Easily one of the most underappreciated filmmakers in the world (his name rarely comes up in discussions of great modern auteurs), Mamoru Oshii is the greatest living genre filmmaker, infusing each of his films with his singular visual stylings, intricately constructed plots and his penchant for genuinely profound thematic material and subtext. He's also one of the unsung heroes of modern screen feminism: the typical Oshii protagonist is an intelligent, highly skilled woman who is self-sufficient to a fault and never defined or limited by her gender--indeed, Oshii seems to go about making a point in his work that gender (and ultimately the human body itself) is a null concept (the case of
The Red Spectacles aside, wherein a female character laments that the world is "set up against women"). Even in his seminal
Ghost in the Shell, where the lead character is depicted nearly nude the entire film (via the unspoken anime law of fanservice), Oshii subverts it throughout, comparing her perfectly manufactured body to a vacant store mannequin, and in the final act--wherein her body becomes exaggeratedly more masculine and ultimately destroyed--reducing his focus entirely to her spirit and mind, the only "true" parts of what make her--and us--human.
(All star ratings out of ✮✮✮✮. Films that have not been seen by the reviewer receive a "No rating" designation. Note: not all titles feature a review at present, and some titles feature only a short "reviewlet." An * beside a film title indicates a "Major work" or "Essential viewing" designation.)
Urusei Yatsura: Only You (1983)
Rating: ✮✮1/2
Mamoru Oshii's first film,
Urusei Yatsura 1: Only You is nowhere
near the level of brilliance that Oshii's later films would achieve, and
is really a minor footnote in his filmography. Completely missing are
most of Oshii's stylistic touches, visual motifs, and complex philosophy--although he would assume complete creative control over this film's
sequel, and essentially turn that into an animated forerunner to his
brilliant live action debut,
The Red Spectacles. Not to say
Only You is
bad;
far from it. Its fun, and Oshii does manage to slip in some scenes of
great visual beauty, but it simply can't compare with its superior
sequel, much less Oshii's later films, starting with his jaw-droppingly
great
Angel's Egg.
Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer (1984)
Rating: ✮✮✮
Angel's Egg (1985)*
Rating: ✮✮✮✮
Whereas Mamoru Oshii's films are usually dense in both plot and ideas,
Angel's Egg
is almost completely devoid of plot. The director's most personal film,
it is almost entirely told through surrealistic images of nature and
architecture, twisted through shadow and music to convey the way
religious beliefs eventually reveal themselves to be
nothing more than false hope and empty promises. The title object,
representing hope and innocence, is eventually destroyed by the male
character, symbolizing Christ--and by extension, belief systems as a
whole. Or not (your mileage can, and likely will, vary). Due to its highly subjective, almost Rorschach-test nature, the film evokes completely different emotions in the viewer on repeat
viewings--watched a certain way, the ending is heartbreakingly tragic,
another way, curiously hopeful. The film was made shortly after Oshii,
who had trained to become a Christian priest in his youth, lost his
faith, and the crumbling religiosity depicted in the film has a personal
quality to it that is unforgettable.
The Red Spectacles (1987)*
Rating: ✮✮✮✮
Brilliant live action debut from Mamoru Oshii, a blackly comic Lynchian descent into extreme surrealism that will likely baffle the unprepared viewer. For film fans who love this kind of stuff, however,
The Red Spectacles is sure to please: it has an army of assassin mimes (who our main hero wipes out while entirely in the nude!), bizarre slapstick, Oshii's usual assortment of striking imagery and imaginative set pieces, and marks the joyous first collaboration between the director and his longtime composer Kenji Kawai.
Patlabor the Movie (1989)
Rating: ✮✮✮
Stray Dog (1991)
Rating: ✮✮1/2
Rather unnecessary prequel to
The Red Spectacles--whereas that film was manic and bizarre,
Stray Dog is
elegant and pretty, with occasional lapses into surreal slapstick and amusing parody of product placement, but it never takes off the way its predecessor does and, despite composer Kenji Kawai's best attempts at lending the proceedings some soul with his excellent guitar-lead score, the film remains largely inert for most of its runtime.
