FILM REVIEW: 2001

During the 1960s, many visions for a Utopian future existed—one which could only be achieved through technological innovations.  The common perception of the 1960s was that science was boundless in terms of its ability to advance human society.  Science allowed us to reach beyond the limits of Earth; on July 20, 1969, the United States astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human on the moon.  This achievement occurred in the larger context of the Cold War, during which the U.S. and Russia fought each other to gain technological global dominance.  As a result of this rivalry, the United States’ striving for dominance in the field of science was fertile grounds for creative expression by many 1960s artists. 

Stanley Kubrick's 2001 was the most significant film from the 1960s which reflected this glorification of science.  Although it presented a Utopian future of the United States as colonizing and exploring space freely, 2001 also revealed the limits and the dangers of technology.  In a world of rapid technological changes, the self-destructive side of science is a frightening reality.

Kubrick’s 2001 portrays humans in the process of creating wondrous technological advancements, such as building a space station and landing on distant planets.  In the film, the United States has sent a group of scientists, including the lead character of David, to explore the solar system.  The lives of these scientists are in the hands of HAL, a super computer which is a highly advanced form of artificial intelligence. 

At first, HAL cooperates with David and his crew, carefully monitoring those who are in suspended animation, and even playing chess with David when he is bored.  At this point in the film, man and technology live in harmony, which each side benefiting from the other; Hal keeps David and the other scientists alive and functioning safely in the hostile atmosphere of outer space, and David keeps HAL company by talking with him. 

This state of peaceful co-existence between man and technology is what scientists in the 1960s wanted to maintain.  Scientists were aware of the darker side of technological development, such as the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but they consciously chose to ignore the dangers of science in order to help the United States gain global dominance over Russia.

              

Kubrick realized that at a certain point, the harmony between man and science could reach a breaking point—eventually, HAL starts to make mistakes, and David and his crew debate over whether or not to turn HAL off.  This leads to HAL becoming more and more malevolent, as its decisions start to threaten the safety of David and his crew. 

Through his portrayal of the darker side of HAL, Kubrick is warning us about the inherent destructive nature of human beings.  HAL was created to replicate human behavior, and in doing so, the designers of HAL also recreated the more deadly side of human nature—the ability to kill. 

The creators of technology ultimately have control over how scientific innovations are used, and if the creators are inherently destructive, then their creation will also be destructive.  The irony of 2001 is that despite all the technological advancements that humans have made, they have not been able to evolve beyond their inherent desire to destroy themselves. 

2001 opens with the dawn of man, which is depicted as a dark era when the first humans, in the form of apes, lived in fear of the dark, and constantly fight and kill each other over territory.  The major technological advancement which occurs with these first humans is the discovery of the bone, which is ultimately used as a tool to kill other apes.  The bone itself is discovered after the apes kill another species of animal; thus the first scientific discovery could only be created through murder. 

In one of the most celebrated cuts in all of cinematic history, an ape throws a bone into the sky, and Kubrick cuts from the upward motion of the bone to an image of a nuclear device floating in space.  This single cut reveals how little humans have evolved, despite all of our amazing technological advancements.  Kubrick is saying that if we cannot evolve beyond our nature to kill each other, then we are doomed to ultimately destroy ourselves. 

However, Kubrick’s 2001 is not ultimately a pessimistic portrait of humankind.  Rather, it is a warning against the human race’s natural inclination to recede to its baser nature. 

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man?”   Man in his basest nature is an ape, whose natural instincts are to destroy life and conquer land. 

However, it takes great effort to overcome these primal desires, and to ultimately become what Nietzsche referred to as a “superman.”  This concept of the superman has been greatly misunderstood by those in power, and has been used to justify war and destruction, as in the case of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.  In order to become a real superman, a cleansing of what Nietzsche refers to as the polluted nature of mankind is necessary.

