Entry 110: "Dodes'ka-den" (1970)

"Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack"

Dear Internet,

                This is the fifth Akira Kurosawa film I have gone over for the Backlog, and I will say it up front that I was unimpressed more or less.  I would rather not beat around the bush concerning what I think about this film.  Partially because I want to get this review over as quickly as possible but mostly because I would like to save you from having to experience a review as adrift as this film was.  The film suffers heavily because of this meandering narrative that goes nowhere for two hours.

                "Dodes'ka-den" is set in a landfill.  As far as the eye can see, there is trash and debris thrown about.  The houses are built from secondary materials and anything else the denizens can get a hold of.  The film follows around a collection of individuals as they go about their daily life in the shanty town.  There is the homeless bum and his son who dream of a house to call their own.  There are two couples, who are color coded for the convenience of the audience that regularly trade spouses.  There is the mentally handicapped child who daily goes out and works an imaginary tram late into the night.  On top of that are a number of other individuals that make a scattering of the setting.  As the film rolls, the audience witnesses a few mix-matched small stories play out.  All these small plots unwinds, the various characters that make up the world are displayed in deeper detail.

                If you are looking for a more cohesive story, you are not going to find one here.  "Dodes'ka-den" is about nothing in particular.  There is no overarching unification of the various stories or of the characters to one another very much.  For the most part, all of the various stories are independent of one another to the point that it feels less like a feature film and more like a series of short ones edited together.  The closest thing that unifies the stories together, besides the setting, is the collection of unnamed women that seem to perpetually do their dishes in the communal water source.  Yet, that is about the height of their interaction with any of the various stories.  They act more as narrators to create exposition through the gossip they pass to one another and inadvertently to the audience.

                What ends up happening with this lack of cohesion between the various stories is a somewhat haphazard final product.  While each one of the various stories can be taken by itself and examined to see what it is trying to showcase to the audience, the collection as a whole does not seem to have any specific direction.  Since there are only a few times that the various stories intermingle, the only thing that can be argued is that the film as a whole is meant to showcase a certain level of futility considering the rounding nature of the opening and closing segments.

                The film opens up and closes with the child that believes he is a tram conductor.  We see him begin his daily routine with all the various miming to show where his imaginary tram exists.  The audience sees his mother, who prays to Buddha alongside her son.  At the end of the film, we see him return to his home and finish his daily grind.  As bookends, these scenes do create some sort of framing mechanic, but that is about as far as it goes.  At first, I thought the film was going to follow specifically the child and treat him as a main character, but this is not the case.  After only a few minutes with this character, the film abandons him for all of two or three scenes here and there until the last scene.  When I figured out that the scope of the film was much larger than one character, I thought that maybe the film was going to continue to use him as some sort of segue to the various stories, but that did not seem to be the case.  Then I thought that the film would be using him as a sort of foil for the various characters and highlight their faults and problems, but that did not seem to be the case.  The film does not use enough juxtaposition to warrant such an outlook.  The film as a whole did not seem to have a specific direction as to where it was going.  If the point was that life is just going in an endless circle, it is a somewhat depressing point.

                There is one thing that the film does well that I cannot leave out.  "Dodes'ka-den" is Akira Kurosawa's first color film, and he presents a wonderfully vibrant world of color.  In the landfill world of the film, any sort of color quickly attracts the eye to it.  Take the color coded couples.  You can easily tell when one husband is cheating on his wife when he walks into the wrong colored house.  Then there are two characters that get gravely sick.  Kurosawa has the two painted up with deep hues of green and blue to highlight their physical maladies.  But the greatest visual display has got to be the tram child's home.  The home is made in a simple Japanese style manner, built of wood and paper.  However, instead of plain white paper being used to line the wooden doors, a large number of either crayon or water colored drawings are used.  Each one of the drawings depicts a tram car.  The effect created when the film shows the interior of the house in the morning is a beautiful stained glass house.  The light passes through the drawings and the house is illuminated by it.  Color is one of few things that the film gets spot on.

