I Want To Stay Sane Enough To Recognize The Terror: Marebito (2004)

I have seen many Tartan Asian Extreme releases, in most cases entirely predicated upon their being Korean films, which means that I will give them consideration for this fact alone.  While about a third of the films are generally watchable, most prove a bit reductive, or exploitative in ways that neither push forward genre conventions or prove watchable even in a disconcerting manner.  Even fewer suffer from the problem of wild mislabeling in their advertisement, or at least that was the case with Marebito, a film that sat on my "to view" shelf for ages because from the looks of its vague, torture porn/vampire cover it was something I would immediately hate upon popping it into my DVD player.  Yet, in the case of this film, the DVD cover and vague description on the back do little to truly speak to the excellent work which presents itself on the film.  An entirely digital film, Takashi Shimizu, manages to meld together various types of moving images, whether they be video recordings, television images or even the diegetic space of the film itself to consider what is seen by the human eye and, more interestingly, what presences beyond human perception can emerge when a new form of technology can achieve heightened senses.  Doubling also as a narrative of descent into the labyrinth of madness, Marebito becomes a work so purposefully expressionist that it has a degree of landscape painting, at times indicative of the work of Caspar David Friedrich or the wonderful nightmarish spaces of a F.W. Murnau film, more so considering the twisting of the plot in ways that make Dr. Caligari seem like a straightforward story.  Marebito, much like post-2000 J-horror films, challenges the conventions of horror, but does so while also undermining the entire under process of filmmaking in the process.

Marebito focuses on Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto) a freelance cameraman who travels about the city of Tokyo chronicling items of interest, compounding them together, along with hours of surveillance footage to create a bizarre sort of viewing room in his house full of televisions and computer screens constantly streaming various imagery, both of a mundane and tragic nature.  Perhaps one of the more unusual things in Masuoka's viewing is that of a woman staring out a window, of which he constantly talks to about her existence.  However, when Masuoka uncovers footage of a man stabbing himself in the forehead, he becomes obsessed with the nature of his fear and curious as to what the man was starring at so intensely right before committing the act.  When the image breaks free of its conventions and directly acknowledges Masuoka's looking, he becomes even more scared and begins a quest into the underworld of Tokyo to find answers.   With his camera in tow, Masuoka discovers a world of underground dwellers known as Dero, who seem more like bestial vampires than humanoid figures.  When he comes across the deceased form of the body he watched stab itself on screen, Masuoka's descent takes on new levels, particularly when he emerges from his descent into a new world of lush colors and dreary skylines, where he finds one of the presumed Deros, this time a female, chained to the wall naked.  Confused, but curious, Masuoka takes the woman back to his apartment and begins keeping her as a pet, an act that quickly takes a dark turn, not only for its possession elements, but because the girl, who Masuoka names F, can only be nourished by being given blood to consume, finding particular enjoyment in human blood.  This leads to Masuoka's life falling apart and his alienating, in some times very harmful ways, from the rest of the world, while also becoming aware of his own heightened perceptions after his descent into the darkness, leading to a sacrificial act on his part so grand that it causes him to assumedly plunge into the depths of the labyrinth completely and irreversibly.

To call Marebito a bizarre reconsideration of Plato's Allegory of the Cave would be a bit of a misnomer, even if Masuoka does represent a character bringing an understanding of "the light" to a group living in the shadows.  Indeed, it is far more inclined to pull from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, particularly since the narrative does have a winding maze like quality about it and the descent into the labyrinth is rather obvious.  Masuoka, however, is far from the valiant figure of Theseus who manages to slay a minotaur and win the love of the girl.  Instead, Masuoka is almost a hybrid of the two tales, a man questing a deeper understanding of perception by coming to face that which is truly frightening, hoping to share in the vision of the suicidal man, thus becoming hyper aware of the world that surround him.  Masuoka certainly achieves this quest, but it is also at the cost of much of the world around him, clearly not the most healthy of individuals Masuoka shells himself up in his home, clearly malnourished and decidedly lacking in proper hygiene.  It is not until his ability to sequester himself from the world around him is question, via his wife whose presence inexplicably emerges into the narrative that things truly take a turn.  The Prozac popping Masuoka tosses away his pills, affording him a new awareness of his surroundings, realizing that even the most normal seeming of individuals are existing in a state of fractured self, one that is tied to the digital world in ways that are visible.  The quickly maddening Masuoka also begins to pick up the creatures navigate the liminal space of the world both through the lens of his film camera, as well as in the shadows of the street, his psychosis, or perhaps his "transcendence" into darkness proving the necessary lens to capture the world in a new and decidedly troublesome way.  This is only one element within all the other considerations at work in Marebito, including narratives of voyeurism, depression, the place of technology in modern Japan and relationships in a broad scale.  It works on these levels brilliantly and jarringly.

Key Scene:  The walking through the streets of Tokyo when Masuoka's perceptions begin to falter is haunting, in a way only digital filmmaking could invoke.

This DVD is pretty cheap on Amazon, but it might still be worth renting first, particularly since I am still uncertain as to whether or not this is actually a brilliant film.

