Casshern

I have just finished watching Casshern and overall it was a visually stunning feast for the eyes with a beautifully woven fairytale at its heart. Unfortunately the fairytale was somewhat drowned under layer upon layer of heavy handed and mostly unnecessary exposition that ponders on for two long and mind-numbing hours, the result being that I am baffled by the entire experience. On the one hand I loved the movie; the style of the film was exceptional, every aspect of the world the director had created strained with the quality that is lacking in most western films. The cinematography was perfectly executed, the design work was breathtaking and the idea at the core of the narrative was ingenious. On the other hand these qualities cannot make up for the script, which is overly long and excruciatingly convoluted; taking an unnecessarily long and ponderous route to a conclusion that, in the hands of a better writer, could have been much more straightforward without necessarily losing any of the emotional complexity of the narrative or its characters. I would recommend seeing this movie if just to experience the spectacular visual feast that it is, but I can't help thinking that the story could have been treated so much better.

I saw "Casshern" yesterday at a packed theater and I was blown away. I went in looking for a black-and-white head-busting superhero flick, but I got a lot more than I bargained for.

First off, the photography is gorgeous--as director, cinematographer, and editor Kazuaki Kiriya makes excellent use of color and grain in his film. At times it's a fuzzy, glowing dream, while at others it's stark, black-and-white sandpaper on your brain. It's an ingenious device to change the mood of the film instantaneously.

There are hints of any number of films here--Metropolis, Frankenstein, Mononoke Hime, Terminator, Tetsuo--and yet the film definitely stands on its own. By no means a slavish adaption of the original animated series, it does contain a number of nods to elements of the original that fans will surely recognize (I leave it to other viewers to catch these for themselves). I was particularly impressed by the first appearance of Luna, who looks like she stepped out of a painting by Tatsunoko alumnus Yoshitaka Amano in that scene.

The action scenes are backed by a driving rock score which reminded me of "The Crow" for some reason. Hardcore action fans who are hoping for a "Matrix Reloaded" bumper-to-bumper slugfest will be sorely disappointed, though. The fight scenes actually run counter to the message of the film--that, as one character states, "War makes humans inhuman." There is a long tradition in Japanese fiction--and animation, in particular--of the hero becoming what he hates to triumph over his enemy. The perfect example of this is Devilman, who becomes a demon to do battle with other demons. There is also a saying in Japan, "kokoro wo oni ni suru" or "steel your heart with resolve," and "Casshern" proves that some decisions will indeed set us on the road to having the hardened heart of a demon. In the end, most conflicts can never be won--even if you win, you lose, as you have more than likely sown the seeds for the next conflict.

I have no idea how foreign audiences will take to the message in this film, but I could hear a number of people crying in the darkness around me, and the crowd was uncharacteristically silent as they left the theater. As a translator, I hope this gets the treatment it deserves when it gets subtitled--the dialog isn't particularly difficult for those with a moderate knowledge of Japanese, and there are vast stretches of film with no dialog at all, but there are also a number of nuances that might be lost. The omnipresent Chinese and Cyrillic characters of the Asian Federation create an oppressive mood that'll be difficult to convey--the nearest example I can think of is the subliminal messages in John Carpenter's "They Live." Some of the other devices used in the film, such as multiple voices repeating portentous words "You don't know what war's like," might also be difficult to convey with normal subtitling. Nevertheless, I hope to see this film made available to a larger audience soon.

Casshern sacrifices narrative continuity in favour of aesthetic grandeur. Kazuaki Kiriya made his feature debut with Casshern and had previously devoted his time to music videos, the influence was overbearing. Soundtrack motifs played in crescendo to action sequences throughout the film, intense colour and CGI made the film visually intense but shot to shot and scene to scene continuity suffered. I found it difficult to follow the story often lost in a mess of fragmented shots and incoherent animations. The plot itself was no linear transgression of events, the film resolves instead on a message rather than a resolution. Kiriya places emphasis upon metaphor rather than storytelling which is unusual. Hollywood fans like myself will probably find the film too messy to deal with, Casshern leaves many loose ends which some may find intriguing. Casshern does offer stunning visuals with big budget action sequences and fresh looking CGI. For die hard 'Art film' fans, the film was so enigmatic and metaphorical, fans of narrative cinema like myself may fall asleep!

My goodness, I really don't know where to start with this film. It looked great in the trailers...

First off I understand what the filmmakers were trying to say - anti-war, anti-playing with genes, anti-lots of things, but unfortunately these intentions are marred by ponderous, drawn out and pretentious dialogue. Fair enough, a lot of Japanese movies (that I've seen) have a bit of this in it (along with those REALLY annoying unfinished sentences), but in this case it was so relentless that I almost cried from boredom.

From the marketing and the tag lines and the trailers I had expected a decent, fresh looking action flick but instead I got a somewhat political film that tried to make a point about human existence, and personally I don't believe that this is the right kind of movie to make this kind of statement. As I say, I get what they're trying to say, but I remain disappointed at the vehicle for it.

Other problems - things intercut and jump about so often that getting confused is far too easy. The music is also relentlessly playing ALL THE WAY through the film (save for a few pauses). Perhaps this might have been OK had it not been so repetitive in style. The film is also far too long. Considerable lack of character - all I remember after watching it are faces, no characters.

Good things - very new look for a start. The CG is used to great effect to construct the environment in this world although it can be a little overbearing at times. Regarding the action, when it gets going it really gets going (although this was far too infrequent for me). The point the movie is trying to make is also quite potent - it's probably better to watch it to get the point rather than me telling you, but it is quite an arduous task.

All in all - overlong, relentlessly pretentiously scripted, absent of character, gratingly scored yet with an interesting point to make and an original aesthetic to show off with all too sporadic action scenes which were, let's face it, what most of us came to the show to see after seeing trailers etc. I spent £7 on the DVD after waiting for ages for the price to come down, and personally I would like that £7 back.

6/10

The good: Very beautiful scenes.

The bad: The movie was about 40 minutes too long, with repetitive flashbacks, scenes unnecessarily drawn out even after the dialogue and action has ended, a meandering plot (with plenty of plot holes), characters that act inconsistently or unbelievably, a forgettable soundtrack, and one -awesome- action scene/battle roughly around the 15% mark that makes you think the rest of the movie will feature scenes just as great, but it's just one long anti-climax after that point.

It also asks many naive questions about war/mankind/humanity to make a pretense at being remotely philosophical. It doesn't discuss what possible answers there could be to those questions, but it takes a mediocre movie and supposedly makes it 'deep.' Strangely enough, it seems that it's this very aspect of the movie that resonated with females (alongside the great visuals), who uniformly gave this movie high ratings.

This movie is barely a 6, for me.