Pulse (2001, Japanese)

Pulse (Kairo), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 creep-fest about ghosts in the machine, is the latest victim of Hollywood’s mania for J-horror remakes. However, unlike staples of the genre such as the Ringu series (which was held back by overzealous production companies until after the American version was in theaters), Pulse is currently available on DVD in the U.S. – so if J-horror is your thing, snap it up before teen dreams Kristen Bell and Ian Somerhalder give it the PG-13 treatment in July 2006.

A little disclaimer – Kurosawa is currently one of my favorite directors, and I’ve been watching all of his films I can find since discovering Cure late last year. He’s a quirky master of psychological horror, and in movies like Doppelganger, Charisma, and the aforementioned Cure, the director and his favorite leading man, Koji Yakusho, plumb the often bizarre and ugly depths of the male Japanese mind. Paranoia runs rampant in these films, as do murderous schizophrenic tendencies and a blackly quirky sense of humor. They often tend to play on the border of J-horror without entirely tipping over the edge, but even the relatively straightforward drama Bright Future deals with issues of psychic rupture and a distinct mistrust of urban Japan.

Pulse shifts from this borderline style, wholeheartedly embracing the horror genre as packaging for familiar Kurosawa themes. The story begins with a trio of friends discussing their concern for a fourth friend, who has been holed up in his apartment for a few weeks working on a semi-secret computer program. After this friend’s bizarre suicide, the story shifts slightly, focusing on another young man and the creepy signals he is picking up through his computer’s internet connection. As these occurrences accelerate – strange, indistinct forms glimpsed on computer screens, coupled with a mysterious rash of suicides – the focus moves back and forth between the central protagonists, as it begins to appear that all of Tokyo may well be haunted by an unnerving number of unquiet spirits.

The structures of Kurosawa’s films can at times be maddening, as they often begin with only a cursory indication of plot details, requiring the viewer to pick up clues as the story progresses (which is often difficult while reading subtitles). The proceedings generally hang on mood rather than a strong story arc, and while mood is extremely important to effective J-horror, Pulse seems at times too drawn-out, so slow in mounting its final onslaught that the final third of the film ultimately loses a bit of steam.

However, what the final minutes of Pulse might lack in a horrific release of tension, they gain in a more subtle, pervasive sense of terror, indicating that Kurosawa’s intentions all along may not have been just about a good creep-out, but rather a twist on one of his favorite themes – isolation within the city and the loneliness of urban life. Kurosawa is adept at showing the solitude of urban spaces, particularly in densely populated Tokyo. Even before people start disappearing from the city streets, there is a visual emphasis in Pulse on empty, or nearly empty, rooms and deserted boulevards. Using horror to convey the desperate solitude of contemporary urban life is a nifty trick, but the match isn’t seamless, and if Kurosawa had excised a few of his atmospheric set pieces, the movie might have packed a bigger punch. Still, the director has managed something that I haven’t seen much of – J-horror that matches style with substance.

(Warning: do not watch this movie during the day, or in a room with a lot of lights on. Yes, this sounds like a ploy to scare your pants off, but Kurosawa’s the stinker, not me – visual details in the film are so subtle, and the colors so murky, that you may have no idea what’s going on if there’s any light bouncing off the screen.)

Dispatch #2 from CIFF - Tokyo Sonata (2008, Japanese)

Tokyo Sonata may be the one of the best Kiyoshi Kurosawa film I’ve seen, but it’s not necessarily my favorite. There’s something so . . . normal about this narrative, which is miles away from Doppelganger, or Charisma, or even Bright Future. All of those films had a streak of crazy in them so wide that it was impossible to mistake any of them for a mainstream film. Tokyo Sonata struck me more as a lightweight Shohei Imamura film, with dollops of crazy, but nothing that really managed to take off on its own. (Perhaps not surprisingly, parts of Sonata reminded me of Warm Water Under a Red Bridge.)

That being said, Sonata is generally quite a lovely film. The story of a Japanese salaryman who gets laid off and must, out of pride, protect his family from this knowledge, takes strange (occasionally harkening back to themes from Doppelganger and Bright Future) and dark turns before finally righting itself at the end. It’s an almost eerily lovely film to watch – many frames are so carefully shot, warmly lit, and loaded with meaning that they in fact reminded me of nothing so much as the photography of Jeff Wall. Still, I felt myself hoping for the loopiness of an old-school Kiyoshi Kurosawa, which never quite made itself fully felt, even with a late-stage intrusion from the awesome Koji Yakusho. (Who may just be one of my most favorite actors, ever. I think there’s good reason that he’s spent time with both Imamura and Kurosawa. The man is mad.) Overall, I felt Sonata to be a bit scattershot, perhaps somewhat under-inspired, and occasionally obvious – but I liked it quite a bit. Go figure. Sometimes there’s just room enough for a quirky little family melodrama, even if it may not always be quirky enough for my taste.

