Satoshi Kon – Why are you so good?
27 April 2008
After ages of having them recommended to me, and after ages of putting them off, I finally watched Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress, in that order. I officially hate Satoshi Kon because he’s just way too good at what he does. It’s like everything he touches, everything that he ever makes is a masterpiece. Watching all three of them in a row is like being continuously smacked with large bricks, but they’re very good bricks. And after all of that, you just sorta have to wonder, where the hell do people like him come from?
I watched Paprika, his most recent film, first. It wasn’t such a good torrent, halfway through the thing the audio suddenly died, revived itself and was painfully off for the latter half of the movie. And there was a large blurry streak going across the top of the screen that really bothered the hell out of me. Of course, it doesn’t really matter what condition the poor thing comes in, a good movie is a good movie no matter how you look at it.
Paprika is one of those near future things, where technology isn’t that advanced yet, but it’s getting there. The whole thing is about dreams, which gives him the freedom to do all the crazy, one step short of a total mindfuck things he likes to do, and it’s pretty much, in a word, awesome. Tokyo Godfathers was one hell of a roller coaster ride and Millennium Actress, which I watched at three in the morning, I was barely awake. I was impressed nonetheless with all three.
Really, I feel less compelled to blab about Paprika and Millennium Actress than Tokyo Godfathers, which was my favorite of the three. What Tokyo Godfathers had, or so it seemed to me, was a lot of heart. Something nice, friendly and warm that neither Paprika nor Millennium Actress. The latter two, actually perhaps all three, felt like flamboyant exercises in madness, pure, entertaining madness.
Dancing electronics? That insane music they play while they parade around the city? Paprika turned into something of a chaotic nightmare, strangely reminiscent of Paranoia Agent, in the end. The one problem, the mindfuck ending aside, was how flat Paprika and Atsuko felt. There were certain lines, certain things they did, that just didn’t feel honest to their character. One second she’s yelling at Tokita for how immature he is, and the next she’s risking her own life to save his, and then they get married? What did I miss? And, can I just say that the director is creepy, immensely, immensely creepy? Not Satoshi Kon, but the old guy in the wheelchair. His sudden involvement took me completely by surprise, well not completely, but I didn’t see it coming.
As for Millennium Actress, well, maybe because I wasn’t awake for most of it, but it was like being hit by a bullet train of a story and when the credits start rolling, you’re still reeling from everything’s that happened. I must admit the story was a real treat, another reason why Satoshi Kon is just too good, blending her life and the interview into her movies.
According to Wiki (apparently, I get everything off Wiki), the inspiration behind Tokyo Godfathers came from a John Wayne film. It’s also worth noting that Keiko Nobumoto, yet another other genius responsible for Bebop and Wolf’s rain, had a hand in this.
Kon has a way of weaving incredibly intricate stories, demonstrated in all three of the films, but especially evident in Tokyo Godfathers. He didn’t waste a scene, or a character or anything. Anything and everything was connected, there was a method behind all of his coincidental and serendipitous madness from the start. The idea was something so uncanny that it worked. A homeless bum, a drag queen and a teenage runaway finds an abandoned baby on Christmas eve. And everything just starts from there.
Of course, the drag queen writes haikus, the girl stabbed her father and the bum is a gambler who left his family, rather, his family left him. There’s something deeply tragic about their lives, but it’s masked by this incredible sense of humor the movie carries. Hana’s facial expressions are absolutely priceless, every expression is exaggerated. When the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place, when they all suddenly look at each other and realize, just as I do, that my god, that’s Gin’s daughter, or my god, they just gave the baby back to the thief, it’s wonderful.
One of the best scenes is when they’re staying at a rundown house and Miyuki runs out to go shopping, she realizes that they’re living in Sachiko’s house and as all three of them stare blankly from the photo back to the house, Gin pulls out the keys and walks in through the front door, one of the few things left standing, and goes (or, so the subtitles inform me) “Honey, I’m home.” Then, the door collapses. Moments like that really set this movie apart from the other two. Maybe that’s Nobumoto’s magic right there, or the combination of both of their creative insane awesomeness, but there was something just so pleasant and heartwarming to the whole thing.
Kon has a thing for really abrupt endings, which works in some situations, but in the wrong context just feels strange. In retrospect, they fit in quite perfectly with his quick paced storytelling. Before I gave it much thought, the ending to Tokyo Godfathers kind of irked me. Miyuki sees her father, all of them go “Ehhh?” and it just ends, it almost felt inconclusive, and I usually make a big fuss about inconclusive endings. But, then, it felt kind of good, like the story was going to continue and that the whole baby fiasco was over, but there’s more to it.
That last scene, which really reminded me of Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, when Hana and the baby are falling and this seemingly miraculous gust wind saves them, and the sun suddenly rises and they’re all just watching, maybe everyone’s just looking for a second chance, a new start, maybe everyone, like Sachiko is looking to be reborn, maybe everyone’s just looking to fix all the things that are wrong in their lives, but then, you can’t really fix anything and you just have to keep on walking.
The movie was just such a riot, an ambulance crashes into the market where they were just seconds ago, Gin’s riding a stolen bicycle chasing after Sachiko in a stolen truck, and Hana and Miyuki are in a cab (that poor cab driver) and they’re all chasing after the baby. I’m really tempted to say that there’s just a little bit of Bebop in there, but my only justification is Nobumoto’s involvement. It was just one hell of a story and one hell of a movie.
I’m not saying that the other two movies were lesser movies because they didn’t leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling at the end of the day. Rather, that I generally tend to gravitate towards the warm and fuzzy movies emotionally. If you’ve known me long enough, warm and fuzzy things are what I live for, and hot guys, guns and mecha. All of his films are lighthearted, with extraordinarily deep undertones. It’s like a really warm and delicious muffin, with a lot of icing and a lot of sprinkles that you have to work through to get to the actual muffin.
Well, now that I got this finally out of my system, when people ask, I can finally say, “Damn right, I watched all of them (with the exception of Perfect Blue)!” Watching films is whole different experience, especially stand alones that aren’t tie-ins to a series. For one, they pay enough attention to the animation so you don’t end up charting animation quality over time and having it look like a sine curve. All of his stuff was done by Madhouse, a powerhouse studio responsible for Claymore, Death Note and the MapleStory anime that I didn’t fully appreciate till now, forgive my ignorance.
It seems that lately all I’ve been doing is just plowing through movie after movie. I started watching Elfen Lied and Serial Experiments Lain, more of those ubiquitous anime series that’ve reached America but have completely escaped my attention. Not to mention, all of the new spring season shows that I started watching but haven’t blogged about….But, it’s a been a nice break.
And, as for why is Satoshi Kon just so damn good? In the words of one of my friends, it’s imagination. Looking at it now, I may or may not disagree with that observation. It’s imagination, and then maybe a little more of something else.
Satoshi Kon is one of my favorite directors, and in a market saturated with shit and fanservice his stuff is above the norm. I love the stuff he puts into his work like satire and social criticism.
For those that think anime can never be anything like a very good movie with real actors. I would suggest looking into any of Kon’s work because I haven’t been disappointed by any of them, and they differently go beyond just being a mere cartoon.