FILM REVIEW: TOKYO TRIBE

Sion Sono has spent his entire career pushing the boundaries of sex and violence in cinema. He doesn’t do this simply to be a provocateur; instead, Sono is confronting viewers to sympathize with those in the margins of society whom we usually shun. Through his portraits of prostitutes, gangsters, and criminals, Sono is like a modern day Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and like Fassbinder, Sono wants to shed light on the dark corners of the human soul to give voice to the voiceless.

With Tokyo Tribe (2014), Sono is exploring the lives of youth who turn to gangsterism because it offers an outlet for creative expression for them. Rap and hip-hop music is rooted in the culture of inner city gangs in the African-American community, but Sono is viewing how Asian youth gangs take on this art form. Based on the popular manga series by Santa Inoue, Tokyo Tribe is the story of a turf war between various gangs in an alternate, futuristic Tokyo. The main players in this war are Show (Shōta Shometani), Sunmi (Nana Seino), Young Dais (Kai Deguchi), Mera (Ryōhei Suzuki), and Buppa (Riki Takeuchi). Each of these characters take on a prominent role in their respective gangs.

Tokyo Tribe is one of Sion Dino’s most expensive productions, and it shows in the intricately elaborate set design with its pop-art-like, bright color palette that recalls early MTV music videos and the paintings of outlaw graffiti artists like Daze and Banksy. There are gold-plated tanks, chainsaw-like bazookas, and a sort of human installation sculpture garden that recalls Salo and A Clockwork Orange. Also, Tokyo Tribe wouldn’t be a Sion Sono film without its share of over-the-top violence, including an absolutely bonkers musical fight sequence that ends with a giant, flesh shredding fan.

The cinematography in Tokyo Tribe, courtesy of Daisuke Sōma, vividly captures the throbbing energy of Sion Sono’s vision. The opening crane shot (filmed in a single, long uninterrupted cut) follows the character Show as he guides the viewer through a vibrant Tokyo cityscape at night, filled with vagrant youth, scantily clad prostitutes, and a DJ’ing grandma. Like his previous masterpiece Love Exposure, the camera moves freely through space and time, mirroring the many exhilarating and expertly staged fights sequences and musical numbers.

All of this technical bravado wouldn’t mean anything if it wasn’t in the service of a deeper purpose, and Tokyo Tribe is indeed more than just an exercise in style over substance. Ultimately, Tokyo Tribe is about the power of youthful idealism over nihilism. The battle between the various gangs in the film is a battle of light over darkness, of hope over fashionable pessimism. Sono reveals how the garishly violent Buppa and his gang only perpetuates an endless cycle of death and destruction, while the more optimistic characters of Show and Sunmi lead the turf war forward towards peace and love.

Indeed, the youth gang represented by Show, Sunmi, and Young Dais spend their time in the film at a 1950s style, brightly colored cafe, where they use hip-hop to celebrate positivity and love for each other. This contrasts with Buppa’s dark and bloody lifestyle, which is filled with gratuitous sex and violence, as most blatantly symbolized by his tendency towards cannibalism. Also, Buppa’s mansion is filled with instruments of death and torture, which contrasts sharply with the serenity of the youth cafe.

Tokyo Tribe ends on a wave of positive energy as Show leads a group of youth in an invigorating and uplifting hip-hop musical number about love and solidarity. By doing so, Sono is contrasting the criminal landscape of Tokyo we see at the opening crane shot sequence with a more hopeful conclusion. It is no coincidence that Buppa and his tribe are older than the gangs represented by Show and Sunmi. Like Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Feminin, Tokyo Tribe is a celebration of the power of youthful idealism over aging cynicism and disenchantment.

FILM REVIEW: THE GREAT BUDDHA+

I saw the Taiwanese film The Great Buddha+ (2017) during a visit to Taiwan in 2017, and I still haven’t forgotten about it. The Great Buddha+ is the clever and dryly amusing feature debut film of Huang Hsin-yao, a former documentary filmmaker. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Best Foreign Film Academy Awards category, and won several international awards, including Best Film from mainland China and Taiwan at the Hong Kong Film Awards, and six Golden Horse Awards.