Talking Head (1992)*
Rating: ✮✮✮✮
Patlabor 2 (1993)*
Rating: ✮✮✮✮
Ghost in the Shell (1995)*
Rating: ✮✮✮✮
Like
2001, Mamoru Oshii's
Ghost in the Shell is a film
that concerns itself with human evolution, but while
2001 begins at the dawn
of man and climaxes at the next stage in human evolution,
Ghost in the Shell
begins in the transitional zone between human and post-human. The
film's main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi, is a government
agent/assassin whose consciousness resides in a mechanical body. Oshii's
usual brand of dense storytelling is at its best here--the film packs
a lot of ideas and plot into a scant 78 minutes, but somehow feels twice
that length (another Oshii trademark--and I am making a complimentary
observation here, not a criticism). A first-time viewer will likely be
overwhelmed by the plot's intricacy, but with repeat viewings,
Ghost in
the Shell reveals itself to be a transcendentally profound examination of
the nature of humanity, and the future of our species as a whole. Oshii
conveys his ideas about human individuality and consciousness through
brilliantly symbolic images (the film's most acutely affecting is a
sequence in which the Major, riding on a boat, looks up into an office
building and sees another woman with the same body as her) and his trademark passages of lengthy, existential dialogue ("All data is both fantasy and reality" and
"Your desire to remain as you are is what ultimately limits you" are
among the most memorable). Both
2001 and
Ghost in the Shell end with
their protagonist becoming transformed into a being of pure
consciousness, free of their physical bodies, but whereas
2001 views it
as a mystical transformation, Oshii frames it in coldly scientific
terms--a visual representation of the evolutionary tree is demolished by
gunfire, and the Major and the Puppet Master combine in a form of
digital sexual reproduction (the Puppet Master arguing that one of the
key facets of living organisms is their ability to spawn genetically
varied offspring). Oshii would expand upon many of the ideas
present in this film in its sequel, but the original still remains his
masterpiece for its stunning originality of thought, brilliant visuals,
iconic score and innovative plot. One can only imagine how Steven
Spielberg will fuck things up with his forthcoming American remake.
Avalon (2001)*
Rating: ✮✮✮✮
Mis-marketed and mangled for it's US release by Miramax, who wanted
teenage boys to think they were seeing another
Matrix rip-off,
Avalon is nothing like that overblown popcorn bore. Quite possibly the greatest piece of high art science fiction filmmaking next to
2001: A Space Odyssey and Oshii's earlier
Ghost in the Shell,
Avalon
is Mamoru Oshii's penultimate masterpiece; a live action film that
mimics the visual style of anime more approximately than any other,
combined with a peerless score from the brilliant composer Kenji Kawai,
and a usually literate, philosophically complex script by Kazunori Ito (
Ghost in the Shell, the superb 90's
Gamera
trilogy). It's all trademark Oshii, however: stunning visuals, a
meditative pace, meticulously composed background details, and a
transcendent central theme about humanity's place in the world, and the
desire to ascend to a higher plane of existence.
So immaculately concieved and directed is the film, that Oshii walks
an extremely fine line between profundity and pretention, but as is
usually the case, Oshii knows how to steer through such artistically
complicated waters, and the film comes through a resounding success.
Avalon continues the trend Oshii started in his filmmaking with the exceptional
Patlabor 2,
in that it is cold, layered with numerous shades of meaning, and
focuses on strong, detached heroines. So thoroughly intellectualized is
the entire film that even the few action scenes have a detached, chilly
quality to them--the film opens with tanks exploding, but the
eruptions of flame freeze in midair, so as to deprive the audience of
any real enjoyment of destruction. In the film's pre-climax battle scene
featuring a giant citadel, the camera pans away from the action, and
instead follows the heroine, Ash (Malgorzata Foremniak) as she slowly
walks, rifle in hand, for almost a minute before resuming with the
gunfire and chaos. Much of the film is composed of such brilliant shots
and scenes, where an incident that takes no more than a minute or so is
slowed down to last several times longer, such as Ash's visit to a
hospital, as the camera tracks her in front as she walks in slow motion,
accompanied by a ghostly choir on the soundtrack. The film's climax is a
confrontation between Ash and a man she used to know (it is
half-implied that they were lovers, but the film leaves it to
interpretation), which if shown in a linear, normal fashion, would
amount to no more than two minutes of screen time. Oshii, however,
intercuts the scene, which takes place outside an opera house, with the
opera being performed indoors--an impressive 12 minute piece by Kenji
Kawai that ranks amongst the best pieces of music ever composed for a
film.
