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.

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 is no need here to focus on technical aspects of the film, or style, or even story, because it is all handled with a perfect, careful balance, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of the film: to provide an abstract framework for an experience that we have all had to reckon with in our transition from youth to adulthood.

When we are young, we assign godlike power to certain elements of our world. Speaking from personal experience, I was faced with a love for a girl in my youth that was so overwhelmingly strong that I could no longer function in any other area of my life; a kind of First Spark, the loss of which is so bittersweet because truly nothing ever strikes the same chord again. It is like a beautiful color that you only see once, never to witness again. This sadness is the encompassing drought that affects us all. No water can survive here, and we all fall victim to it, some of us drying out completely.

It is not just love that is lost in this dry spell, though. It may be talent, friendship, or wonder itself. But the truth is that we do not truly know the function of this world, and that there are indeed forces beyond our control that dictate our very small lives. We are always comparing today to yesterday, forgetting to nurture the power of the meaningful aspects of our lives, and so we dry up. We turn to stone, and we die the death.

Yes, it is fearful, to face this wall of stone, but it comes for each of us.

I think what is so beautiful about this film is its perfect understanding that abstract concepts of our lives must be handled abstractly, not concretely, and the sidelined narrative allows for this abstraction to truly shine. This is something that I think many artists in the West struggle or completely fail to understand, that abstraction can say so much more than words ever can. There is a distinct feeling that is being delivered here, and it is multifaceted. By the time the credits roll, there is a whirlpool of emotions and questions left swirling, and I think any piece of art that can accomplish this is a huge success. We do not always need hard answers for our lives, because life itself is multifaceted, ever-changing, and unique to each of us. That is why I love a film that reflects that, and this film does it in a perfect Japanese fashion.

My only real criticism here, and it is a very small matter of taste- yes, it is hard to criticize this film since it is so masterful in all areas- is that I wish it would actually lean more heavily into true abstraction. There are times when I was perhaps expecting it to lean further and further into real unknown territory, maybe visually, since the sonics were A+ at all times. To accompany this supernatural sense that was being conveyed, though, by actually Going to that place visually would be very nice. It felt like there was an unknowable and surreal world churning below the surface that I thought would poke its head out at least once or twice, but it never really happened. That is my only small, personal complaint.

Truly a beautiful film, though. I will cherish it forever, and water this flower of love as often as I can.

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.