DigitalDjigit
Honky Tonk Woman
I got "Oldboy" from a local rental store and it had a sticker on the box from the staff "The City of God of 2004". I think they were comparing the grandiosity, or level of achievement there rather than any thematic or stylistic similarity but it made me think anyway. I really enjoyed "City of God". It is a very conventional type of storetelling, very straightforward and realistic. On the other hand "Oldboy" I found difficult and not particularly rewarding. I find the same thing with a lot of new japanese movies (I know Oldboy is Korean but it feels very Japanese), in particular Takashi Miike (Gozu, Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q).
They don't communicate very directly, I feel like I am always behind, trying to catch up to what is going on. The characters are very out-there, bizzare, almost like a comic book. The situations are non-ordinary. Take "Shaun of the Dead", while zombies are clearly a product of fiction, the events, the characters and their reactions still feel quotidian, familiar and that is why I enjoyed that movie. You cannot say this of Miike's movies. It's like they are trying to be intentionally difficult and weird.
I still watch them because you never know what you are going to get but I wonder why they are so highly rated. It can't just be that either you say you like them or people will think you don't get it. What do people find in these movies? Why does Miike use this style, what is the history of it?
Thinking about it, not all new Japanese movies are like that, I guess it is mostly Miike, but there is a much higher tolerance for the weird/freaky (for lack of a better word) in mainstream japanese cinema. They stand very much apart from films from other countries in this respect.
There's also a similar thing with Anime ("Akira", "Jin-Roh", "ghost in the shell"). It kind of makes sense until the last half hour. Then all kinds of things happen for no reason with no explanation or logic that can be discerned. It's like "2001" but worse and that at least had the book to explain it. Is it obtuse on purpose or does it just seem that way to me, am I missing someting?
They don't communicate very directly, I feel like I am always behind, trying to catch up to what is going on. The characters are very out-there, bizzare, almost like a comic book. The situations are non-ordinary. Take "Shaun of the Dead", while zombies are clearly a product of fiction, the events, the characters and their reactions still feel quotidian, familiar and that is why I enjoyed that movie. You cannot say this of Miike's movies. It's like they are trying to be intentionally difficult and weird.
I still watch them because you never know what you are going to get but I wonder why they are so highly rated. It can't just be that either you say you like them or people will think you don't get it. What do people find in these movies? Why does Miike use this style, what is the history of it?
Thinking about it, not all new Japanese movies are like that, I guess it is mostly Miike, but there is a much higher tolerance for the weird/freaky (for lack of a better word) in mainstream japanese cinema. They stand very much apart from films from other countries in this respect.
There's also a similar thing with Anime ("Akira", "Jin-Roh", "ghost in the shell"). It kind of makes sense until the last half hour. Then all kinds of things happen for no reason with no explanation or logic that can be discerned. It's like "2001" but worse and that at least had the book to explain it. Is it obtuse on purpose or does it just seem that way to me, am I missing someting?