the taste of tea – cherry blossoms, animators, and giants

My first taste of Katsuhito Ishii was his anime segment in Kill Bill Vol. 1. While I love what he did in Kill Bill, his visually stunning film The Taste of Tea (2004) shows both his versatility and maturity. Stylized and surreal, the feeling attained from watching it is somewhere between a barrage of bizarre experiences and hanging around on a spring day, while taking long sips of tea and staring out contemplating the grass. (exactly what many of the characters in this film do.) It tracks the journey of one quirky family – where the father hypnotises the family for practice, while the nine-year-old girl is stalked by a giant version of herself, while her brother has an ongoing crush on his go-playing classmate, while the mother animates by hand sitting at their kitchen table, using the grandfather as a model. But in between these amusing sketches are long, lingering, highly composed moments which made me take up tea drinking again.

(Knowing how much of a coffee addict I am, this is quite an accomplishment.)

It’s like the family’s life unfolds, but what ties it together are these long slow moments, where they can just take time out from feeling busy and strange. No matter how quirky their lives seem to us, they have a level of mundanity and comfort they can go back to. They all unwind – playing go, drinking tea, bicycling – going through slow moments. The images carries this out: trains pass through the boy’s head and the giant version of the girl sits behind her, and these moments don’t seem out of place or even unrealistic. They’re just part of life.

Little Britain gushing: series 1

Call me a little late on the ball, but I’ve fallen madly in love with Little Britain. (I’ve only seen the first series, but I’m still in love.) The show is based around a constant barrage of shear silliness and completely politically incorrect stereotypes. For me, the show speaks about a general dissatisfaction for contemporary life and the rise of stupidity, mediocrity, and hatred. (beyond that, though, it’s generally hilarious.)

Apparently, it’s going to be remade for American television. I don’t understand this – the commentary and references made in Little Britain is can be applied to North American society just as easily as British. Take Daffyd Thomas, for instance: the “only gay in the village”, Daffyd will kick anyone out of the village if they do not match up to his standards of what it means to be “gay” – even if they genuinely are gay. He manages to sum up both homophobia and provincialism at once. When I used to live in Small Town B.C., people like Daffyd were everywhere – people who would actively push people out of their chosen circles if they threatened their chosen place at the top of the Small Town heap. (the dance teacher, the art teacher, the harpist, etc.) Daffyd takes this mentality to the absurd. Being gay, for him, is his small town niche.

The fact that there’s two more series excites me. I think I’m going to spend winter break watching all of those TV shows and movies I haven’t been able to watch because of school, or at least series 2 and 3 of Little Britain.

paprika – futhering the “I like surreal movies” trend

Continuing with my trend of writing about trippy movies, Satoshi Kon’s most recent film Paprika (2006) was released on DVD a few days ago. I just saw it, and it’s still fresh in my mind, images repeating and rolling around. I think my brain exploded several times, in a fast and very positive way, watching it. The basic premise is that a new device – the DC-mini – has been developed to allow therapists to enter the dreams of their patients. However, this device is misused, causing dreams to be interchanged and become reality. Standing between reality and dreams is Chiba Atsuko, a researcher who becomes her alter-ego, Paprika – the 18-year-old redhead – once she enters the dream world.

Visually, it sums up why animation should be far more respected than it is: anything can and will happen here, and it can happen far more convincingly and seemlessly than if it was live action using the same budget. One of the things I thought was brilliant about it was how well Kon blended the “real” world and the “dream” world. The dream world, with its phantasmagoric images, is colourful and vibrant, contrasted with the dull real world. Another brilliant point: there is no such thing as a dream sequence, as such, because of this blending. Dreams spill over onto reality; reality spills back over onto dreams. Even when there is a certain degree of separation between dream and real, conscious and unconscious, the film still blends the two. Dreams are made tangible through technology; they can be entered and recorded. They are treated as if they are realer than reality. I think the film plays with this to an extreme level: maybe Kon is commenting on the point that technology is further encasing us in a dream world, one it is becoming increasingly harder to awaken from.

One of the film’s central messages is that consciousness can truly be set free only in dreams – for better or for worse – and everything about the film reflects this. Beyond the visual imagery, the soundtrack, composed by Susumu Hirasawa, drives this idea home. Hirasawa, an electronic musician, fills out the dream world with his audio, a soring and pulsating score. (He also offers samples of his music for online free.) Go listen – this is the ending theme of the film.

susumu hirasawa – the girl in byakkoya

I must see more Satoshi Kon.