This cleansing is revealed in 2001 by the increasingly clean environments which the humans reside in throughout the film.  The first environment we see is the jagged and soil-filled environment of the apes.  This dirtier, more natural environment is replaced by the geometrically precise and clean environments of the spaceships.  The last environment is that of the elegant and clinically clean rooms which David lives in before he dies. 

Like the monoliths strategically placed in the film, an increasingly cleaner environment accompanies each stage of human evolution in 2001.  The final stage of evolution in 2001 is the rebirth of mankind into a higher consciousness—one based upon an alignment of the planets with the last monolith.  This final monolith serves as both a warning and a symbol of hope for the human race. 

2001 is both the most pessimistic warning against the destruction of humankind, and the most optimistic portrayal of our ability to evolve into a higher state of consciousness.

LEOS CARAX AND THE FOLLY OF PRAISE, PART TWO

So, should a director not even consider the audience and how they will react to his or her work?  Of course, there is a delicate balancing act between being true to oneself as an artist, without completely alienating the outside world. 

David Lynch

David Lynch has the ability to create a baffling, yet accessible masterpiece such as Mulholland Drive, while at the same time he can make an equally baffling and brilliant, but almost impenetrable film, such as Inland Empire and Lost Highway.

Lynch has never ceased making films, despite the sometimes hostile reaction to his work, because ultimately he is more concerned with expressing himself honestly as an artist, rather than being paralyzed by public perceptions of his work. 

Thus, the audience is always there for every film a director makes, but the real question is if one cares about what the audience thinks?  Can one imagine what a great loss to cinema it would have been if Scorsese had went into exile after his initial hardships? 

For directors such as Cimino and Carax, the secret is to keep making films for the right reason, and to not let the outside world determine the kinds of films they ultimately do make. 

Leos Carax

It is interesting to note that Cimino and Carax were ultimately vindicated in the same year—2012, at the Venice and Cannes film festivals, respectively. 

At the 2012 Venice Film Festival, Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate was presented in a restored print overseen by The Criterion Collection, and after the screening, the audience broke out into thunderous applause.  The Venice Film Festival also awarded Cimino the 2012 Persol Award for Heaven’s Gate because, in the words of festival director Alberto Barbera, “Cimino has exalted the filmmaking art and offered a portrait of America both critical and passionate, lucid and compelling.” 

The Criterion Collection has also released Heaven’s Gate as part of their highly respected catalog of films on DVD/Blu Ray.

At the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, one of the most talked about and acclaimed films was Leos Carax's Holy Motors.  Holy Motors was widely discussed as being in the running for the Palm D’Or, but ultimately lost out to Michael Haneke’s Amour. 

However, The Indomina Group acquired U.S. distribution rights to Holy Motors at the Cannes Film Festival.  In addition, Leos Carax received the Pardo d’onore Swisscon award at the 2012 Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland; this award is given out annually by Locarno to “a master of contemporary cinema.” 

Holy Motors also opened to widespread critical acclaim at several other film festivals in 2012, including the New Zealand International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and Fantastic Fest. 

 

Ultimately, what is most interesting to note about this insurgence in the careers of Cimino and Carax is the timing.  Literally decades have passed since their early initial success, and subsequent derision by fans and critics, so now their body of work can be judged on their own terms. 

They have been able to withstand the psychological need humans seem to have for taking down that which they once loved, and now they can be seen as they truly are—great artists who have been unfairly misunderstood for decades.

LEOS CARAX AND THE FOLLY OF PRAISE: PART ONE

In 1999, the French director Leos Carax was booed out of Cannes with his film Pola X.  The character of Pierre in Pola X was based upon Leos Carax himself.  Like Carax, Pierre was a celebrated artist whose career fell into decline after his earlier phenomenal successes.  In 1984, when Carax was only in his twenties, he released his first feature length film, Boy Meets Girl, which was a huge critical and commercial success in France and Europe (although it was virtually ignored in the United States). 

Carax was hailed as the next great European film director, with many comparing him to his mentor, Jean Luc Godard.  Carax’s next film, Mauvais Sang, was also a huge hit and his reputation was rising.  Then, in 1991, Carax released what was at the time the most expensive film in French cinema history—The Lovers on the Bridge. 