Retribution (2006, Japan)

There’s a lot I liked about Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Retribution, but unfortunately, I didn’t find it very creepy or scary. There are a couple of shots that are quite eerie, but for an ostensible J-Horror film, it’s not big on fright. As usual with Kurosawa’s films, it’s more about atmosphere. Also as usual, it feels like Kurosawa is only giving us three-fourths of the story, so that a lot of ends are left dangling. (If you’re the kind of moviegoer who likes everything to be tied up with a neat bow, I would recommend staying away from Kurosawa altogether.) But as Retribution glided to a close, I found that I quite liked how Kurosawa had pulled his threads together, even though the big reveal is fairly obvious from the outset. Also, big points for yet another strong Koji Yakusho performance. The man unravels like nobody’s business.

Charisma (1999, Japanese)

In their third project together, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and actor Koji Yakusho venture once more into bizzaro world, with a dark story about a mysterious tree. Yakusho plays Yabuike, a disgraced police officer who, upon his dismissal from the force, ventures into the woods outside the city. He begins to live an almost feral and rather inexplicable existence there, and it seems without question that he has gone completely insane. Not long after his arrival in the woods, he encounters several groups of people – an oddly dedicated crew of foresters, a pair of diametrically opposed sisters, and a young ex-mental patient – all of whom are somehow tied to the titular tree. Yabuike is also drawn to this spindly-looking sapling, and begins to help tend it, despite being deeply unsure of whether it is a force for good or evil. (Is it protecting the surrounding woods, or destroying them? What will happen if the tree dies? Why does everyone care so damn much?) As in Kurosawa’s other films, details about background and plot are only implied, and the viewer is left to determine his or her own opinion about exactly what the hell is going on. Multiple theories seem possible, but will likely make even less sense than the film itself does.

Like Kurosawa/Yakusho's Doppelganger, Charisma is spotted with odd humor – so odd that some scenes seem almost unintentionally funny – and the entire movie seems at time a precursor for Doppelganger’s bizarre and hilarious chase sequence (which is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a film since the “Mountain Song” in The Taste of Tea). But in the end, Charisma is more akin to the team's previous effort, Cure, than to the later film, and the end result of all this dark humor is more disturbing than hopeful.

Shall We Dance? (1995, Japan)

I have a hard time thinking of another film that’s as guileless and charming as Shall We Dance? Taking time off from some of his more intense work in the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shohei Imamura, Koji Yakusho plays a serious-minded salaryman who becomes entranced by ballroom dancing, a pastime he must hide from his family and co-workers, as dancing is seen as inappropriately intimate in Japanese society. Yakusho’s excellent performance is supported by a strong cast, in particular the bizarre Naoto Takenake as a Rumba-obsessed co-worker and Reiko Kusamura as their sweet middle-aged dance instructor. This was my second viewing of Dance, and it didn’t lose any of its appeal on repeat. Its pleasures are largely conventional, but they are so sincerely executed and professionally rendered that Dance reminded me why I go to the movies.

The Chicago International Film Festival

The Chicago International Film Festival is in its 44th year, and I’ve been attending screenings for four of the six seasons I’ve lived in Chicago. For a somewhat eccentric and generally ignored festival, I’ve seen some really interesting films in the past few years - The Taste of Tea, Kontroll, The Machinist, and The Savages are a few highlights – and I’ve come to see the festival as an opportunity to see foreign films, along with a few interesting domestic ones, months ahead of Chicago’s sometimes glacial independent theater release schedule. (Jeebus, sometimes I really miss L.A.)

Ahem. In any case, this year I’m going to try to see a few more films than the 2 or 3 that I usually get to, so over the next two weeks, you should see reviews of movies to watch out for (for good or ill) when they finally hit theaters or rental places near you. So far, I have tickets for Deepa Mehta’s new film, Heaven on Earth, the controversial Italian Mafia movie, Gomorrah* (the author has a hit out on him!), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, and El Norte, a third cinema film I’ve been hearing about for years, and will finally have the opportunity to see. I’m hoping to pick up a few more tickets as I go, but I’ve unfortunately already missed a few things, like Wendy and Lucy and The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, that I really wanted to see. Such is the nature of festivals, I suppose.

*Sadly, I missed Gommorah, due to a wicked hangover. It happens.