, Paprika, played at MSPIFF a few years ago and there was a line of avid fans, myself included, running down the block to get in. But it is really his animated series Paranoia Agent that has resonated the most with me. Wildly complex and and incredible heartfelt, Kon delves into the recesses of our subconscious with vivid imagination.

Here's just a teaser of the first episode of Paranoia Agent. I look forward to watching again soon! Satoshi-san, we will miss you!

All of Kon's feature films and Paranoia Agent are available on DVD in the US.

Hayao Miyazaki's MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO

Easily one of my favorite films ever. Originally published by In Review Online for a Miyazaki Directrospective.

Hayao Miyazaki tested the feature length waters with The Castle of Cagliostro and then unfurled Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky with such poise and confidence that it is hard to believe that they are only his second and third features. The rest is history, or so they would say. But Miyazaki’s filmography cannot be so easily cast aside as status quo work. Each film is special in its very own way, and this couldn’t be more true for My Neighbor Totoro his forth feature—Totoro is an emotional hub from which everything Miyazaki flows. The simple story of a family moving into a new house evolves into a heart-rending masterpiece that is both universal and timeless.

Set in the post-War countryside of Japan, Totoro is largely based on Miyazaki’s own experiences as a child during a time when his mother suffered from tuberculosis. In a truck packed with the family’s belongings, a father and his two young daughters, Satsuki and Mei, arrive at their new home at the edge of a forest. The two girl’s unbridled sense of adventure have them bounding into each dusty room with the joy of discovery. And a discovery is exactly what they make: real, live dust bunnies. Established early in the film, Satsuki and Mei have an intrinsic capability to see things other cannot, especially spirits. In this case, they are the soot sprites that have inhabited the empty house and must be chased away by laughter. In another such case is Mei’s discovery of Totoro. Home with her father while Satsuki is at school, Mei follows two creatures (a small and medium Totoro) into the forest. She falls into a hole within the roots of a large camphor tree, and happens upon the home of King Totoro—the most lovable and cuddly polar bear you could ever imagine. Gleefully grabbing onto his soft tale, Mei climbs upon his belly with utter fascination. Tickling his nose and stroking his chin, a three-syllable grunt reveals that he is Totoro, Mei’s misinterpretation for the Japanese word troll. Her father later explains that Totoro is a special spirit and the keeper of the forest.

The enchanting world of magic within the forest offers a polarity to the reality and the fears of being a child. Satsuki and Mei’s mother is sick and in the hospital, while their father, a college professor, tries his best to take care of his daughters and maintain his work. Satsuki and Mei, each at their own level of maturity, try to understand the unnamed illness responsible for their mother’s absence. Adjusting to their new home is no less difficult than yearning for their mother’s presence. Satsuki tries her best to fill her mother’s shoes, but it is a daunting task with the headstrong Mei. Worried about their father walking home in the rain without his umbrella one night, the girls decide to meet him at the bus stop. When he doesn’t arrive on his scheduled bus, Satsuki gets worried. Within Satsuki’s concern for her father and her weary little sister, who she is responsible for, is something so identifiable—the creeping feeling as a child that you have made the wrong decision and you are about to embark into unknown circumstances. It is at this exact moment of sympathy that Totoro lumbers up, nonchalantly wearing a leaf as hat in the rain, to wait next to Satsuki who is now holding the sleeping Mei piggyback. Playfully distracting Satsuki from the problems at hand, Totoro boards the amazing Catbus only moments before the bus carrying the girls’ father arrives.

Unifying experience instead of divisive conflict drives the story of Totoro forward with subtlety and care. The sheer pleasure of everyday life is given as much weight as narrative landmarks. Mei finding tadpoles or a bucket with no bottom is integral to the film, as is her father enjoyment of the flowers she has picked for him. A monumental scene of simple beauty captures the incredible world that exists between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Satsuki and Mei have carefully planted a package of seeds given to them by Totoro, but they have yet to show any signs of growing. The Totoro trio arrives, just as the girls have fallen asleep, and shows them the power of optimism and belief. As their seeds magically grow to the sky, Satsuki and Mei are also lifted on a spinning top, clinging to Totoro puffed-up belly. A connection between the spiritual and natural world is a more understated theme in ‘Totoro’ than in Miyazaki’s other films, but nonetheless very present. The girls wake to find that their seeds have indeed sprouted and that their dream wasn’t just a dream. Miyazaki does his best to correlate these simple pleasures with real magic.

