Saraba hakobune

I have watched many films lately where I don't know how to describe them very well. While I've loved seeing all these things that are unlike much else I've seen, I think I might've reached my limit. I've been overwhelmed by movies - be they good, bad, or somewhere in between - that have been redefining what movies can be/do, in my mind. Over the next week, I would like to watch some nice, normal, comforting films, and maybe leave the energy needed for difficult things to other difficult things in life that don't involve watching films.

I didn't like the way Farewell to the Ark made me feel, but I did appreciate the fact it was able to make me feel it. There's just this really eerie, sickening, queasy, almost beautiful feel to it. I can't call it dreamlike, nightmarish, or like a fever dream. It's a bit of all those things mixed together to become something else.

What's it about? I don't know! Everyone is obsessed with clocks, there's an inappropriate relationship, a man is haunted by someone he seemingly killed and then he also goes insane, and there are also other ghosts that seem to be hovering around the place. Maybe in flashbacks, maybe in dreams (not the Roy Orbison kind).

I don't know if anyone out there would enjoy this, but I think a lot of other people would appreciate it if they were after something unique. It made me feel sad in a way I've never felt sad before, so I'm not even sure if sad is the right word. This is the kind of movie you'd see if, after entering the obelisk at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, you ended up in a realm where they still had cinemas.

What a film, and what the hell.

I liked this film very much, but the connection with Gabriel García Márquez is so thin that I would not credit "Cien años de soledad" as source. It could have inspired Terayama in the same way someone writes a poem after hearing an inspiring symphony. Sometimes the film looks and sounds more Fellini-Rota to me than Colombia, but the really fascinating images and sounds are those culturally linked to Japan. I am not a specialist in cultures, I only respond emotionally to this product, which has a dark tone and complex idiosyncratic background that is rarely present in the world of light and color of García Márquez. Although Gabo's works can be dark and complex, this motion picture has the scent of an ancient world and culture. A bit rambling sometimes, but a very good audiovisual experience.