Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I think we’re finally coming to the end of our coverage of Rotterdam, but these last few reviews seem to have been worth the wait. Check it out:
Hello people at AICN,
This is Amahagger Muggle from the Rotterdam Film Festival, and before I start reviewing movies some musings on how IFFR (which is Dutch for RIFF) starts in general.
Every year it’s the same:
First you start anticipating the films that SURELY will be shown this year, having read reviews from screenings at other festivals (i.e.: Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto).
Then the screening schedule is published two days before they start selling tickets and you go WHAAAAAAAAT, as part of your anticipated list is not on it.
Then you do damage control, pick those things you know and want to see, and make guesses for the remaining 95 percent which you’ve never heard of. Then you try to buy tickets on the first day they’re on sale. This tends to take the whole day. Reserving tickets through the internet only works on-and-off as the server keeps crashing.
And speaking of damage control: several people will get hurt crossing on the very slippery square surrounding the biggest cinema complex.
So guess what happened this year.
Again, some films I was really hoping for weren’t there. In previous years, I saw “Ghost i/t Shell” and “Avalon” on the biggest screen Rotterdam had, with the best sound. And now “Ghost i/t Shell 2: Innocence” isn’t even shown. Curses! The same goes for “Steamboy”. In fact, with “Howl’s Moving Castle” shown to the general public only once, at the very end, without being rated by the public, you might say that animation gets a bit of a cold shoulder this year.
Getting tickets was better than last year, but that could also be because we as viewers were better prepared (and showed up two and a half hours before the doors opened). Despite having the world’s largest IT-firm and one of the largest telecompanies as it’s main sponsors, on-line reservations were again not working correctly (and the system was even decommissioned after two days).
None of which matters much: it’s still a very cool festival and I have only been able to see a fraction of the films I wanted to see. The challenge is in trying to sift the wonderful and weird from the incomprehensible and boring.
And so, on the first Friday of the festival, a couple of friends and me drank a couple of beers to get in the mood and went to see a documentary feature about Japanese soft-porn movies:
“Pink Ribbon”
Directed by Fujii Kenjiru, Japan, 2004.
In 1995 the IFFR showed several Japanese softcore sexmovies, with good attendance but bad ratings if I recall correctly. Since then, one pops up now and again at the festival. Japan is one of the few countries which still have a very active low budget soft-porn industry, mostly because it hasn’t been eradicated by hardcore-porn. The reason for this is that Japan has a very strict legislation in place for showing sex scenes in a cinema. Hardcore is strictly forbidden and can only be watched at home. However, softcore movies, called “pink movies” in Japan, can be shown in a cinema. Therefore the only way to see some skin in a Japanese cinema is by going to these “pink” movies. Very strict guidelines exist though (like it’s forbidden to show any pubic hair), rendering them fairly innocent and harmless if you compare them with European movies.
Or so I thought.
“Pink Ribbon” is a documentary which tries to give an overview of the entire “pink” phenomenon. How it started in the early sixties, how they are made, what is their popularity today, things like that. Some footage from the movies mentioned is shown alongside three on-set reports, but most of “Pink Ribbon” consists of people being interviewed. Most of these people are either famous, smart, cunning or stupid enough to remain interesting for ten minutes (my favorite was the head of the “pink” fan club, shown consistently with a box of Kleenex tissues in the background). Unfortunately, some get to talk for far more than that, and with two hours this documentary has a second half which drags a lot. And even with that length there are serious omissions. For instance: although an entire chapter is about censorship and the censorship board gets mentioned a lot, not a single person from it gets interviewed.