The Lovers on the Bridge

Audiences and critics ravaged The Lovers on the Bridge, calling it a colossal waste of talent and money (although recently The Lovers on the Bridge has come to be seen as a classic).  Needless to say, Carax was devastated, and he disappeared from the filmmaking scene until 1999 with Pola X, whose disastrous reception sent Carax back into exile until 2008’s anthology film Tokyo.

Perhaps, like Pierre, Carax finally realized that all the praise that he received earlier in his career was ultimately false, as proven by the derision he faced later in his career.  Critics and audiences celebrated Carax during the early phase of his career, but when Pola X came out, the perception of Carax changed to that of a wasted talent.  But, Pola X is no different from his earlier films in terms of its artistic quality. 

What was different was that Carax had fallen into the “tearing down” phase of his career after his initial success—a precarious and potentially career ending phase that all great artists experience.  For some psychological reason, we have a tendency to want to destroy those things which we love the most. 

Pola X

Cinema history is filled with directors who were hailed as messiahs of film early in their careers, and then just as they reached their peek, the critics and the public soundly beat them down.  Perhaps the cruelest example of this is Michael Cimino, who began his career with the commercial success of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and then skyrocketed into fame with The Deer Hunter, a hugely popular film that was a cultural phenomenon at the time of its release.   

 

All this success occurred for Cimino while he was still only in his thirties.  And then came the infamous film Heaven’s Gate, which, like The Lovers on the Bridge, was the most expensive film in Hollywood history at the time.   

Heaven's Gate was a collosal commercial and critical disaster which contributed to the near bankruptcy of United Artists, and the resultant buy out of United Artists by MGM.  Cimino never recovered from this fiasco, although he did direct some embarrassing films, which did nothing to improve his reputation.

Other directors have faced similar derision after being initially celebrated, including even Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, but unlike Cimino and Carax, they were able to recover and make much more successful films. 

So, what lesson is to be learned here?  For directors, the lesson is to realize that, in true existentialist fashion, public and critical response to their films is nothing more than a subjective perception. 

In order to advance in their careers, they must learn to put the past behind them, and focus on perfecting their craft.  Carax comments on this lesson in Pola X.  The character of Pierre in Pola X begins the film with a comfortable life, living in an opulent mansion with an older, attractive woman.  At this point, his life is defined by his success as a writer; his material wealth surrounds him, and he regularly makes public appearances talking about his work. 

His life has meaning, but after he meets Isabel, a mysterious woman who may or may not be his sister, Pierre starts to question his existence.  He sees how meaningless his wealthy lifestyle is and as he becomes more and more intrigued by Isabel, Pierre starts to pull away from his material goods. 

Pierre realizes that his life has been defined by how the public perceives him, and he realizes that the perception they have of him conflicts with how he perceives himself. 

To Pierre, he is still a great writer, but he confesses to Isabel at one point that he is unable to express himself artistically because there is “something” from the outside preventing him from doing so.  This “something” is obviously Pierre’s constant need for public adoration for his work, which ultimately paralyses him from expressing himself.

FILM REVIEW: NIGHT AND DAY

The Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo has always been influenced by the works of French New Wave director Eric Rohmer, so it’s only fitting that he would eventually make a film set in France.  That film turned out to be 2008’s Night and Day, a brilliant and witty comedy of manners.

Night and Day takes the European feel of his Korean set films and places them in Paris, which was the setting for many seminal films from the French New Wave era, such as Suzanne’s Career, Masculin Feminin, and The Mother and the Whore.  Like these films, Night and Day is a nuanced and cerebral film that contains long, extended shots of dialogue set among the cafes and apartments of Paris.  Indeed, the city of Paris becomes a third character in the film, one which both constrains and liberates the central characters.