What makes The Great Buddha+ such a remarkable film is its skillful mixture of satiric comedy and social commentary on class relations in modern day Taiwan. It is the story of a night security guard and his bumbling friend (who go by the names of Pickle and Belly Button) both of whom live in poverty and work for Kevin, a wealthy businessman who owns a Buddha statue manufacturing factory. One night, out of boredom, the two friends start investigating the dashcam footage of their boss’ car, and in the process discover dark hidden secrets about the businessman’s nighttime activities.

While this plot summary makes The Great Buddha+ sound like a traditional thriller, the way the film is shot is much more interesting. Huang, with his background in documentary film, lets the scenes play out naturally, as if he was observing real life without any cinematic artifice. We observe the day to day lives of the two main characters, as they find ways to get by while living on the margins of society.  Belly Button spends his days scavenging for items to recycle for money, and Pickle finds ways to keep his wealthy boss Kevin happy, while amusingly trying to find the right time to ask for a raise.

The humor in The Great Buddha+ comes from the sometimes absurd dialogue and darkly funny situations, such as a scene where Pickle gets cheated into buying a pair of sunglasses that he doesn’t need. Indeed, much of The Great Buddha+ is about power relations and dynamics between Pickle and his businessman boss Kevin, and between Pickle himself and his friend Belly Button. The laconic and droll humor of The Great Buddha+ is reminiscent of Aki Kaurismaki, who also makes films that examine the plight of those whom society traditionally ignores.

The tone of The Great Buddha+ gradually changes as Pickle and Belly Button start exploring the dashcam footage of Kevin, which evolves from late night dalliances with his mistresses to much darker matters. These scenes with Kevin’s activities play out in a unique manner, as they are shown through dashcam footage played out in realtime; we hear audio of the boss talking and seducing the different women he has affairs with, but we only see the road ahead as the car drives through the daytime and nighttime streets. Viewers are forced to imagine what they are hearing, which makes the later turn into more disturbing discoveries even more effective.

Without giving anything away, by the time that Pickle and Belly Button have discovered the dark, hidden secrets of Kevin’s nighttime sojourns, The Great Buddha+ effectively turns into a thriller of sorts. However, there is no bombastic music to pummel you with suspense; instead, Huang continues to observe the daily lives of his characters with the same non-obtrusive documentary-like manner. Pickle and Belly Button, who have spent much of the film looking up to and admiring the wealthy Kevin, now see him for the despicable person that he actually is.

By quietly and patiently letting the story of his characters play out naturally, Huang rewards the audience with an emotionally powerful climax that has deeper resonance. While the world is filled with those who struggle to get by, such as Pickle and Belly Button, and those who prey on others to obtain great financial wealth and power, like Kevin, in the end everyone meets the same fate. The Great Buddha+ ends with a Buddhist ceremony taking place, as if to memorialize the lives of its characters. Although those who are less fortunate may be forgotten and ignored during their lives, Huang is showing that they too are still human, and their story is just as important as that of the rich and the powerful.

FILM REVIEW: ATLANTICS

Atlantics (2019) is a mysterious and beguiling film that completely draws the viewer into its hypnotic spell. Directed by the Senegalese/French filmmaker Mati Diop, the niece of the legendary Djibril Diop Mambéty, Atlantics begins as a love story that turns into something much more enigmatic and complex. Diop keeps revealing more layers of meaning and surprises as Atlantics progresses, culminating in a touching and powerful coda.

Set in the capital city of Dakar in Senegal, Atlantics is the story of Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), a young woman who is in love with Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), but is bethrothed to marry the wealthy Omar (Babacar Sylla). After Souleiman is unable to get paid for his work at a construction company, he resorts to the desperate measure of taking a boat with his coworkers to Spain to find employment. Without giving anything away, the risky boat trip sets into motion a series of mysterious and supernatural events for Ada and her seaside community.