Still, lots of interesting tidbits appeared, many of which surprised me. For one, the actors in pink movies are not nude on set, technically speaking. Although breasts are shown, both women and men wear band-aid masks covering their genitalia! “Makes the actors concentrate more on acting”, one of the interviewed directors mentions (causing the audience to laugh). Sex scenes only look real after the censorship board has made sure a small blurred area covers the screen where the assumed action is taking place. This principle is used in hilarious ways: a blurred blowjob is shown which looks real, but without the blurring the prop used looks terribly fake. Blurring is not always needed though. Some footage showed that with some inventive camerawork, virtually anything can be used to block the audiences view (in one good example a very small glass of white wine successfully blocks the assumed connecting parts of the couple behind it). A big difference with sex in European movies, where even in mainstream films the actors are really naked (and sometimes really have sex). Second surprise: these movies are not in any way innocent fun. Their audience consists mostly of older Japanese men, and according to one of the interviewed directors, they want rape scenes (especially men who participated in World War II). Therefore, most ”pinks” have some sort of rape or torture in them. The terms “love”, “sex” and “rape” are even used without distinction in the interviews. Most shocking bit: movie footage showing a woman getting her vagina sewn shut as punishment, filmed from the inside out, with the woman heard screaming in the background. It got past the censorship board because a fake vagina made of pork was used, and the director was praised for this inventive scene. Vile to say the least and you’d expect this in a Miike Takashi film, not in a film that’s supposed to get you aroused.
Thankfully there was also much to laugh about. Did I mention these “pinks” are low-budget? One of the on-set visits in the movie shows the demise of a production caused by incredible amateurism, combined with the director being a wimp. A rape scene filmed against a fake wall has to be shot while several people keep the wall in place, pushing back in rhythm with the actors. Hilarious.
All in all this documentary was interesting, if waaay overlong. I gave it three-ish out of five.
I cannot imagine a bigger contrast between a “pink” and the next film, “2046”, even though there is sex and nudity in it. Having never seen any movie of Wong Kar-Wai prior to this one, I cannot comment if it’s better than his previous work. I can just say that this is a really, really good film.
“2046”
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai, China HK, 2004.
Wong’s earlier film “In the Mood for Love” was apparently made while he was trying to film this one. It started out as an episode of “2046” but grew on the director, who decided to make an entire film out of it. I tried to watch it before seeing “2046”, but somehow never found the time. Having seen “2046”, I will certainly seek it out now.
The story is as follows: a writer named Chow goes to Hong-Kong in the late sixties and has (doomed) affairs with many women, one of them being his gorgeous neighbor Bai. This writer lives in room 2047 of a hotel, and has a fascination for the number 2046 and the room that goes with it. He writes articles about nightlife, erotic stories and two science-fiction novels, named “2046” and “2047”.
That’s basically it, but the devil is in the details here. The movie is like a big puzzle, slowly explaining why this man does what he does. At the end you have a pretty detailed picture about what is going on here. It’s a sad, touching and very intelligent portrait of a man who is damaged by the love of his live. You grow to care whether or not he can get out of the emotional pit he has dug for himself. Remember the movie “Remains of the Day”, and how you sometimes wanted to shake Anthony Hopkins’ character and slap some sense into him? The same happens here on several occasions. Having a shot at real love, Chow misses it. First you think he’s stupid, but when he gets a second and third chance, he does the same, deliberately. Still stupid, but… different.
There are so many things to like here, but let’s start with the acting. Chow is played by Tony Leung, and he is good. Very good. I do not hesitate to say brilliant. Also as Chow, sporting a Clark Gable moustache, he might be the smoothest SOB you’ll ever see. Gorgeous neighbor Bai is played by Ziyi Zhang, and she is very good too. The schedule that’s published a week before the festival shows her on the cover instead of the festival’s own poster (a first!), and she deserves it. The two of them together are awesome. Flashback lover Gong Li is good too. And everyone else is good too in this. Want more? Cinematography by Christopher Doyle, a cool soundtrack, the retro sci-fi look of the stories Chow envisions. Wong Kar-Wai apparently edited this film for years, showing up at different festivals with different versions, and it looks polished. There are tons of little effects, jokes, references hidden away. I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie grows with repeat viewings.
The only thing that bothered me was the length: it feels long at the end. It never gets really boring, you just start to wonder if this is going anywhere. Thankfully, it turns out that it does.
I gave this movie four-and-a-half out of five. It’s still doing rounds in my mind though, and after a second viewing I might give it a five.
So, no anime in this years IFFR except for the last day of the festival. What to do? You go to see Casshern, that’s what!
“CASSHERN”
Directed by Kiriya Kazuaki, Japan, 2004.