Night and Day is about Seong-nam (Kim Yeong-ho), a middle-aged, married painter living in Korea who gets in trouble with the law when he is caught smoking marijuana.  He flees Korea to live in a hostel in Paris, where he meets and falls in love with Yu-jeong (Park Eun-hye), an attractive, much younger art student.  A moral dilemma ensues as Seong-nam finds himself steadily more obsessed with Yu-jeong, while trying to remain faithful to his wife, whom he calls every night. 

Unlike the more romantic version of Paris portrayed in American films like Midnight In Paris and Henry and June, Night and Day presents a more realistic and grounded portrait of the French city.  Hong Sang-soo is more interested in exploring the everyday, mundane life of Paris, carefully observing Parisians in the park exercising or buying medicine at a drugstore, than in presenting an overly sentimentalized portrait of Paris as a city filled with bright lights and romantic encounters. 

Night and Day was Hong Sang-soo's first film shot in digital video as opposed to film, creating a more documentary-like look.  This resulted in the more naturalistic tone of Paris that Hong Sang-soo was going for.

The only time we see anything close to the cliché of Paris as a city of lovers is when Hong Sang-soo films a Parisian couple on a bench kissing, but this scene is shot from a distance and in the dull brightness of the day, removing the scene from any romantic connotations. 

Indeed, virtually all the outdoor scenes of Paris are shot during the daytime, giving the film a more prosaic view of the Paris streets.  Hong Sang-soo further distances himself from shooting the City of Lights during the more romantic nighttime when a character tells Seong-nam that it is difficult to distinguish night from day during the summertime, due to the long duration of the days. 

This inability to tell night from day also symbolizes the disconnect that Seong-nam feels as an expatriate living in a foreign country.  Not only is he separated from his wife in Paris, he also becomes separated from his desires in his pursuit of what he realizes is an unobtainable woman.  The art student that he chases, Yu-jeong, even tells him at one point that she cannot have a relationship with him due to his marital status.  Paris is no longer a mythical city where romance blooms for Seong-nam; instead it has become an emotional prison.

Thus, Hong Sang-soo is not only demystifying the overly romanticized portrait of Paris which so often occurs in American films.  He is also revealing the futility and messiness of relationships, where love is possible, but not without real-life consequences and emotional turmoil.  This deromanticization of love is a topic that Eric Rohmer also explored, most famously in his “Six Moral Tales” films. 

Both Rohmer and Hong Sang-soo use film as a means of portraying male/female relationships in a more realistic manner.  They know that oftentimes the desires of men do not match those of women, and vice versa.  This central fallacy of love leads more often to heartbreak and misunderstanding than eternal bliss, as portrayed in Hollywood romantic films. 

Night and Day is like an existential version of the Hollywood classic An American in Paris, minus its lavish musical numbers and brightly lit shots of Paris.  Indeed, by making his main character a painter and a foreigner in Paris, Hong Sang-soo seems to be paying tribute to the similar struggling painter and expatriate in An American in Paris.  In place of music numbers, Night and Day has long, clever scenes of dialogue, which at times feel like music numbers themselves with their elaborate back and forth banter, and inventive wordplay.  In place of the ebullient Gene Kelly, Night and Day has a brooding, emotionally awkward protagonist. 

The post-modern cinematic simulacrum has come full-circle—French New Wave filmmakers paid tribute to classic Hollywood films, Hong Sang-soo and other members of the Asia New Wave paid tribute to French New Wave filmmakers, and now Hong Sang-soo is paying tribute back to Hollywood classics. 

While the Korean character in Night and Day doesn’t quite fit in with his new Parisian surroundings, Hong Sang-soo’s filmmaking style is a perfect match for his new French setting.  Like French New Wave pioneers such as Eric Rohmer and Jean Luc Godard, Hong Sang-soo is able to make a film in Paris which doesn’t gloss over and overly romanticize the mythical city. 

Instead, like his European counterparts, Hong Sang-soo has made a sophisticated, intelligent film that presents a well-rounded and realistic portrayal of the eternal emotional dance between men and women. 