Avalon demands numerous viewings to even begin
to comprehend the whole picture and the totality of it's ideas. I have
seen the film almost ten times now, and there is always something new,
tucked quietly away in the corners of the screen, that provides a small clue to the nature of the story. Notice how when Ash
exits the Avalon gaming headquarters, there is always the sound of a can
being kicked, even though she never kicks a can. Notice how every
statue seen in the film is beheaded, or has it's face smashed in. Notice
how the majority of pedestrians in Ash's world are completely immobile,
or how in the second scene with the bassett hound, the dog is heard,
but never seen.
It is almost impossible to believe that the film's budget was only 8
million dollars, as it is a classy production indeed. The compter
generated special effects are all first rate and rival those of big
budget Hollywood productions, the score is performed by the Choir of
Warsaw Philharmonic and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, and the
computer-enhanced cinematography is jaw dropping in it's detail and
realism. The entire first 2/3rds of
Avalon are almost completely
desaturated of color, with the film having a greenish-sepia tint with
occasional touches of color. With all this visual wizardry on display,
is it is a shock when the film reaches it's brilliant twist ending and
reveals it's greatest special effect:
almost no special effects at all.
The finale's rebuff to the glorifying of special effects is a marvelous
touch--and one that sets it apart from the dunderheaded whiz-bang likes
of
The Matrix and other genre pictures.
Miramax's hideous handling of the film is a real tragedy. Oshii's
color scheme has been ruined, as the US edition steamrolls right through
the film with an overly-oppressive sepia that washes out all the
subtler color usage and just makes the film look like piss. The dialogue
has been ruined as well; the English subtitles are in fact dubtitles,
based upon the needlessly dumbed down English language dub that
completely omits one of the film's central metaphors and replaces it
with meaningless technobabble, robbing the film of much of it's intended
meaning both story-wise and visually. Your best bet for seeing the film
as it was intended to be seen is to buy the Korean 2-disc special
edition, which is actually a copy of the Japanese special edition. It
contains the accurate visual representation, as well as excellent and
accurate English subtitles transcribed by the famous author Neil Gaiman
(!). The film is also available on an excellent Blu-ray disc from Bandai Japan with
the same picture and subtitles, although it is very pricey
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)*
Rating: ✮✮✮1/2
Tachiguishi Retsuden (Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters) (2006)
Rating: ✮✮✮1/2
Mamoru Oshii's
Tachiguishi Retsuden is a film that can really be
appreciated by an American audience only if they are familiar with the
directors earlier work--most notably
The Red Spectacles. It's a mockumentary chronicling the adventures of the "fast-food grifters";
basically, people who live life by stealing food in Japan throughout the
country's history. The film is divided up into segments, as it moves
from each 'tachigui' to the next, from characters such as Moongaze Ginji
(who appeared in
The Red Spectacles), Foxy Croquette O-Gin (played by the voice actress of the girl in
Angel's Egg), and Hamburger Tetsu (played by Oshii's
frequent composer Kenji Kawai, who also contributes another fabulous
score, as per usual). The whole film is animated in what Oshii calls
'Superlivemation', which is basically applying the "puppet theater"
animation style he conceived with the
MINIPATO shorts to the CGI
effects work he experimented with in
Avalon--the results
frequently achieve a surreal, comic beauty. A constant stream of
striking images and clever visual puns, as well as Oshii's usual
philosophizing and social commentary,
Tachiguishi is almost completely
inaccessible to anyone who is not at least marginally familiar with
Japanese history and pop culture--as well as, again, Oshii's work, but
for his loyal fans, and film lovers who yearn to see strange new sights,
"Tachiguishi-Retsuden" is certainly worth a look; and if nothing else,
it provides another rousing game of "Spot the Bassett Hound!"
The Sky Crawlers (2008)*
Rating: ✮✮✮1/2
Oshii's best film since
Avalon. After several years of doodling around with self-indulgent pet projects and anthology works,
The Sky Crawlers marks a triumphant return to his brilliant style of solemn, philosophical filmmaking.
Assault Girls (2009)
Rating: ✮✮1/2
Easily one of the weakest works of Oshii's career,
Assault Girls is a slight, unnecessary spin-off of his earlier masterwork,
Avalon--though this time around, things are played for laughs and self-parody, as Oshii playfully sends up the world of video gaming and, well, not much else. Being Oshii, it's of course gorgeous to look at and the jokes are sporadically amusing, but this is essentially a 15 minute short film dragged out to feature length, and is a considerable missed opportunity.