                You might find something about "Dodes'ka-den" to like.  In fact, there are a number of characters and stories to like here, but I did not find the film as a whole to be enjoyable.  At times, the quiet scenes added a dynamic to the behavior of characters, but would also make the film stretch out a bit too long.  For a film that is about nothing in particular, it takes quite a while to say nothing.  It reminds me a bit of Kurosawa's earlier work, "The Lower Depths."  While both films detail those that rest at the bottom of society, at least "Lower Depths" had something to say.  Albeit it was Russian realism, which means Russian pessimism, but at least that film carried a bit of suspense to a central plot.  "Dodes'ka-den" is like a slice of life film without any of the genre's charm.  Outside of the tram child, there is not much worth watching the film for.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next is "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" for PC, provided I can get it operational.

Entry 105: "The Lower Depths" (1957)

Dear Internet,

                "The Lower Depths" is the second film by Akira Kurosawa which has got stems in play acting that I have reviewed for this Backlog.  If you remember, the first was "Throne of Blood" which was based off of Shakespeare's "Macbeth."  This film is based on a play by the same name, written by Maxim Gorky.  I am unfamiliar with the play.  So, I cannot do some sort of adaptation awareness review as I did with "Throne of Blood", and I will not try.  From what I have read, the film is a close adaptation, and in some aspects, this is evident.  The most notable aspect is the fact that the film only has five scenes, which I assume is a reflection of the five act structure found so often in plays.  But that is a guess at best and a bit of speculation at worst.

                "The Lower Depths" tells of a group of people in the Edo period.  In the group are gamblers, thieves, whores, adulterers, and maybe even a murderer.  They are all gathered under a ramshackle roof of a greedy landlady.  Within the film, we are introduced to the various characters.  There is Sutekichi, the thief and lover of Okayo, who is the sister to the landlady, Osugi.  Then there is the former actor who is dying of long term alcohol poisoning.  After that is the tinker whose wife is on her deathbed.  There is also the man who claims to have been a samurai lord years prior to the jeers of his peers.  Beyond that are a number of other characters who all have similarly tragic and depressing tales.  But perhaps most noteworthy is the old man in pilgrim garb named Kahei.  Kahei enters into the bottom barrel in as a fresh element into the mix.  He gives the various characters advise to better their situations and attempt to steer their cynicism away.  However, as the film continues, the story takes a final dark turn.

                Beyond that, there really is not much of a story or plot.   It is more of a premise than anything else, but the most central story would have to be the relationship between Sutekichi and Okayo.  Sutekichi was one having an affair with Osugi, but wants nothing to do with her now.  He is stuck in his way of life and wants to get himself and Okayo away from the dead end tenement that the film takes place in.  The film most closely follows this as the central plot, but since there are so many characters that exist within the film, it is hard to only tie it down to this one thing.  The rest of the cast receive almost equal footing in their presentation to the audience.  The tinker is on equal footing as the drunk.  The thief is just as important as the prostitute.  The landlord is as important as the sister's uncle, and so on.  This creates an effect that the film is more about the collection rather than anyone specific.  The film is about a premise, not a story.

                But then, what is the premise trying to get to?  It is wracked with human suffering, obviously.  There is not a single individual in the entire film that does not suffer or have some sort of heartache.  Even Kahei, the traveling pilgrim, shows signs of his less than perfect life before appearing in the film.  The film starts with this suffering and ends with it.  It does not have much hope for the characters.  Considering that the majority of the characters ended up there because of their own actions, it would make sense that the only way for them to get out would be for them to pull themselves out.  Unless some change occurs either within them from some outside source, they will most likely remain there until they all die, one by one.  "The Lower Depths" does not paint a pretty picture.

                Kurosawa does a great job making the miniature world come alive.  Between the varied cast and the set, the film is able to draw in the viewer. I definitely want to give some praise to the sets and costumes.  The building they all live in looks like it is about to fall in on itself.  At the start of the film, two women toss their rubbish over a cliff onto the building thinking it is desolate.  The walls are made of irregular sized boards that show how many times it has required patchwork fixes.  There is one specific shot that shows the roofs of both the shanty house and the one that the landlord lives in.  The landlord's roof is made of perfectly shaped and organized shingles.  The other roof is made of a mix match of shingles from a variety of different styles and sizes.  The contrast between the quality of living is stark and quick to understand.  Then there is the wardrobe that the characters wear.  Every single one of the shanty tenants wears cloths dirtied to the point of being threadbare and nearly black in most parts.  When Kahei appears, he is wearing white garments that are so bright that everything else is made darker by comparison.  The visual effect gets its point across.