Note the capitals? They’re needed. This movie is LOUD!
The story in short: after several years of war between Asia and Europe, a scientist works on a way to easily grow artificial limbs to help battle environmental diseases and wounds. He hopes to use this procedure to cure his dying wife, but when his son dies in the war and gets sent home for burial, all hell breaks loose. Somehow, a giant metal piece of lightning strikes his laboratory and causes thousands of limbs to grow into mutant humans. This being a military project, frightened soldiers immediately start shooting these new people who turn out to be super strong (and, less usefully, can see ghosts). Some escape, kidnapping the scientists wife and vouching revenge on mankind. The scientist opens his sons coffin and lets the metal lightning revive him. The corpse is reborn as the archangel Casshern, while the mutants revive a sleeping robot army to attack the humans. Casshern battles the mutants and tries to end the war he died in. And save his mum and grieving girlfriend. And make sense of his existence, and violence in general.
I saw the trailer, I read the reviews. Beautiful, boring, crap, trash, brilliant, stupid, empty, heavy, blah… so I was hoping for the best and expecting the worst. I got both I guess, and I can see the reasoning behind any of the above. But I couldn’t help myself and was pulled into this insane maelstrom of a movie. There is so much to love here. The gorgeous designs, the sweeping soundtrack. There is even a retard in the movie, whose dreams are shown in stop-motion like “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. Yes, the general message (hate is bad, love is good) gets obvious straight away, and you still get pummeled with it a thousand times more during the film than is necessary. But this is the closest I’ve ever seen a movie get to pure opera. Everything, I mean EVERYTHING is exaggerated. And just when you think the makers of this movie can’t go any further, they top themselves. A word which you cannot use to describe this film is “subtle”. It isn’t. It’s so over the top that it becomes glorious, almost an art form in itself. It’s as obviously biased as propaganda, in fact it even looks like it. Digital back lot is used to create the insane worldscape that this story takes place in, pinching things from the thirties, sixties, and the Final Fantasy videogames. Machinery looks unreal but very detailed, a bit of what I expected from “Steamboy”. Like “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” this doesn’t look one hundred percent real, but that doesn’t matter: it’s opera! If you can remember that while watching “Casshern”, you can start having fun. Because what is on screen is often so outrageous that it’s a miracle somebody gave money to people to make this. To show the pointlessness of violence this film keeps showing it as escalating out of control. Sides keep topping each other with more insane weaponry, and Casshern’s actions only provoke even more extreme violence. Just wait until the chief mutant says “Forgive me” and presses a button. Something insanely cool happens, and the audience started laughing because of the sheer audacity of what was shown. For me, it topped the end of “Attack of the Clones”.
I cannot blame anyone who thinks this film is boring. There were several walkouts during our screening. “CASSHERN” is long, two and a half hours to tell a simple story (bar the occasional twist), and there are many slow parts. But sometimes it’s just because Kiriya is doing a buildup. A fine example is the end of the mutants escape. I’ll explain in detail: the last few surviving mutants travel over a freezing mountainside through a snowstorm. One of them, a baby, dies from exposure and is buried. The leader yells in powerless rage (I said it wasn’t subtle, didn’t I?), but then spots a tower in the distance. The mutants go to the tower, and find a huge abandoned fortress which provides them with shelter. They explore the fortress and find a huge abandoned weapons factory, complete with millions of huge abandoned droids. They power the machines, things start moving all over the place and all of the mutants, now covered in splendid clothing, gather in the main hall. As fascist banners unfurl, their leader starts a speech. Now, up until this moment not a single word has been spoken, and the sequence mentioned here last for fifteen minutes or so. When the mutant leader speaks, the words are the first he utters in his life. Yet he gives a speech so eloquent, so full of rage, so full of malice it’s fit for any dictator. And all this time, from mountainside to speech, you have the same music underscoring it, the same theme, swelling, swelling, adding instruments, adding volume. It’s brilliant. It’s insane. It’s… opera! With giant robots and angels!
