Cartoon heads morph into ever-more-complex fractal structures, following the musical cues.
Tag Archives: Animation
FANTASIA 2023: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: KURAYAKUBA (2023)
クラユカバ
Wanderers in the Darkness
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DIRECTED BY: Shigeyoshi Tsukahara
FEATURING: Voices of Hakuzan Kanda, Tomoyo Kurosawa, Raikou Sakamoto
PLOT: Ne’er-do-well detective Sotaro is hired to investigate a series of disappearances coinciding with a touring carnival, and descends into “the Dark,” an undercity plagued by gangs and, it is rumored, supernatural concerns.
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Jazzy steampunk, circus evil, and eldritch mystery shroud this animated action/noir gurgling with easy-going humor, and its big top finale makes for a wild ride of Caligari-style wonderment.
COMMENTS: There is a lot that makes sense about our protagonist, Sotaro. He’s a detective because his father was one, he’s disheveled because business is slow, and he’s got something of a sidekick in the form of a scrappy street urchin named Saki—because, frankly, a down-on-his-luck, alcoholic detective would. He also has two qualities to his credit, at least in the eyes of a newspaper man who wants an investigator: he’s broke, and takes a relaxed view of his own well being. This makes Sotaro (after some booze and cajoling) the perfect candidate to take a dive into “the Dark”, an underground labyrinth and cave system teaming with ancient shrines, modern hoodlums, renegade law enforcement aganets, and ghostly, carnivalistic evil.
Kurayukaba‘s visual style is reminiscent of a dog-eared, old comic: watercoloring bleeds, and a papery quality renders the image tactile at times. The hero’s world-weariness does a dance with his deep-seated vivacity: while he’s only shown drunk or hung-over, his quick wits and powers of observation make him the ideal “reactive protagonist” (contradiction in terms that may be). As he explores the glorious, cluttered mess of “the Dark,” the pastel-steampunk world below the surface comes alive in a confusing maze of train cars, gears, bridges, and colorful characters. The case concerns the recurring disappearance of random victims, with a chaotic muddle of black markings the only trace of evidence. Conspiracy is in the air, as these events are typically hushed by the powers-that-be. And Sotaro is on the case because—well, he’s on the case because he needs the money; he was hired because he has a long history with “the Dark.”
Rarely, if ever, before have I had the pleasure to witness this particular visual fusion found amongst the mysteries of Kurayukaba. Among the oddities to enjoy are an armored demon train reputed to haunt the labyrinth; a Greek chorus of clockwork birds on a merchant’s display stage (which reminds me of the strange behavior of our dear detective’s office parrot…); and Sotaro’s various flashbacks. His explorations continue his father’s work, culminating across the generations in a fantastical centerpiece. Kurayukaba is inspired by ’20s-era visuals and sound, with a particular bent toward German Expressionism, and the film meanders along its tracks with an ongoing rota of eccentric characters and phenomena, de-layering an age old conspiracy until a vibrant, hallucinatory climax that ties the case together while resolving Sotaro’s difficulties with his father. After the explosion of light, sound, and spectacle, our tired hero can finally go top-side and have himself a well-earned drink.
Read our interview with director Shigeyoshi Tsukahara and producer Shinnosuke Yoshida.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: SUGAR SHOW (2020)
Characters go through bestial and monstrous transformations as they search for love in this animation exploring the mysteries of human attraction.
CAPSULE: BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN (2022)
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DIRECTED BY: Pierre Földes
FEATURING: Voices of Amaury de Crayencour, Arnaud Maillard, Mathilde Auneveux, Pierre Földes; Ryan Bommarito, Marcelo Arroyo, Shoshana Wilder (English dub)
PLOT: A salaryman struggles emotionally when his depressed wife leaves him; meanwhile, his co-worker is approached by a giant talking frog who insists that the timid accountant assist him in forestalling an earthquake set to devastate Tokyo.
COMMENTS: The blind willow of the title is a fictional tree; flies bear pollen from its blossoms and deposit it into the ear of a woman, causing her to fall into a deep, fairy-tale sleep. The fable is related from inside a flashback in one of the stories that compromise this semi-anthology film. It’s one of many mysterious strands running through Pierre Földes cinematic debut, adapted from six Haruki Murakami (Drive My Car) short stories. The film follows three main protagonists, and one anthropomorphic Frog, through dismal-but-bearable lives in a post-earthquake Tokyo. The movie marches the trio through bouts of catatonic depression, workplace humiliations, odd vacations, encounters with magical restaurateurs, ambiguous erotic and semi-erotic encounters, a search for a missing cat, dreams, and one epic, hallucinatory quest.
The stories are all suffused with gentle melancholy and a sense of humanity’s search for meaning. No answers are given or purposes uncovered, except, perhaps, in the case of accountant Katagiri, who, with the help of the movie’s breakout character, the loquacious and puissant Frog, finally achieves recognition for his years of long and thankless service. The film’s general tone is more attuned to Komura, who endures abandonment by his wife with quiet and insular stoicism, and Kyoko, whose dissatisfaction remains inexpressible, even to herself. The figurants the main characters sit beside on subways, buses, or cafeterias are all silent and spectral, drawn as translucent overlays. There’s something ghostly about the film’s protagonists, who move about as if they’re bound to the world by some unremembered purpose, so it only makes sense that they inhabit a spectral civilization.