By calling her protagonist Ada, Diop alludes to Jane Campion’s The Piano. Like Campion’s protagonist in The Piano, Ada in Atlantics is a strong-willed woman who engages in a forbidden love affair. Also like the protagonists in Campion’s Bright Star and Top of the Lake, Ada is forever seeking a way out of her restrictive, male-dominated society, and in the process define her own identity as a woman.

Another similarity to The Piano is the important role of the ocean and nature in Atlantics. Throughout the film, Diop focuses her camera on the vast and majestic Atlantic Ocean. For the characters in Atlantics, the ocean is both a symbol of escape, and also a harbinger of tragedy. Souleiman seeks a better future for himself by escaping across the ocean, while Ada views the ocean as something that traps her within her family and unwanted marriage. Throughout Atlantics, Diop reveals how confined Ada feels, by framing her through fences and other man-made barriers. Ada’s only form of solace is a night club where she regularly goes with her friends.

Diop’s use of color and sound creates both a comforting and at times threatening environment, mirroring Ada’s journey through the film. When Ada is at the club, she is bathed in an otherworldly green light, while we hear the powerful waves of the ocean in the background. Indeed, Diop regularly cuts to alternatingly calm and ominous shots of the ocean, depending on Ada’s situation. Diop is more interested in creating a certain mood and tone than telling a straightforward narrative, and she successfully envelopes the viewer in her visually poetic world. Cinema is a primarily visual medium, and Diop has a complete mastery over this aspect of film.

With Atlantics, Diop carefully weaves an enchanting and at times eerie tale of doomed love and female empowerment. Although Ada struggles against many outside forces which try to control her, the concluding shot of Atlantics shows Ada coming to a satisfying self-realization. Spirits and ghosts appear throughout Atlantics, doomed lovers reunite, family members and friends argue and reconcile with each other, and all this is masterfully crafted by Diop; she is truly an exciting and powerful talent to watch.

FILM REVIEW: PERSONAL SHOPPER

Most supernatural ghost films function to provide visceral scares and thrills to the audience. With Personal Shopper (2016), Olivier Assayas is attempting to create a more cerebral and introspective ghost story, whose function is more to shed light on the psychological aspects of the supernatural realm rather than simply frighten the audience with jump scares. Anchored by a subtly powerful performance from Kristen Stewart, Personal Shopper is an unsettling experience that wants to disturb us more with the human realm rather than spectral apparitions.

In the film, Kristen Stewart plays Kyra, an American personal shopper for a supermodel in Paris. After the recent death of her twin brother from a heart condition, Kyra visits her late brother’s mansion to try to arrange its sale. The buyers of the property are concerned that the mansion may be haunted, so Kyra, who has a lifelong interest in the supernatural realm, decides to investigate the house. After spending a night in the mansion, Kyra may or may not be haunted by a supernatural entity as she tries to go on with her regular life.

Personal Shopper follows Kyra through her daily activities in a detached, observational manner. When Assayas reveals glimpses of what may be a ghostly presence, he does so in a purposefully ambiguous manner to question whether what we are seeing is real or just a figment of Kyra’s imagination. Indeed, as the film progresses, Assayas reveals how Kyra is gradually becoming more and more detached from the real world through the twin factors of her demanding boss and the recent death of her brother, whom she was close to.

Throughout the film, Assayas constantly subverts the viewers’ perception of reality. In one sequence, Kyra starts receiving unusual texts from an unknown person, which plays with her admiration for and jealousy for her boss. The texts are a sort of psychological game to get Kyra to defy the orders of her boss and potentially get her fired from her job. Are the texts from a real person, from the ghostly presence at her brother’s mansion, or just Kyra’s steadily fragmented grasp on her own sanity?

In a traditional supernatural film, we would see explicit manifestations of ghostly figures haunting their victims. But, with Personal Shopper Assayas is more interested in exploring the more mundane everyday life of someone who may or may not be haunted. There are long, quiet scenes of Kyra going about the daily duties of her job as a personal shopper, or getting dressed and undressed to go to sleep. By doing so, Assayas is planting his supernatural story in the most prosaic manner possible so that we are focusing as Kyra as a person rather than as some form of spiritual medium.

