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Casshern.
Reincarnated with an invincible body to fight an iron devil. If Casshern does not do it, who will?
This film, like its tagline, has meaning that is rather difficult to come to grips with. Ostensibly, the story is this:
In an unspecified future, civilization is falling apart--torn down by war and disease. One doctor, living in the Eastern Federation, thinks he may have found a way to combat the effects of radioactivity and chemical waste that are ravaging the population (including his beloved wife), but the consequences of his discovery are far darker than could have been imagined. In the meantime, his son has gone to war against the terrorists of Eurasian Zone Seven, but the flame of idealistic nationalism has failed to protect him from reality, and he returns to his father's laboratory as a corpse just as crisis erupts in the containment chamber.
Though beautifully rendered, this movie is in some ways very unwieldy. The original film clocked in at over two hours, while its American release was cut to come in under the two-mark. (A professor once told me that this was common with foreign language films released in America - the reason being that Americans don't like to read for more than two hours at a stretch... pathetic, isn't it?) Despite this cut, the story still follows a very classically Japanese storytelling pattern that can be hard for those unused to it to appreciate. The pattern is simply thus: an extremely long exposition that leads to a sudden and fleeting climax.
The climax of the story is what holds the meaning; it is where all the pieces of the initial exposition fall into place and crystallize in the mind of the viewer. And it is not possible without that exposition.
In Casshern, the moment of realization is sublimely powerful. The film broaches a number of tough topics--most notably the struggles between humanity and monstrosity, between love and hate, between forgiveness and grudge--but there are no simple answers, and perhaps Casshern's ambiguous ending is a deliberate acknowledgment of that. I would probably have to watch it again many times (I've already seen it thrice) before I arrived at a definite conclusion, and even then...
I only know that it moves me, and that while it inspires me to pity the monsters wherever I find them--in myself and in others--it also admonishes me to believe that transformation is always possible for anyone and everyone.
This film, like its tagline, has meaning that is rather difficult to come to grips with. Ostensibly, the story is this:
In an unspecified future, civilization is falling apart--torn down by war and disease. One doctor, living in the Eastern Federation, thinks he may have found a way to combat the effects of radioactivity and chemical waste that are ravaging the population (including his beloved wife), but the consequences of his discovery are far darker than could have been imagined. In the meantime, his son has gone to war against the terrorists of Eurasian Zone Seven, but the flame of idealistic nationalism has failed to protect him from reality, and he returns to his father's laboratory as a corpse just as crisis erupts in the containment chamber.
Though beautifully rendered, this movie is in some ways very unwieldy. The original film clocked in at over two hours, while its American release was cut to come in under the two-mark. (A professor once told me that this was common with foreign language films released in America - the reason being that Americans don't like to read for more than two hours at a stretch... pathetic, isn't it?) Despite this cut, the story still follows a very classically Japanese storytelling pattern that can be hard for those unused to it to appreciate. The pattern is simply thus: an extremely long exposition that leads to a sudden and fleeting climax.
The climax of the story is what holds the meaning; it is where all the pieces of the initial exposition fall into place and crystallize in the mind of the viewer. And it is not possible without that exposition.
In Casshern, the moment of realization is sublimely powerful. The film broaches a number of tough topics--most notably the struggles between humanity and monstrosity, between love and hate, between forgiveness and grudge--but there are no simple answers, and perhaps Casshern's ambiguous ending is a deliberate acknowledgment of that. I would probably have to watch it again many times (I've already seen it thrice) before I arrived at a definite conclusion, and even then...
I only know that it moves me, and that while it inspires me to pity the monsters wherever I find them--in myself and in others--it also admonishes me to believe that transformation is always possible for anyone and everyone.
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Are you saying that Japanese films follow the pattern of jo-ha-kyû just like traditional arts do? That'd be an interesting thing to look at...
I've only seen the movie once, and while I don't remember too much about it, I do remember that it didn't make much sense, and in some way just sort of failed. Maybe I need to see it again to see if maybe I just missed something, misunderstood something.
As for clocking films in under 2hrs.. as for not releasing subtitled films to begin with because Americans won't like it or can't deal with it, I'm not even sure who to be more upset with - the people who make these prejudiced assumptions about Americans, or the American masses, the average Joes, who prove them right.
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As for the stereotype of the American who hates to read... like I said, this was told to me by a professor. Whether or not this is true, it's certainly backed up by the number of films that are cut down when released in America. I know that Shall we dansu? has been cut to come in under two hours like Casshern was. One of the nice things about the Criterion Collection DVDs is that this never happens, but films that get picked up by more mainstream distribution companies don't always fair as well. (Shall we dansu? was handled by Miramax and Casshern was handled by Dreamworks.)