Erstaunliche Leben der Fast-Food-Gauner

A documentary without a loss for words... ever...

Let us assume that the narration is more than a spoof, let us assume it is a commentary on Japanese society. And as this film is as fast paced an absurdist documentary as they come, the constant wordplay, as fast is it goes, and as poorly translated as it is-- in its current festival screener version as seen tonight at the Copenhagen Cinematek-- It is still quite enjoyable.

But for the patient, and ONLY the truly patient and open-minded, I'm talking to you Jim Jarmusch fans with ADD relapses, I believe this is a film for you. It's an intelligent film if you allow it to win you over.

Quite beautiful, and quite kitsch, and quite Japanese sub-culture. And quite experimental. Static 2D in a 3D world. All in all, Fun for those that want to see a Japanese film that spoofs Japanese food culture. A thumbs up if you're in the mood for something completely different.

Mamorou Oshii's mockumentary of food freeloaders is damn near impossible to see. For some reason the film has never really had any real release outside of Japan (some here on IMDb said it's played France). In weird way I kind of understand it. This is a very unique film in the truest sense of the word.

The film is told in a weird style of photo realistic animation fused with normal animation. Characters have no depth and are 2 dimensional. There is some live action bits mixed with other style. Some times it looks like Jibjab gone berserk. At other frequent times its static.

And then there is the dialog, or rather narration. Its a very heavy, very complex documentary style that tells us all about the various grifters we are seeing and the world they inhabit. Twenty minutes into the film I knew that I was in way over my head. I wasn't catching all the references , the details and the odd bits. yea I could follow what was going on but it was clear that I was hopelessly lost. Its the anime version of Prospero's Books.

Why hasn't this gotten any release outside of Japan? I don't think most non Japanese audiences wouldn't sit through it even most anime audiences wouldn't sit through it. Its not what you expect when you think of when you think animation.

I have no idea what I think of it. I'm going to have to watch it again to determine that.

For now know that it's a very strange very deliberate film. In its way its a masterpiece.

You want a unique film this is it...

TACHIGUI: THE AMAZING LIVES OF THE FAST-FOOD GRIFTERS Japanese title: Tachiguishi Retsuden

Director: Mamoru Oshii Featuring: Toshio Suzuki, Mako Hyodo, Kenji Kawai, Shinji Higuchi, Katsuya Terada Narrated by Koichi Yamadera ----------------------------------------

Way back in 1995, Mamoru Oshii unleashed his dazzling animation feature Ghost In The Shell, which helped consolidate anime's international acceptance - and also burrowed itself into Andy and Larry Wachowski's overall concept for The Matrix.

The movie's sequel, Innocence (2004), was the inaugural Japanese animated film to compete for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and it left heads spinning as much for its style and innovative effects as for its oft unfathomable plot.

Always the trendsetter, Oshii has now presented us with Tachigui: The Amazing Lives Of The Fast-Food Grifters – which has absolutely nothing to do with Ghost In The Shell, nor Japanese anime for that matter.

Say hello to Oshii's creation "superlivemation": not quite animation, nor exactly live-action. Instead the cast endured somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 snapshots, which were digitally processed and reconstituted in a deceptively simple paper cut-out fashion reminiscent of Balinese puppetry. The movement itself is a stilted, stop-motion style that echoes sequences from Shinya Tsukamoto's experimental Tetsuo: Iron Man (1988).

"I couldn't think of any method but this one," said Oshii in a recent interview with The Daily Yomiuri. "I realized that this project was not suitable for traditional animation."

The cast choice is equally enigmatic. Kenji Kawai - who also composed the superlative soundtrack - appears as a ravenous burger fanatic, while renowned Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki spends his screen time being murdered in bizarre fashion. Others include Katsuya Terada, who dabbled with Oshii on Blood: The Last Vampire, and Shinji Higuchi - a special effects whiz who's worked on Godzilla movies.

Koichi Yamadera's narration sounds like the stuff of a dry NHK documentary – which belies the comic undertone here as well as Yamadera's extensive career voicing stoic anime characters like Spike Siegel in Cowboy Bebop.

And the plot itself is a bizarre re-imagining of post-WWII Japan in the context of various fast-food off-shoots - from soba ramen shops to gyudon stand-up bars; American dogs in the heat-up trays of convenience stores to McDonalds- inspired burger-chain restaurants. "Food is a primal root of desire," asserted Oshii, by way of explanation.

Thrown into the mix is a new breed of consumer: the fast-food grifters of the title, people who don't like to pay for their tucker and are constantly fine-tuning their elaborate scams to score free munchies.

Oshii said his ulterior motive was homage to the "art" of eating food on the streets – something still considered a bit of a taboo in this country, and which goes some way toward explaining the use of "tachigui" in the title.

The director of live-action movies (Avalon, Stray Dog) as well as animation, Oshii has often blurred the definition between the two mediums. The celluloid result here is deposited somewhere in the grey area between both formats.

At times the visual experiment here is as exhilarating as it can be irritating. Just don't ask what it's all really supposed to mean; Oshii's films, which are equal parts cerebral and innovative, are often not particularly clear story-wise. Where Oshii succeeds is via a liberal dose of black humor – here you'll find Kentucky Fried Rat, death by hula-hoop, the world's fastest samurai burger chef – and in the movie's very nature of surrealism.

This is a man who defers to the influence of filmmakers like Godard and Truffaut, and perhaps owes as much to Andrei Tarkovsky as he does David Lynch. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that at one stage a B-52 bomber does a fly- through in a Yoshinoya look-alike franchise. The 54-year-old writer-director seemed to think this natural. "The Japan I depicted in the movie may not necessarily be faithful to reality," he suggested.