Indeed, the very banal nature of the film’s title itself suggests that Assayas wants to strip away all forms of sensationalism in his film. This has been something Assayas has been working towards his whole career— after more technically flashy films like Irma Vep, Demon Lover, and Boarding Gate, Assayas started to ground his films in a more naturalistic manner beginning with Summer Hours. Assayas isn’t interested in making a traditional genre picture. Instead, he wants to use the ghost story genre to tell a grounded story of a few days in the life of a young woman.

Hence, as the title suggests, Assayas is interested more in the personal realm than the supernatural realm. Kyra is not a person who has been haunted by and possibly possessed by a ghost. Rather, she is a traumatized person who is trying to regain hold of her life after the death of her beloved twin brother. Personal Shopper is less about thrilling us with loud scenes of screaming ghosts, and more about us seeing how a person can overcome grief and despair to find comfort and solace.

FILM REVIEW: NON-FICTION

The digital era has increasingly altered traditional ways of creating art, causing a schism between traditionalists and the newer generation of artists. This conflict between the old and the new is explored in Olivier Assayas’ film Non-Fiction (2018), a deft and clever relationship comedy-drama about a group of friends working in the publishing industry. As a filmmaker, Olivier Assayas has been very eclectic, making everything from French New Wave inspired art films like Irma Vep and Demon Lover to epic political thrillers like Carlos. Now, with Non-Fiction, Assayas is paying homage to Eric Rohmer’s comedy of manners, but updating it for the digital age.

Non-Fiction is the story of a struggling writer (Léonard Spiegel, played by Vincent Macaigne) and his strained relationship with his publisher and friend (Alain Danielson, played by Guillaume Canet).  Vincent and Alain are locked in a power struggle about the publication of his latest novel Full Stop, which is intensified by Vincent’s affair with Alain’s wife Selena (Juliette Binoche), who plays a fictional version of herself as a famous aging actress. In the meantime, Vincent is having relationship problems with his own wife Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), who suspects Vincent of having an affair, and Alain is also having an affair with Laure (Christa Théret), a young woman he hires to help bring his publishing company into the digital era.

This complicated series of extra-marital affairs never gets bogged down into soap operatic melodrama. Rather, like the films of Rohmer, Non-Fiction is a bitingly funny exploration of the intricate power dynamics between men and women in and out of love. On this level alone, Non-Fiction succeeds as a realistic portrayal of the complex emotions that accompany every marriage, and the bonds that both threaten to tear relationships apart and bind them together even stronger. 

Unlike an American film, Assayas doesn’t explore infidelity from a purely moral perspective. Instead, Assayas examines how emotions between men and women change over time, and how this can lead them to seek other partners to satisfy their needs. By the end of the film, there is no definitive resolution for the infidelities of the main characters; instead, just like in the real world, things are left unresolved and messy.

As the title itself suggests, Non-Fiction is also about the tenuous nature of truth in the publishing industry. Vincent writes novels that he categorizes as fiction, but at the same time they are clearly autobiographical in nature, as he writes characters and situations that are based of his own convoluted personal life. Also, the relevance of the novel as a written form in the modern era is challenged throughout the film by Laure. She continuously encourages Alain to steer away from publishing novels like the ones which Vincent writes, and focus more on monetizing online forms of writing, such as blogs and content for E-books.

With Non-Fiction, Assayas is asking us to re-evaluate monetary success as an end-all. Should Alain sell out his publishing company to an E-commerce company which will transform it into the digital future which Laure revealed to him, or keep publishing his friend Vincent’s novels? In an era in which the definition of what constitutes literature is constantly changing as a result of digitization and the new demands of E-commerce, how can we as a society preserve traditional novels as an art form?

