Mono no aware

Or, “What is the function of cinema as an entertainment medium and expressive art form?” Or, more simply, “What the hell was that?”

I’m a little reluctant to endorse the marketing strategy of some distributors of Japanese cinema titles, beyond the fact that they bring the said titles to would-be viewers’ attention. Y’see, I don’t want originality and thoughtful film-making to be mistaken for some “Hey, look at those crazy Japanese people and their crazy movies!” sales pitch. The Happiness of the Katakuris was an artistically innovative demonstration of the importance of family (I’m not kidding) and if you watch Battle Royale purely for the shock value of sixteen-year olds killing each other, you’re missing the point of the exercise by a mile. I’m more interested in seeing what their film industry as a whole has to offer beyond this cultural stereotyping, but I digress.

Gen Sekiguchi is probably better-known as the director of the imaginative and offbeat Supercar music videos but here he makes his feature-length debut with some well-known names in Japanese media…along with a special appearance by British footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones. This movie is unlike any other I’ve seen and as such has ‘cult hit’ written all over it but my question to Survive Style 5+ is: What is your function?

The film opens with a man breaking the fourth wall by talking directly to the viewer about how he’s killing his wife and burying her in the woods. This is a bit of treat in that the killer in question doesn’t talk much at all later on during the film but does wind up murdering his wife several times. The problem is that no sooner than he buries her and returns home his waifu is waiting patiently for him, ready to give him a thorough beating for his troubles before the hapless couple repeat the farcical cycle over again.

This is one of several plot threads that separate and intertwine during the course of the movie. The others include an advertising director who dictates a myriad of contrived ideas for TV ads onto her dictaphone that are not nearly as amusing to other people as they are to her; three young burglars who wrestle with boredom, sexual tension and the desire to go straight (if only in the professional sense); a hard-up salaryman who thinks he’s a turkey after a tragic incident at a hypnotist’s live show; a managing director whose board meetings are interrupted by inane telephone calls from his family; two schoolgirls in a cafe who discuss a series of increasingly bizarre injuries; all somehow connected, however improbably, with Jones as the hitman with a simple yet profound question, speaking through an interpreter with questionable credentials.

The narrative structure is clever enough but has garnered a few Quentin Tarantino comparisons for the dark, dry humour and interrelated plot threads. I actually find Tarantino to be grossly overrated as a director but Survive Style 5+ manages to deliver on not only larger-than-life characters and situations while never coming across as dull, but throws in no small amount of humanity for good measure. It seems to be examining the meaning of human existence and our relationships with one another without once coming across as pretentious or too serious for its own good; if anything, I’ve never seen the most fundamental of philosophical issues addressed in such a lively and entertaining way.

The cinematography is pretty extraordinary too. The colours are unnaturally vibrant from the surreal Dali-esque décor in the house of the homicidal husband and his quietly furious and immortal spouse, to the outfits, the garish aeroplane cabin Jones flies in and the pastel shades of the Kobayashi family home. Much of the humour is thematic or visual rather than reliant on wordplay so translates well: the point where Mr Kobayashi, post-hypnosis and waddling around the house pecking seeds out of his children’s hands, sees a turkey cooked for Christmas dinner and imagines himself roasting in the oven was grimly hilarious. So too is the office of Jones and his interpreter with the furniture and fittings labelled clearly in English, the former playing up his hard-man image and the latter dressed in a tastelessly-coloured suit with an SLR camera slung around his neck.

There’s a lot in this movie that is geared towards an overseas audience as much as a domestic one, such as Jones’ recurring cameos, but the use of Engrish and misunderstandings are brilliant. The sparingly-used music is selected from some pretty eclectic quarters for maximum catchiness and irony, heightening the incongruity of it all. The Kobayashis singing along enthusiastically to a Western rock tune complete with the profanity-laden lyrics that are obvious to any English-speaking viewer had me in stitches; and yet the misunderstandings and breakdowns in communication were sometimes very touching.

Mr Kobayashi’s condition is hard on his wife and teenage daughter but his young son still looks up to his old man and sees his odd behaviour as something to be enjoyed and cherished. The moment where the father, seemingly lost in a hypnotic trance, sheds a tear as the young Keiichi voices his continued devotion, was as telling as it was surprising. Similarly the homicidal husband, played to deadpan perfection by Tadanobu Asano (who impressed me by his turn in Love & Pop but was just as great in Zatoichi and Mongol) eventually comes to an understanding with his wife in an eye-poppingly rendered Christmas wonderland and we finally see them share moments of romantic bliss, without him burying her with a shovel and her not giving him a roundhouse kick to the face.

While it’s easy to dismiss this or enjoy it on a superficial level as just another crazy or random Japanese movie, Survive Style 5+ has a firm grasp of what it’s trying to say in that by the end there’s definitely method in the madness. The direction and editing take a bit of getting used to but I gradually came to realise that it has a playful desire to be original and unpredictable but has a clear idea of where it’s going. The faces must be pretty well-known and high-profile for me to recognise them but their perfomances are all of a very high standard and must have had a lot of fun filming this; the final scene is also one of the most uplifting and downright AWESOME film endings I’ve seen in years.

So then, what is Survive Style 5+’s function? An experiment in set design and storytelling? A riotous collision of Eastern and Western pop culture? I’d like to think it’s an audacious, laugh-out-loud take on life in its happy, painful, ironic absurdity. Go watch it.

Sorry, no related posts yet.