The artwork reinforces the calm, poetic, dreamlike mood. Color palettes are muted, with static backgrounds; in the loveliest composition, two characters stand at a bus stop in front of what looks like a springtime watercolor landscape of cherry blossoms and tall grass, a brown mound of mountain arising in the deep background. At times, especially in scenes with Frog, the art can recall anime, although this is not as much of a stylistic touchstone as the Japanese setting might suggest. The movie takes time out for flights of fancy in several dream sequences—Katagiri finds himself flying through the sky in the belly of a worm who resolves into a train as he wakes—but also in waking daydreams, as when Komura sees the whorls of his nephew’s ear morph into a nude woman, or when a spectral salmon swims above two lovers in bed. These digressions harness the fantasy power of animation in a way that seems more natural than it would in a live-action feature, suggesting that the characters’ interior realities have as much emotional weight as their dialogue. Földes has an odd trademark of drawing his character’s lips unusually wide and dark, but this is a minor distraction.
The multitalented Földes, previously known mainly as a composer, not only adapted Murakami’s stories into the screenplay, directed, and wrote the score, but also voiced Frog in both the French and English versions. Perhaps only his love of Murakami’s prose pulled him into filmmaking, but I hope this isn’t the last we see from him. He’s too skilled at this to sit on the sidelines.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: “THE END OF THE WORLD IN FOUR SEASONS” (1995) AND THE CANADIAN FILMS OF PAUL DRIESSEN
DIRECTED BY: Paul Driessen
PLOT: In “The End of the World in Four Seasons” small, repeating vignettes of life in each season play out in eight separate-but-interconnected frames; each ends with some sort of destruction, but by winter, all the settings are wiped out.
COMMENTS: Paul Driessen first appears in the weird movie connoisseur’s consciousness as a hired hand; the Dutchman was enlisted to storyboard and animate on Yellow Submarine. But rather than trying to move up the ladder to features, he has resolutely stuck with his self-created shorts, establishing a personal style and inspiring plenty of others. Two movies created by Driessen’s students have won Academy Awards, while his own “The Killing of an Egg” allegedly inspired marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg to try his hand at animation. (Hillenburg would go on to create the cartoon juggernaut SpongeBob SquarePants.)
In the early 1970s, the fabled patron of animation the National Film Board of Canada enlisted Driessen to come and work on the other side of the Atlantic, resulting in a series of unusual and subversive works. Six of these shorts were collected in an anthology entitled “Des histoires pas comme les autres” (“Stories Unlike Any Others”), and while we’re focused on one of those today, a quick glance at the full set can be instructive in assessing Driessen’s style and development.
Consider “Air” (1972), which presents multiple relationships with the title subject in less than two minutes. Flowers, fish, birds, and finally a being who seems to be in sheer terror of clouds all struggle to take in enough air to breathe. Of note is Driessen’s facility with the line, which does most of the work to define the space, transforming from the earthen bed of the flowers to the still surface of the sea in the space of a breath.
“Cat’s Cradle”(1974) goes deeper into the idea of transformations, with objects consistently scaling up and shifting from predator to prey. The design here hearkens back to Yellow Submarine with its large, toothy creatures and optical illusions. The French title, “Au bout du fil,” is also a hidden commentary; it means “on the line”, which of course is Driessen’s whole M.O.
In 1975’s “An Old Box”, we get our first look at Driessen’s fondness for simultaneous narratives, as the title object unfolds and refolds itself to reveal changing tableaux on its sides. We also get some of his dark whimsy, such as a garbage truck that licks its lips after gulping down a healthy chunk of refuse.
So now we come to “The End of the World in Four Seasons,” which indulges Driessen’s penchant for minimal animation by making it minuscule. The screen is populated with eight tiny screens, each of which displays its own tiny repeating vignette, sometimes connecting across the gaps. The film cleverly demands repeat viewings to take in everything that’s going on. (With a new set for each season, there are about 30 stories to take in.) Driessen also demonstrates a slapstick master’s gift for stretching out a joke as far as it can reach; for example, a skier hurtles incessantly downhill for nearly three minutes until Driessen suddenly moves his camera and the athlete slams into the side of the frame. But that cleverness points to the biggest shortcoming of “The End of the World”: it’s not much more than its joke. Actions repeat until they don’t, creatures behave grotesquely until they meet grotesque fates themselves. The shifting of the seasons changes the milieu but not the method. And crucially, the film has no real point it wants to get across. The end of each world–by fire or by crumbling–isn’t instigated by the actions or behaviors of the characters within them. It’s just time to move on. Of all the movies in the Canadian collection, “The End of the World” is the most ambitious in its technique, but surprisingly empty when it comes to generating any sense of Driessen’s feelings about his creations.
This is decidedly not a problem in the next work, a movie Driessen would later call his favorite. 2000’s “The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg” is the Walter Mitty-like tale of a boy who dreams of a more interesting life. The twinned layout has fun juxtaposing fantasy against reality, right up until the moment when reality becomes far more intense. It owes a lot to the narratives of “An Old Box” and “The End of the World” with the way attention gently shifts between two competing storylines, but is far more mature in its content and tone. The gimmick is simpler, but allows for more focus on the details that lead to the haunting outcome.
The most recent film in the collection, 2003’s “2D or Not 2D”, begins in a rush of color and movement that looks positively decadent compared to his previous films, but hinges on the discovery of a bizarre two-dimensional barrier which feels solid and impenetrable until the camera pivots slightly along the z-axis, turning the barrier into doorways, trees, or even one of the protagonists. In other words, Driessen has come back to the line, only now it has far more depth and nuance.
All told, the collection of Driessen’s output for his Canadian producers provides an excellent snapshot of the filmmaker’s styles and mindsets. While “The End of the World” does capture him at his most adventurous, it also helps define the arc of his career, marking the moment when mastery of technique became a means more than an end.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Steven. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)