FILM REVIEW: SUMMER PALACE

Lou Ye is one of the most controversial filmmakers from mainland China.  His films deal with topics that are taboo to portray in Chinese films—homosexuality, political radicalism, and, most of all, the realistic portrayal of sex.  The latter two of these forbidden subject matters are covered in Lou Ye’s 2006 film Summer Palace, and the topic of same sex relationships is portrayed in Lou Ye’s 2009 film Spring Fever, which won the Prix du scenario award at the Cannes Film Festival.  As a result of Summer Palace’s politically tinged portrayal of the Tiananmen Square protests, Lou Ye was banned from filmmaking in China for five years.

Like Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Lou Ye’s Summer’s Palace is an incisive and heartbreaking portrait of how the hopes and dreams of an entire generation were shattered by a major political event.  The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a mass protest of Chinese college students against the government to advocate for democracy.  The protests ended with a military backed crackdown by the government, which led to the deaths of many students. 

Although it does deal with the events at Tiananmen Square, Summer Palace is more of a personal story about a woman’s growth in China from the late 1980s through the 1990s.  The story follows Yu Hong (played by Hao Lei), a troubled young woman who experiments with sexual and political liberation as a student at the prestigious Beijing University.  While in college, she meets and falls in love with Zhou Wei (played by Guo Xiaodong), who becomes her college boyfriend and lifelong love interest.  She also befriends Li Ti (played by Hu Lingling), a free thinking woman. 

There is a clear divide in Summer Palace between the college years, which are portrayed in a romantic, optimistic light, and the years after the Tiananmen Square protests, an event which seems to shatter Chinese society and also the lives of three central characters.  Many of the scenes during the college years are shot against the warm glow of the sun or filtered through a bright haze, symbolizing the idealism and promise of youth. 

These early scenes are all about Yu Hong liberating herself from societal boundaries.  Her friend Li Ti introduces her to the pleasures of smoking and drinking.  She talks politics with her friends, discussing the possibility of a democratic society free from government restraints.  She falls in love with and has a brief, but passionate sexual relationship with Zhou Wei. 

However, at the same time that Yu Hong is attempting to experience a fully liberated life, we discover through the many interior monologue scenes that she ultimately feels a deep sense of existential dread and isolation from the world at large. 

This inescapable sense of alienation culminates in Yu Hong dropping out of college, both as a result of her participation in the ill-fated Tiananmen Square protests, and her increased dissatisfaction with her relationship with Zhou Wei. 

After the Tiananmen Square protests, the scenes in Summer Palace are filmed in a colder, harsher light.  The three main characters drift apart and continuously struggle to find ways to connect with themselves and others.  Li Ti and Zhou Wei consummate a relationship with each other, and end up moving together to Germany, where their relationship starts to deteriorate.  Yu Hong has problems fitting in with the wider society, both at work and in her personal life.  The idealism of youth and the promise for a bright future have been shattered. 

Lou Ye is portraying an entire generation that feels lost and adrift, one which cannot satisfactorily fit into the expected roles of marriage, love, and career.  He seems to imply that this generational malaise was always inherent within Chinese society, but it didn’t take root until the disastrous Tiananmen Square protests.

Although Lou Ye did have a script for Summer Palace, he used it mostly as a reference point for most of the filming.  Like Jean Luc-Godard and his contemporaries during the French New Wave era, Lou Ye abandoned the traditional constraints of the written script, and gave his actors the freedom to improvise and come up with their own lines and interactions. 

As a result, the acting in Summer Palace feels naturalistic and authentic, free from the artificiality and theatricality of more method approaches to acting.  This filmmaking technique reflects the central theme of Summer Palace—that of the liberating power of a life lived away from restraints and constricting rules. 

Indeed, the only post-Tiananmen Square scene in the film in which any of the characters reveal contentment occurs when Li Ti and Zhou Wei are casually walking through a square in Berlin, watching street performers, vagabonds, and various other outcasts from society freely expressing themselves. 

FILM REVIEW: 2046

Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 is a sequel to his film In The Mood For Love.  It has the same central character of Chow Mo-Wan, played by Tony Leung, a melancholy writer who has a series of romantic entanglements with different women. 

