Lunettes rouges

Red spectacles

I loved Avalon, I think This director has made some awesome demented visions of the future. This film however was boring pretentious crap. The opening scene showed great promise for what the cover art and description promise a surreal live action amimae style future noir. I feel I got that with Avalon.

With Red Spectacles I was only driven to feel a uncomfortable to desire to what the hell the point was. The film barely made sense to me and I could not care less about the people in it. This would all be ok if the film was effective art. While the opening scene looked interesting and the scene with the giant robot-suit person holding the giant machine gun in the rain looked cool, it did not watch the film worth watching.

Thumbs down.

I watched the trilogy by Mamoru Oshii. The words surreal, Orwellian and Kafkaesque come to mind. However, despite all their bizarre aspects I believe they are essentially jokes. The darkness was there as a chiaroscuro backdrop to highlight the humor. The first, Red Spectacles, is about a man who can not let go of his past not matter how painful and dangerous it was because he never felt more alive that when he was facing death. The second, Stray Dog, shows that man during an interim period when he seems to be almost at peace, being brought back to that death-seeking modus operandi which precipitates the events of the first film. The third film, Talking Head, while not directly related to the events of the first two, does refer back to them as a man attempts to create truth out of illusion. The idea is that film, as an art form, is essentially an exercise in madness and that illusion is finally a higher truth, an idea that was touched on in the first film. But it is the humor that is Oshii's ultimate goal. He doesn't want to make highly significant pronouncements on the nature of humanity and reality. He just wants to tell a story, and if the story is funny, all the better. I suppose that many parallels could be drawn between Oshii's work and that of Philip K. Dick.

I recently purchased Mamoru Oshii's Cinema Trilogy Box Set. This was the first film, and I must say that I was more than pleasantly surprised. I was expecting action and sci-fi... and while I got a little of that, I also received a huge helping of intelligent, thought-provoking mystery and a large dose of entertaining slapstick comedy. In truth, this film is a throwback to silent film (Just as Quentin Tarantino's films are often throwbacks to pulp fiction, blaxploitation, chop-socky, spaghetti western etc. films)... It truly is a silent film with dialogue. The actions and expressions of the actors are excessive and exaggerated, techniques commonly thought of as "primitive" in the cinephile community are used, and there's, of course, the sepia tone that covers most of the film.

Shigeru Chiba is definitely the shining star of the film, portraying qualities that Hollywood action, drama, and comedy stars would kill to have. Chiba is also featured in the other two films in the box set, and definitely carries all three films with his small yet enormous presence.

This film, along with "Stray Dog" and "Talking Head," does not spell out each and every little thing for the viewer... Mr. Oshii trusts the audience to be able to come to its own conclusions. I definitely respect that and would recommend this film to anyone who would listen.

This film is not for everyone. It is not even for all fans of Mamoru Oshii necessarily. It is extremely bizarre, often seemingly incomprehensible, very unpredictable, and a mix of several genres that is not necessarily seamless. It seems that most of the negative reactions to it are from viewers that were expecting something more in line with Jin-Roh, and being that it is supposed to be part of that saga, this isn't exactly a wild conclusion to make. However, it is quite different from Jin-Roh and other Kerebos related works. It is possibly Oshii's most bizarre work to date, and although not completely different than Jin-Roh, still a different beast. Mostly, I would urge viewers not to go into this expecting the heavy doses of action delivered in his anime works.

For what it is, the production values are quite good. Most of the film is shot in black and white, but it is one of those movies where this helps the tone and it feels natural. The opening sequence is an over the top action scene in color where the main characters mow down a bunch of bounty hunters with their gigantic machine guns and power armor, but after that it is mostly straight surrealism layered with general insanity. The tone shifts frequently and leaves you never knowing what to expect. You just never know if you are going to get an action scene, comedy gags, or long sequences of social commentary... which are sometimes intertwined with action and comedy.

Red Spectacles is one of the finest works of surrealism I have seen. The feeling it evokes is very unique and stayed with me for days. It bounces between noir drama, gun fights, kung fu, suspense, tragedy, slapstick comedy, and set piece driven sequences without any given indication. It is a wild ride that will take you off guard, for better or for worse. It is steeped quite heavily in symbolism as usual with his films, but I feel that this is one of his best deliveries in terms of that. The ending is incredibly powerful in particular, and paired with Kenji Kawai's brilliant soundtrack, and the outlandish landscapes, ended up being straight up haunting. The OST is absolutely one of Kenji Kawai's finest scores as well, and I do not say that lightly as I hold his work in the highest regard. The epic main theme is unforgettable, and the movie would not have been what it is without him.

Lastly, Shigeru Chiba's performance is simply amazing. You may know of him from his anime voice acting career. I assure you that the film is at very least worth watching for his over the top and ridiculous performance. He is honestly even more entertaining on screen than he is as a voice actor, it would have been great to see him in more live action films. He single handledly brings the film alive and makes it even more than it could have been. His performance here is reminiscent of Tomorowo Taguchi's acting in the films of Shinya Tsukamoto.

Love it or hate it, I guarantee you will never forget it.

This is, for lack of a better term, an art film. This should be said from the start, because while many of Oshii's anime films are of a philosophical bent, they hew closely enough to convention to appeal to mainstream movie fans. This film probably does not.

Judging the film as a whole, it makes some interesting philosophical points and pays off at the end. The question is whether this payoff is enough to justify what went before. I am not sure about this.

Normally one assesses a confusing film that can only be fully grasped at the end by looking at that film's secondary characteristics.

Judged as an art film, the movie's technique is expert, but it is not so innovative or visually compelling so as to justify the film by itself. There is nothing wrong with the acting in this movie, but it is not so compelling that it shifts one's focus from the film as a whole.

Judged as a more commercial or mainstream film, this movie is distinctive for its emphasis on humor. That humor is an old-fashioned form of slapstick however, and while this will make the film for some people, if you do not especially like this form of humor, then the fact that it is placed in a confusing and rather dark movie will prevent the individual bits of humor from coalescing into a funny unity greater than the sum of the parts.

The one thing that cannot be denied or dismissed, is that this film is an original one, and is philosophical without being preachy. If this is enough, then you are certain to be satisfied.