The haves, the have-nots, and the thin line between,

                The film progresses nicely for about four-fifths of its length.  At the climax, it bottoms out quickly.  The last scene of the five is the weakest one despite the final moments of the film.  Short of the last minute, it is uneventful and got me wanting the film to end quickly since it showed no signs of going anywhere.  On top of that, the final kicker does not deliver all that much kick.  I can say that there is a suicide at the end and not really be spoiling the ending.  This is because the film does not hint at much of anything less.  The film is a collection of people at the edge of society with mentalities and personalities driven just as far.  The suicide is precisely what the story was veering to all along.  It is the final crime that had yet to be committed.  The character that commits the deed is somewhat surprising unless you examine them closely.  I would even say that the character that does it is the one that had been most likely to do it.  But in the end, the film goes nowhere except to show the spiraling downward nature of a self-destructing behavior.  

                This would not be so bad if it were not for, well everything.  The film is way too depressing and negative that it would be sickening if it went on after the suicide.  I cannot help but think of "The Bad Sleep Well."  Both films detail a cast of characters that have grey morality.  However, "The Bad Sleep Well" is a examination at the attempt of revenge and how it is a black deed no matter the angle of viewing.  "The Lower Depths" has got too much of a sense of futility.  Both films can be seen as cautionary tales, but "The Lower Depths" plays a heavier hand.  The villain, if there is one, gets away with exactly what they wanted.  At least in "The Bad Sleep Well," there was comfort in knowing the villain lost what he really wanted.

                "The Lower Depths" is a not a fun film, but it is a good one.  It gets its point across, I think.  Then again, with a work like this, it might be actually trying to portray the world it creates as a final truth.  In the end, it is a fantasy born from select realities, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.  That is what all fiction is.  The end result is what matters.  For the film, it is an end that is just too black for reality.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. See the announcement for further entry details.

Entry 078: "Destroy All Monsters" (1968)

Dear Internet,

                Well, I made a bit of a mistake yesterday.  The title of the film today does not have Godzilla in the name, but it is called "Destroy All Monsters."  Godzilla plays a part in the story, but there is more to it than that.  The film marks the 20th Toho Kaiju film, which is remarkable considering that this film came out only after 14 years from their first giant monster film "Godzilla."  That means the company exceeded a single Kaiju film per year during that time.  On top of that is the wide variety of monsters that the company created.  A majority of those creatures come back or make appearances for this film.  Eleven of these colossal terrors come together for this smorgasbord movie that celebrates the series of science fiction monsters.

                Of course, having all these monsters come together requires a workable plot or reason for why they share a similar story.  Enter the hypothetical future of the year 1999.  Here, the monsters have been gathered to live peaceably, far from civilization on tropical islands.  The different monsters are kept from leaving the islands through the use of specialized equipment tailored to each monster's weakness.  From smoke screens to magnetic fields, there is no danger of these creatures escaping to destroy any more cities.  After this 20 yearlong effort, a select number of scientists are allowed to study the creatures in a research facility on the islands.  One day, a mysterious yellow smoke appears and knocks both the scientists and the monsters out.  Afterwards, a crew is sent into to investigate the disturbance which has also caused all the monsters to leave the island.  When they get there, the crew finds a few scientists that are under the control of the Kilaaks, an alien race that now controls the monsters and scientists through radio transmission and other advanced technologies.  The demands of the aliens are simple: either be ruled under the Kilaaks or face the destruction of civilization by the hands of the controlled monsters.  Will the humans be able to fight against the combined might of numerous titanic abominations and the power of a more sophisticated type of alien technology?