Alain must choose between cashing in his company’s work to the unnamed tech giant (as symbolized by his extra-marital affair with the digital guru Laure), or preserving his personal relationships with his wife Selena and his friend Vincent. Assayas doesn’t offer an absolute resolution to this dilemma, or any neatly tied up conclusions to Non-Fiction’s various plot strands. Instead, through the story of his characters and their complicated love lives, Assayas suggests that the only thing that does remain constant in the rapidly changing digital era is the genuine love between couples and friends.

FILM REVIEW: A HIDDEN LIFE

Most war films celebrate the heroism of soldiers who fought for their nations, but Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019) is about a soldier who does the exact opposite. A Hidden Life is about a German soldier during World War II who refuses to join in the war efforts of the Nazi party. Like Malick’s previous films, A Hidden Life is ultimately an exploration of a man’s search for a deeper spiritual meaning in his life. The soldier in Malick’s film sees the darkness and brutality of Germany’s slide into Nazism, and tries to make sense of it through a deeper connection with God.

A Hidden Life is set in 1940s Germany and based on the true story of the conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) and his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner). As the film begins, Franz, Fani and their daughters live an idyllic and peaceful existence on their farm in the village of Radegund. However, the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party is still felt in the village, as evidenced by the patriotic Mayor (Karl Markovics) who constantly badgers Franz to join the war effort. Although Franz at first refuses to join the army, he eventually is drafted into the war effort. Franz leaves Radegund to prepare for battle, but he refuses to fight, leading to his imprisonment and torture.

A Hidden Life feels very much like the film that Malick has been working towards his whole career. Malick’s legendary status began in the 1970s when he burst into the cinematic landscape with two astonishingly accomplished films that heralded the arrival of a major talent. Malick then disappeared for almost two decades, and didn’t make another film again until 1999 with his World War II set epic The Thin Red Line. Malick then returned in 2005 with another historical period piece with The New World, followed up by The Tree of Life a few years later.

After The Tree of Life, Malick went on a filmmaking binge, with four films almost back to back from the years 2012 to 2017. Malick’s two previous historical epics The Thin Red Line and The New World were ambitious but flawed films that felt like a director who was re-learning the art of filmmaking after a long absence (indeed, as mentioned before, Malick hadn’t made a film for almost two decades before that point). While there were incredibly crafted scenes of spiritual and visceral beauty in these two films, they also felt meandering and muddled at points. The Tree of Life was a more structured and accomplished work than The Thin Red Line and The New World, but it also contained some jarring thematic detours that didn’t quite gel into an aesthetically coherent whole.

Then, Malick seemingly went off the deep end with his next three films To The Wonder, Knight of Cups, and Song To Song. Malick shot these three films without a script, and by all accounts the productions of the films were scatter shot and without focus. The films themselves were seemingly randomly improvised scenes strung together in post-production by druggy, sleepy voice-overs that sounded like hippies trapped in an endless time warp of the 1960s. While Malick’s usual thematic concerns about the search for God and meaning in a spirituality impoverished world were inherent within these films, they ultimately were too meandering and incoherent to function as satisfying works of art.

With A Hidden Life, Malick finally settled down and created a film with a tightly structured script and shooting schedule, and the result is Malick’s best film in years. In fact, A Hidden Life is as powerful as Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light and Martin Scorsese’s Silence in its portrayal of spiritual struggle. Like these films, A Hidden Life is an emotionally devastating examination of the search for meaning in a cruel and indifferent world. As Franz wrestles with his belief in a higher power while his Nazi captors endlessly torture him, Malick’s film reminds one of St. John of the Cross’ 16th century poem The Dark Night of the Soul.

By basing A Hidden Life on a true story, and setting it in confined locations, Malick is able to focus his skills in a more effective manner than his previously unstructured films. The scenes of religious and spiritual torment no longer feel out of place as they did in To The Wonder, which awkwardly cut back and forth between Javier Bardem’s tormented priest and Ben Affleck’s search to constantly get laid. Indeed, the cumulative impact of Franz’s journey to find God culminates in an emotionally devastating last act.