2046 takes place after the events of In The Mood For Love, when Mo-Wan had a passionate affair with Su Li-Zhen, played by Maggie Cheung.  The narrative of 2046 moves backwards and forwards in time, ranging from the far future in the year 2046, when the world becomes connected by a vast train network that is headed for a mysterious destination known only as “2046,” to the past and present love affairs of Mo-Wan.  For much of the film, Mo-Wan lives in a hotel, and it is within the confines of this hotel that many of his affairs occur. 

 

Tony Leung, who has worked before with Wong Kar-wai, brilliantly portrays Mo Wan.  He is an actor who is able to express the utmost sadness and happiness with just his eyes.  Throughout much of 2046, Leung’s dialogue is kept to a minimum, and much of his acting is done through facial expressions.  With just a single glance, we can sense Leung’s deep longing as he tries to consummate a relationship with a character played by Faye Wong.  The other performances are all also commendable; indeed, the cast reads like a who’s who of Asian superstars—Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Takuya Kimura, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung, and, of course, Tony Leung and Faye Wong. 

With its free flowing narrative structure, and its ruminations on the nature of time and how it effects the many characters of the story, 2046 is Wong Kar-wai’s most ambitious and experimental film to date.  While he has played with parallel story arcs before in films such as Fallen Angels and Chungking Express, 2046 is Wong Kar-wai’s first film to completely break apart from narrative convention to enter a realm of cinema based upon the true, fragmentary nature of time and memories. 

As we live in our present worlds, memories of past events often break into our minds at seemingly random times, disrupting the linear structure of our everyday lives.  As Mo-Wan isolates himself in his hotel room in 2046, his thoughts are haunted by memories of his past affairs, and Wong Kar-wai constantly interweaves these memories into the central narrative of 2046. 

The traditional three act structure of conflict and resolution is replaced by a more fragmented narrative structure.  This more disjointed narrative is not based upon audience manipulation to achieve a desired emotion, which is the traditional goal of Hollywood based films, but rather upon active audience participation to put together the seemingly disconnected pieces of the narrative. 

For Wong Kar-wai, this active engagement of the audience is an attempt to recreate the more free-flowing nature of memories.  In order to interpret the seemingly random nature of our memories, we must put in an effort to interpret them to discover why they are intruding into our minds.  Similarly, the viewer of 2046 must re-interpret the many free flowing scenes in order to see how they ultimately connect with the central story of the film—that of a writer who is haunted by a long lost love. 

However, this does not mean that watching 2046 is a chore that must be endured.  Rather, with its gorgeous cinematography and evocative use of operatic and classical music, 2046 is an all-encompassing, truly cinematic experience.  As we follow Mo Wan through his passionate love affairs, we yearn for him to find happiness and some sense of closure to the long lost love of his life.  However, like Mo Wan himself, the viewer is thrust into a world where true love is fleeting.

 

Wong Kar-wai’s explorations in time and narrative structure are similar to what European filmmakers in the 1960s were experimenting with.  Alain Resnais’ 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad also dealt with a central character whose story is filtered through the stream of consciousness nature of lost memories. 

Also, in the realm of literature, Marcel Proust’s seven part Remembrance of Things Past dealt with the fragmentary nature of time and memories.  Raul Ruiz’s 1999 film Time Regained was a bold cinematic adaptation of Proust’s tome, and an interesting cinematic parallel to the themes and structure of 2046.

Ultimately, 2046 is about the elusive nature of time, and how our actions in the present are inescapably tied to the past.  No matter how hard Mo Wan tries to free himself from memories of his long lost love, he sees her image in all the women that he meets.  Memory is a prison for Mo Wan, but for Wong Kar-wai, memory is a liberating force for breaking apart the limits of narrative film.  With its penetrating exploration of narrative structure and time, 2046 is a bold and haunting vision.

Note: In The Mood for Love is being released by The Criterion Collection in October with a great Blu-ray upgrade.