                Thus is the basic plot of "Destroy All Monsters."  It is obvious that to put all the monsters together in one film required something more than just a simple premise of just having them together and making a few stock characters run in terror.  No, by making all the monsters already rounded up and waiting for things to go wrong, the film is able to skip a lot of useless la-de-da and just straight into the good parts--the destruction of cities and them fighting one another.  There is one specific thing that I want to point out that somehow makes the film prophetic.  When Godzilla is sent to destroy a city, he is sent to New York City.  The film is supposed to be occurring in 1999.  It is somewhat humorous considering the 1998 "American made film "Godzilla" that had the giant destroy that same city.

The scene only lasted about two minutes in total.

                The visuals are classic Toho.  The miniatures are fun and work well.  I am still impressed every time the ground opens up to swallow a hill or mountain into a sinkhole.  The buildings are more than just boxes with only the outer shell being constructed.  They include interior floors that also fall apart when a Kaiju rips through them.  The monsters themselves include a variety of suits that run the gamut of being either very intimidating to being downright laughable.  This is coming right after "Son ofGodzilla" and Minilla makes a repeat appearance.  At least his importance and influence in this film is minor compared to that of the previous film.  The set elements probably take the cake for the level of corn thrown into the veggie salad that is this movie.  From laser guns that look like derringers to mind controlling pearls inserted behind the ear, the film pulls out all the stops in trying to make the story come alive while still retaining a self aware level of how campy the plot really is.  For example, the aliens place radio transmitters across the globe, hidden in various places including coconuts and giant clam shells.  They are not even hidden very well, which is evident when an elderly man stumbles upon one and brings it to the local police station for identification.  You would think that an advance group of extra-terrestrial beings could think of hiding their devices in better places.  The costumes are even more outlandish with their design.  The Kilaaks are dressed in silver caped outfits that are covered in sequins, but the best has got to be the spacesuits for the main human cast.

The look like Lego people wearing their birthday suit.

                The music is wonderfully orchestrated and pulls from the various previous films that the various monsters come from.  Although I did not hear the original Godzilla theme song in a standalone format, numerous other iconic songs seem to weave themselves into the soundtrack as well as some well done original pieces.

                There is not much I can say against "Destroy All Monsters."  This is not because it is a perfect film.  The characters are rather forgettable and some even seemed to merge together in my mind.  There are really only two memorable characters but they are reduced to "the guy" and "the girl."  Beyond those two, everyone is playing their part in a typical monster film.  There are the generals, the reporters, the other scientists, and the fleeing crowds of people.  One thing that has always struck me as being weird is how willing the press is able to sympathize with the military officials and obey what they are told to do.  The general will say something along the lines of "We do not have any information, so please try not to create a panic."  The journalists comply constantly and do not question the lack of ability of the Japanese military.  If this was taking place anywhere else, the journalists would be trying to break down the doors with questions, yelling over one another, and then print reports about how the military is incompetent and unable to protect the nation.  It must be a Japanese thing.  There are a few non-Japanese actors who deliver Japanese lines and at least do not feel out of place, but I cannot say at how well they deliver those lines.  The length is pretty good considering that even at 90 minutes it felt like much longer but not in a bad way.

                The film mostly is just trying to be an entertaining mash-up of different monsters.  In this way, it succeeds.  However, it does not try to be anything greater than a Kaiju fan's dream film, putting all the various monsters together in the same scene.  It is not trying to talk about some greater moral, deep philosophical point about the nature of man, or something like that, which is actually good to not try to do for such a premise.  "Destroy All Monsters" is a good film for the kid in all of us that likes to see a house of cards tumble apart or watch a line of dominoes fall against one another.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow is the "Godfather" trilogy, which I will spread over three days.

Entry 070: The Mysterians" (1957)

Something about that UFO makes me think there are going to be aliens in this one.

 Dear Internet,

                You know what is refreshing, Internet?  A work that does not want me to be depressed or contemplative.  "Saikano" and "Sky Crawlers" wanted to make me feel horrible and failed.  "Rhapsody in August" and "Silmido" wanted to make me think and succeeded.  I doubt "Wii Play: Motion" had any sort of ulterior motive.  Trying to talk about four works in a row that are meant to drain the energy out of the audience is tiring.  Thankfully, "The Mysterians" has a way of energizing the audience, even if it was not trying to.