King Totoro and the Catbus are two of the greatest animated characters to grace the screen. Vividly realized with an uncanny charm, they are only matched, in my mind, by the beloved Pooh-Bear. Part silly bear and part amiable gorilla, Totoro is a creature adorned with amazing facial expressions and physical oddities. With a powerful hop, he can pirouette to the top of his tree with ease. But his mischievous personality comes alive while waiting at the bus stop with Satsuki and Mei. Totoro is frightened by the first large drop of water from the trees that that makes a ‘thwack’ on his umbrella. Eyes wide and mouth set in a cringe, he looks like someone who has just tipped over the milk bottle. Once he understands the phenomenon, he gets nothing other than a shit-eating grin on his face as he jumps up in the air causing a tiny earthquake and a downpour from the trees above. Completely satisfied with a trick well done, he boards the Catbus, still daintily holding his umbrella and carrying his wacked out grin. And what is there to say about the Catbus? Twelve legs flying and eyes glowing, the Catbus’ plush interior opens up with a UFO-like sound.

Much of the credit for the beauty of Totoro should be given to art director Kazuo Oga, whose meticulous background paintings bring the landscapes of rural Japan to life. Although it is hard to take your eyes off the characters in the film, Oga makes it worth your while. Two years ago Oga had a 500-plus piece exhibition a the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art compellingly titled “The One Who Painted Totoro’s Forest.” The Museum extended the show and extended its normal hours to accommodate the popularity of the exhibition. Oga worked on a total of ten Studio Ghibli films, including Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo, but it was his art in Totoro that gave him the notoriety he has today.

My Neighbor Totoro was released in 1988, the same year as Grave of the Fireflies, made by fellow Studio Ghibli director Isao Takahata. Because Totoro was seen as more of a financial risk, the two films were released as a double feature. Fireflies was seen as a sure-sell because it was based on a popular novel that had retained its historical relevancy. Over time, of course, it was Totoro that became a huge hit. The irresistible Totoro has become many things for many people including cultural icon and ambassador, and the face of Studio Ghibli. However, for its legions of fans that span ages and borders, Totoro represents a world without cynicism and irony and where, for 86 minutes, we can believe in the unbelievable.

Shane Acker's 9

Originally published on In Review Online.

Adaptation is the medium of our time. For better or worse, appropriation has devolved from oxymoronic theories of postmodernism into a more practical mode of replication. I keep wondering, specifically with films in mind, when, if ever, this market driven habit of re-mining used material will run aground. The most confounding examples are the films that get remade by the same director. Hideo Nakata’s US remake of his own film, Ring, was probably more lucrative for him and exposed more people to his work, but critically speaking added nothing to the original. The same could be said for Michael Haneke’s arrogant remake of his arrogant film Funny Games—a point-for-point slap in the face that did not expose Haneke to anyone new. (Tempting Naomi Watts digression denied.) But how do we categorize Shane Acker’s remake? Acker’s visionary award winning and Academy Award nominated 11-minute short 9 deservedly wowed everyone with its sensitivity to visual and emotional detail. Bring directors Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Wanted) and no-need-for-introduction Tim Burton to the table as producers and somewhere along the line, Acker is convinced to turn his short into a feature length film. Or maybe this was his goal all along. Visually 9 flourishes on the larger canvas, but narratively it languishes under the heavy hand of the script and storybook contrivances.

9 is the lead character in an animated fable about the rise of a different kind of machine. Emblazoned with the numeral 9 on the back of his sock monkey body, he is the product of an innovative scientist and of resources limited by a diminishing and hostile world. His prophetic numeral emblem is, at least on the surface, his identification number within a small but heroic team. Jolted to life in a Frankenstein-like fashion, 9 wakes to an apocalyptic wasteland where his creator is dead. Motivated by unknown forces, he picks up a strange glowing medallion and he strikes out on his own into a land aptly called The Emptiness. Little does he know, but he has eight siblings that came before him. When he stumbles upon 2, his joy in finding a companion does little to lift the dark ambiance and simply accentuates the inherent loneliness of the barren landscape. And no sooner does 9 find a friend than he loses him. Stalked by a much more sinister form of artificial intelligence, referred to as “the beast,” 2 is captured and taken away. Of more importance to the beast is the small medallion that 9 harbored inside his zippered body. The beast snatches the medallion as well as 2 and runs off toward a foreboding smokestack clad castle.