FILM REVIEW: THE SHOCK LABYRINTH

There are interesting differences between Asian horror films in terms of their countries of origin.  Korean horror films tend to be more realistic and straightforward in tone, and focus more on real life thrills, such as serial killer/detective plots (I Saw the Devil, Tell Me Something).  This can be attributed to Korean films being more mainstream in tone, as the Korean film industry is trying to establish a new Hollywood of sorts in the East, and want to make films that can compete with Hollywood on the global film market.

Southeast Asian horror films tend to focus on the supernatural realm, with films dealing with ghosts and hauntings (Shutter, Ghost of Mae Nak).  This focus on the more supernatural realm of horror films can be attributed to the highly spiritual nature of Southeast Asian society; in many parts of Southeast Asia, such as Thailand and Indonesia, the realm of ghosts and spirits is intricately linked with the mundane realm of the real world. 

 

Japanese horror films, on the other hand, are the most eccentric and original of all Asian horror films, as they frequently delve into the realm of the surreal and the absurd.  This may be attributed to the very strict and disciplined nature of Japanese society, in which life is based on a series of orderly and long-engrained traditions of rules and rituals.  Thus, the arts are a means of escaping from the rigid confines of Japanese society, and into a liberating realm of free-flowing creativity and taboo breaking, sometimes shocking displays of defiance.

The 2009 Japanese horror film The Shock Labyrinth is a perfect example of this rebellious, surreal aspect of Japanese arts.  Directed by the prolific and successful Takashi Shimizu, best known for the Ju-on series of horror films, The Shock Labyrinth is a bold and chilling film.  The Shock Labyrinth is reminiscent of the cult classic Japanese film Hausu, which was re-released by The Criterion Collection in 2010.  Like Hausu, The Shock Labyrinth is a genre bending film that takes the horror film trope about a group of youth who find themselves in a haunted house, and elevates it to a surreal and outrageous level. 

The Shock Labyrinth begins with a group of young friends who mysteriously encounter Yuki, a long lost friend who they thought had been dead for a long time.  As the friends begin to question the true identity of Yuki, and some start to question their own sanity, Yuki has an accident, and they are forced to drive her to a hospital.  The only hospital they find turns out to be deserted, and as they explore the hospital, dark, hidden secrets from the friends’ childhood start to emerge.

 

Like the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the hospital in The Shock Labyrinth starts to take on an identity by itself, as it taps into the subconscious of each of the friends to dig up repressed memories of a tragic event that occurred in their collective childhood experience.  As the title implies, the narrative of The Shock Labyrinth becomes labyrinthian in nature, as it weaves back and forth between violent and haunting memories of each of the main characters.  The dark and frightening rooms and tunnels in the hospital become direct reflections of the primal fears of each character, and as the true identity of Yuki gradually reveals itself, the characters one by one descend into madness.

Shimizu does a great job of throwing the audience into emotional turmoil, as his narrative gradually fragments into seemingly disconnected scenes of disturbing violence and bloodshed.  Upon repeated viewings, the fragmentary scenes of the narrative gradually reveal themselves to be intricately connected, like a giant puzzle which can only be solved by the more patient and discerning players.  What Shimizu is doing is cinematically portraying the true nature of a nightmare—how the seemingly random nature of our dreaming world has its own internal logic, one based upon the deeper matrix of the collective subconscious.

By gradually revealing more and more about the mystery of Yuki, Shimizu is also revealing the true nature of repressed memories.  Oftentimes when a traumatic event occurs, our mind tends to repress memories of this event.  These memories only come out when we are presented with a triggering mechanism to conjure them up.  The triggering mechanism in The Shock Labyrinth is the hospital itself, which becomes a living, breathing monster that threatens to swallow up all of the main characters. 

The Shock Labyrinth is a brilliant and frightening film that takes us on a wild ride into the realm of nightmares.  Its narrative structure is psychologically sophisticated, and by the end of the film, the viewer is stuck in the deepest, darkest realms of the character’s horrific memories.