                "The Mysterians" opens up with a spaceship in outer space of alien design.  Weird things begin to happen near a Japanese village.  First a fire breaks out in the nearby forest, burning in a manner that the residents identify as peculiar before they are burned alive.  Later, the local shrine and surrounding area is swallowed in a massive sinkhole, while radiation levels spike and drop mysteriously.  Finally, a giant robot with laser eyes begins to terrorize the countryside before succumbing to the strength of the military.  When the top scientists organize together to determine the reasons for these series of events, they are contacted by the Mysterians.  They are an alien race who once lived on the now destroyed planet that is now the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.  The Mysterians have a greater understanding of all science than the Earthlings and make two passive-aggressive requests.  The want a strip of land for their own, but more importantly, they want Earth women for species reproduction.

                You do not have to go over that brief summary to know that the film has got enough corn for a whole field.  The film is filled with science-fiction clichés and tropes.  The giant robot I already mentioned is one of the least mobile suits I have seen.  It looks like a cross between a mole and a refrigerator.  When it "shoots" its laser beams, they are about balls of blue energy.  You can see that the film repeats three very bad drawings over the frames in the film instead of a nice beam of some sort.  The various space ships that the aliens use and ones that the humans develop are miniatures that would look more in place in a "Flash Gordon" than on an aeronautical center's drafts table.  One of the best ham-handed scenes is when the humans decide to drop fully built giant satellite dishes mounted to wheeled structures from the sky.  They do not use parachutes to let the structures fall somewhat gracefully to the ground.  No, the satellite structures use jets to gracefully touchdown, completely ignoring the fact that the structures' center of gravity would cause it to fall upside down.

                My favorite cob of corn has got to be when the aliens welcome a select group of scientists to enter their spaceship.  They tell the scientists that the spaceship is somewhat colder than outside.  To remedy this, the scientists are told to wear cloaks.  That is right, cloaks.  So there are the Earth scientists sitting all around a table, surrounded by multi-colored fluorescent tubes of future technology, and wearing full length cloaks with collars that touch their shoulders.  It gets even better when the aliens show up and half wear the same style cloaks, albeit in primary colors.  Why are they lowering the temperature of their spaceship if they are just going to go around wearing cloaks?

I think Edna Mole said it best.

                The message that the film attempts to portray is the classic atomic warning.  If you start to use nuclear weaponry, all it leads to is complete and utter annihilation.  Thankfully, the film does not try to nail it into the viewer too much.  It comes up from time to time, with only three times being notable.  First, when the aliens mention that it is the reason for their planet being gone.  Second, when the idea of using it against the aliens.  Third, at the end of the film when the moral of the day is being recited.  The whole nuclear warning can even be ignored easily so that the film becomes a B-film action flick, which is about all it is good for.

                The miniatures are well made and are able to create a sense of calamity.  When the village is swallowed into the ground by the sinkhole, it is able to show the terror of an entire town being obliterated.  When the aircrafts that the military creates are launched, only a little imagination is required to see the impossible vehicle taking flight.  However, there are a number of things that the visuals get painfully wrong.  As I mentioned before about the mechanized mole, it feels terribly out of place.  This is mostly due to the fact that it is clunky and acts somewhere in between a robot and a giant monster.  It is some sort of hybrid between the two and made me laugh more than fear it.  I have already mentioned the satellites dish structures and how they are immune to the effects of gravity and balance.  The most laughable visual is perhaps the Mysterians themselves.  They are some sort of cross between Pikmin and Power Rangers.

Just wait until they summon their Dinozords.

                Overall, "The Mysterians" does a poor job of reciting a warning, but has fun along the way.  Despite the number of times that the Japanese military fails to attack the Mysterian base, the fact that they are fighting to, tongue-in cheek, "defend the women" is really what makes the audience root for them.  The characters are likable, but bit players playing as character types rather than unique individuals.  While I found the film enjoyable and wonderfully campy, probably because I have been swamped by heavy and depressing items from this backlog, I realize that there is not anything very special or notable about it.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow is "Shin Megami Tensei: Persona," provided that I can get it working.  This better not be depressing.