Hey, Where The White Women At?: Blazing Saddles (1974)

I promise that this month of westerns will consist of some more traditional notions of what the genre consists of and not complete revisionists examples of a western, however, I have had a bluray of Blazing Saddles sitting on my shelf for so long and knowing that I would fully enjoy it I figured it was appropriate to incorporate within this blogathon, especially since it does indeed allow me to grasp a variety of examples as to what exists within the genre over its century of films, furthermore, I am always in the mood to watch a Mel Brooks film because I know it will result in me laughing with genuine excitement as well embracing the magic of what has to be one of the most post-modern filmmakers to ever work in comedy.  As readers may well know, Blazing Saddles has a reputation that precedes itself and manages to be quoted by many individuals without even realizing they are quoting the comedy masterpiece.  This recent visiting of the film had been the first time in years, and I can vaguely remember watching it when I was younger and far too lacking in knowledge of both film and forms of comedy to appreciate it in its grand execution.  Of course, given that Mel Brooks has a complete disregard for any sort of political correctness or social limitations relating to his comedy, Blazing Saddles could easily offend a ton of people if they are not willing to detach themselves from their contemporary viewpoints.  I, on the other hand, would argue that Brooks is always aware of the layers of his comedy and never delivers a joke that could be deemed offensive or in bad taste without entrenching it within a simultaneous critique of the very nature of what makes the specific joke funny.  Furthermore, given the recent backlash against Tarantino for his use of racial slurs and race within the context of a western, it would seem as though all those madly throwing diatribes against the wall hoping they would stick to the ever changing walls of the internet, managed to, in most cases, disregard this film completely, and, while I would never say that it is offensive, the same critiques fired at Django Unchained, would certainly apply to Blazing Saddles, all be it in a comedic context, and knowing Tarantino's sharklike ability to consume films it is impossible to think that Brooks work was not on his mind, particularly in their use of a particularly infamous racist organization in their respective films.

Blazing Saddles is set at the height of post-war American West, wherein African-Americans although free, possessed little if any rights and found themselves subject to exploitative work and a lack of social mobility.  One such worker Bart (Cleavon Little) is forced to use a railroad car to check an spot of railing that might be within quicksand, leading to his near death and the final moment of frustration that leads him to take a shovel against his employer.  This act of frustration leads to his being placed in jail, under the supervision of State Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman), who spends most of his time attempting to correct his name being mispronounced, as well as reigning in the antics of the state governor and sex fanatic William J. Le Petomane (Mel Brooks).  However, when the town of Rock Ridge expresses concern over suffering and exploitation at the hands of local marauders, Lamarr and Petomane, who have vested interests in the railroad moving through that town, decide to use Bart as a way to throw the town into chaos, while also making a selfish stride in civil rights for political purposes.  Bart, confused at his new job offer, nonetheless, takes it happily and arrives at Rock Ridge, only to be greeted with distrust and racial slurs, yet, Bart is an absolutely brilliant person and learns to manipulate the idiots of the town and the various attackers to his advantage, even gaining the help of the pseudo-alcoholic wash-up The Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) who sees past Bart's race and works with him to make the city safe and worthy of occupants.  Lamarr, still desiring to make money off of the railroad, sends in a gang to destroy the town, although Bart and The Waco Kid use this knowledge to plan a counter-defense, which leads to a fight between the town and gang, ultimately, breaking the fourth wall of the film and becoming a battle of all film genres within the studio lot and cafeteria at Warner Brothers Studios.  When all is done and Bart and The Waco Kid have won they ride their horses off into the sunset, or at least the distance required to reach the awaiting limousine.

Tropes, tropes, tropes...that will be the theme this month and boy does Blazing Saddles completely throw these notions out the window.  While this is easily achievable within the context of the film being a comedy, Brooks manages to layer his deconstruction of the western as well as revisionist pieces that seem intent on suggesting that the landscape was anything but misogynistic and racist.  Characters like Bart and Lili Von Sthupp (Madeline Kahn) exist within the space of Rock Ridge to show how individuals of the era would likely have acted towards persons not white or male in the rough and tumble western towns.  Of course, revisionist westerns are filled with characters who seem completely at peace with racist internalizations and embrace oppressed individuals gladly.  For example, while Unforgiven is an excellent film, it certainly suffers from this high degree of over optimism regarding race relations, where as the previously mentioned Django Unchained, as well as Blazing Saddles make it quite clear that even the most open and liberal of minds in the era suffer from racist notions.  The Waco Kid is certainly willing to trust Bart, but that is not without first testing the waters and even then he still has moments in which racist assumptions move through his interactions.  In fact, should a person think that Blazing Saddles does not expressly concern itself with issues of race and the layers to which people acted in the past, his decided inclusion of an actor as Hitler, as well as a parallel between Nazi's and the Ku Klux Klan drives that notion directly into viewers minds, because if racism existed in 1930's and 1940's Germany its likelihood of existing in the 1870's American West was undeniable.  Furthermore, considering that racial issues were still huge in America in the mid-seventies, the commentary Brooks provides within Blazing Saddles adds a layer of meta-criticism, as some viewers were likely to retain similar, if not more degrading notions, of African American to those of Rock Ridge.  Of course so many other rejections of the western genre and its tropes occur, particularly when it is staginess is revealed, but an entire lecture could be formulated around Brooks use of post-modernism in such a way.

Key Scene:  There are so many zany, over-the-top moments in this film as far as comedy is concerned, but the subtlety Wilder uses in the very funny "smoking" scene had me laughing well after it moved on to another situation.

This bluray is super cheap and looks amazing, furthermore, it is a maddeningly funny film and you have no excuse not to own a copy.