Of course. --------------

By Andrez Bergen

OK, I am not Japanese. I do know a little about Japanese culture, and a little less about Japanese pop culture. Other than that, I am Spanish, I eat paella and I like black humor.

Good, with that point set, I can comment on the movie: I have no idea on how it is enjoyable to the Japanese audiences, Mamoru Oshii is quite a good director- despite the overly pedantic postmodern stuff in the style of Talking Head, and even that was curious and somehow interesting- and I am surprised he came up with this. It may just be one of those lost-in-translation cases, I am afraid it is, but as a European viewer watching the film with subtext overloaded English subtitles I just thought it was horrible. The jokes seemed bad, the script was overcooked- I mean, give the audience a break, and shut up a little you damn narrator- to the point of almost making my head explode over an overkill of fast-paced speaking and absurd action.

However, I thought the animation was really cool. The idea is great, and it is well exploited in those animated scenes. However, the eye-candy finishes as soon as the characters are left aside to start with an endless not funny at all mumbo-jumbo speech over still pictures. It just makes you want to fast forward to the next cut-out hysterical characters scene.

I read Mamoru Oshii is actually planning on a sequel for this. The idea was good but horribly exploited. Maybe the second part will bring up the good parts of this first one and actually make an interesting movie, or maybe it will be more and more over-narrated scenes. But hell, if you thought Talking Head was dense, Amazing Lifes of Fast Food Gifters will give cause you a stroke.

Of course, all this comment is based on the experiences of someone who is European. Probably this is totally useless to Japanese people, maybe it was a really funny film lost in cultural frontiers and translation. Maybe.

There is no director I like more than Mamoru Oshii. But sadly, even though he directed quite a few films that gained huge international attention, there are still a fair few of his films that have slipped through the cracks. Tachiguishi is one of them, and even though I loved it to bits, it's not hard to see why distributors in the West are somewhat reluctant to release it.

In between his big and serious films, Oshii is known to do some smaller and quirkier projects. While Tachiguishi definitely falls into this category, Oshii has really outdone himself with this one, creating something that is very hard to classify, even as a freaky Japanese flick. Go figure.

At its very core lies a documentary not quite unlike Otaku no Video. But rather than make a fool of an existing subculture, Oshii invents his own and delves into the lives of culinary heroes, scrounging away food for free and upholding the Japanese culinary level. Oshii's approach on the subject has close ties with Dai-Nipponjin, as the subject is handled with a deadly sense of gravity while the images on screen look as ridiculous as can be. Deadpan humor taken to the extreme.

But that is not all, rather than simply shooting his mockumentary Oshii decided to make it using a new visual technique baptized superlivemation. A weird mix of live action, photography, digital animation and puppets on a stick. Performed and acted out (or posed, if you want) by the greats of the Japanese animation industry no less, as the project was supposed to be as low-budget as possible.

And if you think that just about covers it, know that the film is extremely dialogue-heavy, making it a good companion piece for Innocence. The influence of the grifters is analyzed from all kinds of cultural, political and even philosophical angles, fired at the audience through a continuous stream of monologues and dialogues. And to make it even worse, the whole film is completely grounded in actual Japanese history and customs, making it even harder for a foreigner to get a good grip on the material. Needless to say, multiple viewings are advised to make the best of all the details tucked away inside the film.

That said, on a conceptual level the film is easy to follow and already pretty hilarious. Various grifters are introduced as were they the most influential historical figures of post-war Japan. The film plays like you'd expect a serious documentary of any other important figure to unfold, but somehow the big and crudely animated cut-out photography limbs of which figures are assembled don't quite make it all that serious. The range of characters introduced is sublime, Shinji Higuchi taking the cake as cow-creature wearing a nose ring while taking on the fast-food chains with his gang of bull/people.

Oshii regular Kenji Kawai provides, besides a pretty comical performance, a score ranging from atmospheric and dark to wacky, strange and comical. A lot of fun is to be had from the exaggerated noises and effects, complementing the animation and totally contradicting the tone of the rest of the film.

Visually the film is very atmospheric, though it must be said that the animation is pretty scarce and while effective, remains toned down, only to burst out in hyperactive weirdness from time to time. Which is not exactly a bad thing, seeing how Tachiguishi is so dialogue-heavy. Despite that, the film is still a visual masterpiece as each frame looks absolutely lush and is tailored to match and improve the general atmosphere of the film.

Beware though, because Tachiguishi does demand a lot from the viewer. If you don't speak Japanese, there is a lot of reading to be done and there are many cultural references that demand some attention. On top of that, the monologues in the film area quite extended and can be hard to follow. The film still lacks English subtitles and even though my French was largely sufficient to get what it was all about, I'm sure I missed many of the finer points of the film.

Tachiguishi is not an easy film to get into, but around halfway through it reaches full steam and it doesn't let off from there on. I still hope to see this one again with English or Dutch subs. A dub would actually be best for a film like this (much like Container), though I guess a quality anime dub is a bit too much to ask for.

With all of that said, I can only congratulate Oshii on another marvelous film. It's rare to find a film that blends and mixes so many styles and influences to create something that is so unique and still works. The film is smart, looks and sounds great and is filled to the brim with creativity. It is immensely funny, even if you can't catch all the details on the first viewing. But be sure to at least get this with decent subs, as the automated English translation that is floating out there is completely worthless and does the film no justice at all.

Tachiguishi caters to a very specific audience and I'm not surprised the French got their release while the rest of Europe (and the rest of the Western world) is still waiting for a sign of this film. But for those that like Oshii, appreciate dry and deadpan humor and crave creative spirits, it is a film that cannot be missed, even though it could just as well misfire. 4.5*/5.0*