The Red Spectacles

I too am a big fan of Oshii's anime work, but I have to admit I went into this movie expecting an action packed movie such that it starts out as, and it ends up being something akin to Lynch's Mullhuland Dr. I was perfectly willing to accept that, and I enjoy all kinds of movies, and would particulary enjoy a very high brained live action anime type flick, and the visuals where spectacular in many scenes. However, I wish someone who saw this film would explain in depth more about what exactly was going on, as they saw it. I have to admit that I didn't get half of what happened in the last half of the film, and I would consider myself pretty versed in metaphoric interpretation of film.

According to others what was being shown is a reflection of the confusion of the character trying to find out what happened to his friends who he left and let die? Perhaps only in that the viewer is confused by what they're seeing?

I don't know, but if you consider when this movie was made, in 87, it was extremely advanced in quality of the film.

Red Spectacles is an odd mix of film noir, surrealism, slapstick and anime mech(at the beginning and end). As a whole it does not work. I think possibly as a series of vignettes it might work better but collectively the parts do not sit well together and the humour for me at least is sadly lacking.

The cinematography ranges for excellent to below par. Some shots are very film noir and others have bad framing with heads cut off and shot without enough shadowplay to justify there lenght.

The sound is very poor and distracting. All sound was added in post production so there is a spareness to the sound which makes everything seem overly poignant and frankly off putting. The score is poor for the most part and sometimes inappropriate music is used for a scene, at least inappropriate to western culture.

As an art film it does not really compel this viewer, neither does it have any particularly outstanding aspects technically or thematically. It is run of the mill with a few nice visuals.

I watched the trilogy by Mamoru Oshii. The words surreal, Orwellian and Kafkaesque come to mind. However, despite all their bizarre aspects I believe they are essentially jokes. The darkness was there as a chiaroscuro backdrop to highlight the humor. The first, Red Spectacles, is about a man who can not let go of his past not matter how painful and dangerous it was because he never felt more alive that when he was facing death. The second, Stray Dog, shows that man during an interim period when he seems to be almost at peace, being brought back to that death-seeking modus operandi which precipitates the events of the first film. The third film, Talking Head, while not directly related to the events of the first two, does refer back to them as a man attempts to create truth out of illusion. The idea is that film, as an art form, is essentially an exercise in madness and that illusion is finally a higher truth, an idea that was touched on in the first film. But it is the humor that is Oshii's ultimate goal. He doesn't want to make highly significant pronouncements on the nature of humanity and reality. He just wants to tell a story, and if the story is funny, all the better. I suppose that many parallels could be drawn between Oshii's work and that of Philip K. Dick.

Red spectacles

I loved Avalon, I think This director has made some awesome demented visions of the future. This film however was boring pretentious crap. The opening scene showed great promise for what the cover art and description promise a surreal live action amimae style future noir. I feel I got that with Avalon.

With Red Spectacles I was only driven to feel a uncomfortable to desire to what the hell the point was. The film barely made sense to me and I could not care less about the people in it. This would all be ok if the film was effective art. While the opening scene looked interesting and the scene with the giant robot-suit person holding the giant machine gun in the rain looked cool, it did not watch the film worth watching.

Thumbs down.

After watching Avalon (which was decent only because of the very nice digital fx), and several anime films written by Oshii, including Jin-Roh (which is fantastic) I decided I should check out the Oshii cinema trilogy box set. Being that the Red Spectacles and Stray Dog are related, I will comment here on both. And let me tell you, it was one of the biggest wastes of money I have spent in a while. I first watched Stray Dogs and then The Red Spectacles. I am sad to say that these films are quite possibly the most boring two movies I have ever seen. For only about 10 minutes in each film do you get to see some action between the the characters, who are only dressed in the "Panzer Cop" outfits for a few fleeting scenes. The rest of the time you will see some very drawn out scenes filled with boring dialogue in some less than impressive locations. I really don't understand the motivation behind these two films at all. I love the Wolf Brigade outfits and the idea behind the plot, but the films themselves leave much to be desired. I would suggest NOT watching these films, and certainly do not buy the box set like I did, unless you enjoy wasting money. Oh, and if you are wondering what I think about the 3rd movie in the set, Talking Head, I couldn't even bring myself to watch it before I purged the box set from my DVD collection via eBay at a $20 loss. If you want cool Japanese live action, check out Returner, or Ichii the Killer or the Zeiram series.