Malick poetically contrasts the bucolic and pastoral natural beauty of Franz’s village of Radegund with the dark and grimy Nazi prisons where Franz is imprisoned. In this sense, Malick is pointing us forward as a species towards the almost Eden-like existence of Franz and Fran and their peaceful connection with nature (much like how Malick portrayed indigenous tribes in The Thin Red Line and Native Americans in The New World). In a way, Malick’s films function as a time capsule for how we can co-exist peacefully, and A Hidden Life is his purest expression of this. A Hidden Life is not only a portrait of the horrors of Nazi Germany, but also a stirring and powerful reminder of the goodness of the human spirit amidst unspeakable cruelty.

FILM REVIEW: DOMAINS

Domains (2019), directed by Natsuka Kusano, is an innovative and startling examination of the nature of performance in cinema. A single plot summary would not encompass the many ways in which Kusano dissects the multiple layers of the cinematic medium in her groundbreaking film. Domains is about the various degrees of truth and perception which film can explore. Do we see a film to uncover simply plot details, or should we explore deeper by seeing how cinema can change our perspectives as viewers? Kusano examines questions like these, and many more, in Domains.

As the film opens, the lead character Aki (Shibuya Asami) is confessing her part in the murder of the daughter of her close friend to a police investigator. At first, we think Domains is going to be a police procedural about what led Aki to commit this shocking crime. In a way, Domains is an investigation into what would drive someone to commit murder, but it does so in a completely unexpected manner. After the opening interrogation scene, the rest of Domains consists of rehearsal scenes for a separate film about the events leading up to the murder. The three main characters in these rehearsals are Aki, her close friend Nodoka (Kasajima Tomo), and her friend’s unnamed husband (Tomo Kasajima).

The rehearsals play out for the most part in real time, and it’s interesting to see how Kusano films the same scenes multiple times in varying perspectives to reveal how a simple change of tone or rephrasing of a line of dialogue can alter the whole meaning of each scene. In this way, Kusano is exploring the elasticity of cinema, and how it can be used to distort viewers’ perspectives of cinematic truth. Jacques Rivette also explored this same free flowing nature of film in his magnum opus Out 1, which similarly consisted of many scenes of actors rehearsing.

Both Kusano and Rivette are showing how cinema by its very nature is something that is being manipulated not only by the director, but also by the actors who bring their own truths to cinema. Aki tries to make sense of her motivations for murder by turning her actions into a filmic performance piece for an audience. By doing so, the actress playing Aki, along with her two acting collaborators, have just as much power over the construction of Domains as the director Kusano does.

However, this power is not simply one of actors using their skills to elicit emotion from the viewer as in a traditional film. Instead, by revealing how all of Domains is essentially a transparently theatrical experience, Kusano and her actors are giving power back to the viewer to create their own interpretations of what they are seeing on screen. It is never made clear if Aki actually committed the murder she confesses to at the opening of the film, or if the murder is just a fictional aspect of the film Aki is rehearsing for.

Kusano wants to reveal those elements of cinema which are traditionally hidden from viewers. Not only does she show us rehearsals of scenes, but Kusano also draws attention to the camera itself, as in one scene where the camera purposefully pulls back from the actors in a disruptive and obvious manner. In another scene, we clearly see the reflection of the camera in a mirror, and several times throughout the film we hear someone yelling “cut,” or we see the slate being used. Alejandro Jodorowsky similarly ended Holy Mountain by panning out to reveal a film set, but Kusano takes this further by hiding almost nothing from the viewer.

Ultimately, Kusano is trying to make a more active form of cinema where the audience has to fully engage with what they are seeing on screen. Kusano is breaking apart the artificially of film, and forcing viewers to come to their own interpretations. Like the character of Aki, one views Domains as a form of constant rehearsal to re-wire how we view cinema. There is no longer one form of cinematic truth dominated by Hollywood films whose sole function is to manipulate viewers into feeling pre-determined emotions and perspectives. Instead, Kusano and other filmmakers like her are pointing us towards a more empowering and liberating form of cinematic engagement.