The spectacle in 9 is the absolute breathtaking detail that is given to every square inch of the screen. It is the precision and subtlety that lend sympathy and emotion to these very unlikely heroes. Even before 9 could speak, his physicality gave him personality that supersedes anything Elijah Woods brings his identity. His stitched together burlap skin edges on the freakish, but everything else intones gentleness and vulnerability that is immediately identifiable. The zipper that runs the length of his torso acts more of a pocket than a vital orifice. Open, the zipper pull hangs like genitalia and closed it hangs below his chin like a manmade wattle. The eyes, enclosed in a rigid lens, contain the most delicate and expressive diaphragm apertures that open and close as meaningfully as any human’s eye. Moving away from the most typical character design, their lumpy potato sack form accentuates an anthropomorphic dowdiness. Each one of the ragamuffin team has varying attributes of individuality within the group: 1 has crude metal hands and a belted waist; 2 is tied up with a shoelace; twins 3 and 4 are smaller, hooded and voiceless; 5 is a buttoned and patched warrior; the crazed 6 is pinstriped and mop-topped; 7 is the smooth-skinned female that seems an obvious homage to Princess Mononoke; and 8 is the burly and thuggish Stay Puft Marshmallow Man version of the species. Their vivid tactility moderates the actors’ solid performances. Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly bring a humanness to the two leads, 9 and 7, but it is really Christopher Plummer as the ego-driven 1, Martin Landau as the exploratory and aging 2, and John C. Reilly as the timid 5 that accentuate their computer modeled characters with their performances. Crispin Glover plays the rambling 6, but his part is sadly very small.

9 unfortunately takes two minor missteps that diminish the film exponentially specifically with an unfulfilling narrative arc and a confounding over-orchestrated score. The short had an air of mystery and an aura or loneliness and revenge. The feature attempts to flesh out a background, build in an adventure and edge ever-so-close to a love story, but it all feels very forced in a very abbreviated 79 minutes (and God knows 10 of those minutes are probably credits.) The script relies too heavily on convention and reduces these enigmatic characters into ethos that is patronizingly superficial. Acker’s work clearly thinks outside of this box, but the screenplay does not follow. The same could be said about the soundtrack that screams summer action blockbuster. The first full length trailer for 9 had hints of clever contemporary choices for music, employing a song from electronic wunderkinds The Knife and salt of the earth prog rockers Coheed and Cambria. It was a complete tease; 9 uses button-down action/adventure orchestration that is too overpowering.

The medallion contraption that was stolen from 9 was far more potent than imagined. It awakens a maniacal assembly machine that is able to create weapons out of found materials. In the midst of war, it was the ultimate defense, but now that war is over and all the humans are dead, the only adversaries are 9 and his friends. Ironically, they were made by the same hand. Like so many historical examples, the scientist’s greatest invention was used as a tool for power. The aging scientist, seeing his folly, created his smaller and much more delicate machines in his own image under the hope that, even in this brave new world, the meek would be able to inherit the earth. Acker draws from influences that he readily acknowledges, most notably the Quay Brothers and Jan Svankmajer. The quintessential Quay doll head find its way into 9 a couple times, the most memorable in the form of a demon spider machine. The dark and apocalyptic aesthetic is a mirror not only of Svankmajer and the Quays, but an atmosphere that has its origins in films—such as Blade Runner or Se7en—only to be canonized in contemporary sci-fi video games. The look is somewhat ubiquitous, but unique for a film billed as a PG-13 family film like 9. Acker’s visual ingenuity is a force to be reckoned with, but the watered down script and simplistic cause-and-effect plotting of 9 comes across as being micromanaged by industry types—and all poetry is lost to The Emptiness.