August in the Water

Even in the career of Sogo Ishii (later Gakuryu Ishii) - where storyline and structure are often side-lined for atmosphere, mood and general carnage - 1995's "August in the Water" is something of an enigma. Made in the mid-Nineties, where his three feature films were slow-paced, dreamlike mood pieces, it is a bright and colourful burst in the middle of the dark and gloomy "Angel Dust" (1994) and the monochrome coma of "Labyrinth of Dreams" (1997), though has a deliberately complex storyline to leave you as equally lost as its characters.

The plot is perhaps the weakest element of the film and towards its conclusion is more a series of moments than anything coherent, ranging from the silly to the fantastical and mysterious. Diving star Izumi (Rena Komine) joins Mao (Shinsuke Aoki) and Ukiya's (Masaaki Takarai) school, with Mao immediately drawn to her. Mysteriously failing an attempt at a dive, Mao dives in the pool to save Izumi, resulting in her being in a coma.

On waking, she is drawn to the remains of an old meteor in a nearby forest, becoming elusive and difficult to pin down. She is now drawn to a different world. Meanwhile, in the city, the hot summer drought sees people randomly collapse with 'stone disease,' where internal organs turn to stone. Bringing in elements of astrology also, little is fully developed or explained, leaving us in the position of Mao, wondering what is going on in Izumi's mind.

But this confusion is beside the point, or maybe it is the point. "August in the Water" is an atmosphere of teenage anxiety at finding your place in the world, with Norimichi Kasamatsu's cinematography and Hiroyuki Onogawa's soundtrack blending to create an intangible quality of intrigue and questions the script will never answer directly.

Ishii's use of continual background soundtrack gives every scene a dreamlike quality of another world, removing you from your senses. Indeed, you will easily find yourself gazing blankly at the screen while the film seeps into your system. Combined with the slow-pacing, this hypnotises the audience, leaving them numb as to what they have just seen, unable to explain, yet fully at ease.

The shot composition is also impressive, feeling like that of a film with a much bigger budget. The diving scenes use numerous aerial shots, quickly edited together, making the sport look the most impressive it has ever been. Aerial and night-time shots of the forest are also beautifully constructed, with a look to match the emotion. The heat of the urban landscape is also captured, as wavey shots of people collapsing on the streets make this truly reflect the heat of August.

While certain scenes may feel like those that have come before (list your own famous Japanese shots of women walking into water), along with "Angel Dust," this shows Ishii is a director pushing limits and taking risks. The plot is too enigmatic, introducing too many complex elements with little offer of explanation. But this risk pays off in how it leaves the audience. You simply give up on trying to follow and explain, and simply lose yourself within. By the final scene, you are absorbed to the point to feel its full impact, as Izumi impacted Mao.

"August in the Water" in a mystery that you just can't explain, finding yourself drawn back to it to relive that sense all over again.

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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.

Within 5 minutes, this film completely blew me away. The dreamy music and atmosphere just did it for me. There's not much of a plot, just reoccurring images of space and pools. This gets by pretty much just on atmosphere alone. Luckily, it's some of the best atmosphere you're likely to find in a movie.

Some insane editing, awesome direction, and beautiful cinematography of Japanese cityscapes seal the deal for me. Trippy as hell, with speaking dolphins and odd, 5 minute shots of people diving into pools.

Some kind of masterpiece I need to watch a few more times to completely wrap my head around.

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.

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.