Sometimes a director has an idea and is allowed to run with it. But in this case, Kiriya took off and broke the sound barrier. Only three movies I have seen recently packed this weird WOW I DON’T BELIEVE THIS THEYRE INSANE BUT IM HAVING FUN factor. They were “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”, “The Incredibles” and now “CASSHERN”.
I came out of this screening on such a high that I, maybe unfairly, gave a five out of five. People rated this all over the place, from one till five, and you can start heated discussions on the topic.
Which is higher than the new Miyazaki, so maybe I’m insane as well!?!!?
“Howl’s Moving Castle”
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 2004.
Officially Howl is this years closing picture. Although it was shown several times earlier in the week, the late evening screening of Saturday the 6th was the only time the uninvited paying public was allowed to see the film. Because of this, “Howl’s Moving Castle” was not competing for the public’s price (awarded a few hours earlier to the Kurdian movie “Turtles Can Fly”). Pity, as I’m curious in what place Miyazaki’s latest would have finished. For while it’s a very good movie, I don’t think it will have the rabid following that “Spirited Away” has.
The story: in a country reminiscent of 1900 Germany/Austria a war starts with a neighboring country. Wizards and witches are called in to fight on the side of the king. One of these wizards is Howl, who lives in a building which is a cross between a castle on three legs and a steam engine. People fear him for he is rumored to hunt pretty young girls and take away their hearts. Sophie, a young plain girl, accidentally meets Howl on the street. She then gets changed into a little old crone by his enemies, who mistake her for an accomplice. Seeking out Howl she ends up at his moving castle. Howl being a young bachelor, the place is a complete sty so he employs her as a cleaning lady. While the war outside intensifies, Sophie falls in love with the moody Howl, and tries to help him as well as herself.
In general I love Miyazaki’s work. The worlds he portrays are always filled with exquisite detail, people show shades of gray and although there is always a message, you never get the feeling you’re being lectured. These things easily set him and his company Ghibli apart from all other animation studios. When he is not in form he’s still good, and when he is in form, he’s just… awesome. He’s like a country you go on holiday to once every couple of years. The best work he did in my opinion was the book version of “Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind”, followed by the movies “Princess Mononoke”, “Spirited Away”, followed again by “Nausicaä” (film version), “Castle of Cagliostro” and “Laputa: Castle in de Sky”. I would place “Howl” with this last group. Technically the film is stunning. Every shot is gorgeous and can be hung on a wall as a poster. Whenever someone lights a candle, thousands of orange highlights are shown on surrounding objects. Sunsets make everything glow. Miyazaki uses digital 3D-trickery here more than all his other movies combined. Palaces are insanely detailed (a bit like the witches office in “Spirited Away”) and move in perfect perspective with the camera. The flying warships have beautiful metallic sheens. The moving castle itself morphs, stumbles and hisses in ways impossible to achieve with hand-drawn animation. And all of this is used to embellish Miyazaki’s style, not replace it. “Howl’s Moving Castle”is still vintage Miyazaki. All designs can be recognized as being his, and nobody can draw a vertigo-inducing flight sequence like Miyazaki.
Storywise however, this movie may leave a lot of people scratching their heads. There is no conventional storyline. A lot of time is taken to show the mundane, like household chores, shopping, etcetera. It’s like you’re watching a 26 episode series called “Sophie’s weird adventures as an old lady”. Many subplots are started but not finished, like Sophie’s relationships with her family (who sometimes help, sometimes betray her). The endings we do get all suddenly happen at exactly the same time, making it seem rushed and coïncidental, like a slapped-on epilogue. The fact that by then the end title music is already playing for a minute emphasizes this feeling.
But it’s all so beautiful and charming and luscious, that it doesn’t diminish this film too much. While not as coherent as “Spirited Away” or “Princess Mononoke”, it still succesfully transported me to Miyazaki-land for two fun-filled hours. Seek it out if you like any of his other films.
I couldn’t give a rating, but it would have been easily 4.5 out of 5. Some in my group would have given it higher, most a bit lower.
For me, this was the end of the International Film Festival Rotterdam for this year. Goodbye!
Amahagger Muggle (meaning easily bewitched but without an ounce of magic).
Thanks, man. Sounds like you had an interesting mix of stuff at the fest.
"Moriarty" out.
