Mizu no naka no hachigatsu

I had to watch it a second time because I didn't understand what happened and thought I missed something. So I watched it again closely. Now I understand even less. The style. The soft 90s quality adds to the surrealism as it gradually goes off the deep end. The music is the star of the movie, I can't recall a time the music elevates the picture this much. I can see how it inspired a lot of western films as well. Overall it is one of the strangest films I can recall, it has its own beating heart and passions, unforgettable sequences and images, and yet it is behind the thick kind of wall of incomprehension.

Dealing with cosmic (in)significance, aliens and ecological concerns, August in the Water captures the essence of a astronomically pure mood using only nebulous visuals present in reality, transcending the universe' beauty of what exists in nature. Numerous motifs and philosophical questions are also used: extraterrestrials, the origin of humans or ancient, mystically inscribed stones. With a plot bursting with enigmatic, imaginative and sometimes ludicrous ideas augmented by the magical realism atmosphere.

I wanted to start August off right and I knew August in the Water just had to be watched after my experiences with Gakuryu Ishii back in January. Mixing New Age spirituality, animism, astrophysics and advancement in technology, August in the Water can easily be described as the quintessential vaporware film, often feeling like several overlapping films that somehow complement and deepen each other's various mysteries. Ishii crafts a film that largely unfolds as a succession of mood pieces, remaining optimistic as it deconstructs the meaninglessness of our existence while simultaneously offering a hallucinatory analysis of coming-of-age malaise. The direction and framing are just sumptuous, it's all handled in a familiar and comforting style not too far removed from other Japanese filmmakers of the '90s. Part of that comfort comes from the film's incredible sound design and gorgeous musical score by Hiroyuki Onogawa, new age sound blending with classical synthesisers. Exceptionally intriguing and self-assured exercise in style with wry observations about modern Japanese life, August in the Water is simply beautiful in its deliverance, one that I can't recommend enough.

There's a new girl at high school, Isuku (Rena Komine), whose arrival as a high diving champion creates quite a splash. Her appearance coincides with a double meteorite strike in the forest outside the town, which inexplicably acts as a catalyst for a drought and a local epidemic which causes ones inner organs to turn to stone. Taking in the whole spectrum of pre-Millennial New Age phenomena, Ishii's bizarre film is a bit of a mixed bag. Thematically, its a real inspiration: The X-Files notwithstanding, this sort of imaginative pseudo-scientific fantasy stands uniquely amongst contemporary cinematic output. To my mind it evokes the more imaginative sci-fi pictures from the 60's or 70's, such as ‘Quatermass and the Pit' or ‘Doomwatch'. ). Unfortunately in execution it is often unfocussed and confusing, lurching from one idea to the next (Gaia theory, Chaos theory) but never quite drawing any satisfying conclusions. It has a detached air about it which I personally find to be the case in a lot of Japanese films. This is often down to the cultural and linguistic differences, though in this case it is the plotting which is most likely the cause. It perhaps suffers from trying to fit just too much into its running time, and the finale is rambling and unnecessarily protracted. Stylistically the film admirably eschews expensive visual effects or CGI in its portrayal of the assorted esoteric ephemera, settling for natural lighting, brightly lit exteriors, rapid multiple-angle edits, and abstracted close-ups of natural phenomena (much akin to ‘Pi'). Ishii certainly has an aesthetic eye, and the film possesses an oneiric quality that will remain with the viewer for a long period afterwards.

At the risk of sounding like a weak reviewer, there were definitely parts of August in the Water that reminded me of other films, but in good ways. Also, not in ways that felt derivative or too samey. I think this is entirely its own thing, even to the point where I don't know completely what to make of it, but I liked the experience it offered. It's slow, quiet, and empty, but always has something under the surface to keep things feeling oddly energized and going forward.

There's also a strong sense of mystery at the heart of August in the Water that I wasn't really expecting would be resolved, but that's okay. It feels like it's exploring things that are beyond our understanding, maybe a little like the eerie - yet not exactly scary - scenes near the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which I got reminded me a bit of). There's also the sense of a very quiet, understated, and probably realistic set of vaguely apocalyptic occurrences (if you choose to read accidents and misfortunes that way), and the very by-the-numbers ways these things occurred made me think of Threads a bit.

It's a bold-looking movie; never too flashy, but never boring to take in. It captures the pleasant boredom and heat of summer well, and is remarkably different to the other films I've seen from Gakuryû Ishii, at least stylistically. If it starts to lose the plot a little at the end... I can't be too mad. That was always likely, and also I'm tired, so maybe I missed something. But I do feel like there was a quality to this that was engrossing, and while it was super slow, I didn't feel it was boring very often at all. The use of music also stood out to me, and definitely added something.