Black Gate

As I’ve said before, sometimes the movies I see at Fantasia on a given day have a common theme. And sometimes they don’t, however much it might look like they ought to. On Wednesday, July 20, I’d go downtown to the Hall Theatre to watch an oddity: a restored Japanese propaganda cartoon from World War II, Momotaro, Sacred Sailors (Momotaro, Umi No Shinpei). Then I planned to head across the street to the De Sève and watch an independent American horror film, The Alchemist Cookbook. I hoped to make it back to the Hall after that in time to watch the second in a series of Japanese science-fiction action movies, Library Wars: The Last Mission (Toshokan Sanso: The Last Mission). It looked like a packed day, and I wondered how the movies would play off of each other.

Momotaro was written and directed by Mitsuyo Seo, and released in 1945. Seo was apparently told by the Japanese Ministry of the Navy to make a propaganda film for children, and given Disney’s Fantasia as an example of what the Ministry had in mind. Seo, who’d already made a 37-short retelling the bombing of Pearl Harbour, produced the 74-minute Momotaro. It was believed lost during the American occupation, until a VHS copy turned up in Japan in the 1980s. Recently the original negatives were found, a 4K restored version was made, and Momotaro screened at Cannes in the Cannes Classics section.

Momotaro’s a mashing-up of the war in the Pacific with the Japanese legend of the peach boy Momotaro. The basic story of the tale has an elderly couple finding a boy in a peach that washes downstream past their house; when Momotaro grows up he sets out to defeat an island of demons, or oni, and does so with the help of various animal companions. Seo’s mapped that story onto the Japanese war effort in the Pacific. The movie begins with a group of anthropomorphic animals on leave from the Japanese navy and returning to their village to be celebrated as heroes. Various knockabout gags follow, and the animals join forces to save a child from falling over a waterfall. They rejoin their unit, and we see them at a navy base working and taking classes.
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I had only one movie on my schedule for Monday, July 18, but thanks to the good offices of the people at the Fantasia Film Festival and at Oscilloscope Laboratories, I ended up able to catch another film first. The Love Witch was a movie that I’d been unable to watch in its theatrical showing at Fantasia due to a scheduling conflict. After seeing it Monday, I’d go on to the Hall Theatre for The Wailing (Goksung), a two-and-a-half hour Korean horror film. The movies made for an odd contrast. In both cases I greatly appreciated them but came away fairly sure I wasn’t part of their primary audience. But movies play to whoever sees them, and perhaps writing about these films will bring them to the attention of people with better perspectives than my own.

Directed and written by Anna Biller, The Love Witch is a mix of horror, satire, and melodrama which follows Elaine (Samantha Robinson), a witch and murderess, as she moves to a new home and seeks love. Unfortunately for the men she desires, she’s both unforgiving and possessed of high standards. Any sign of weakness or emotional neediness is a sign of her partner’s unfitness, which she puts to an end both swift and fatal. Will Elaine finally find the man of her dreams? Or will her interest in Richard (Robert Seeley), the husband of her friend Trish (Laura Waddell), bring about her downfall?

From the opening shots of a bright scarlet car driving along a California highway we know this is going to be a stylish treat for the eyes. Biller’s created a colour-drenched world out of a Hollywood melodrama, circa 1970. It isn’t set in that time — we get a few signs to the contrary, mostly in scenes involving policemen trying to figure out where all the dead male bodies are coming from — but it’s largely played that way, with sets and props evoking the period. More than that, there’s a mannered artificiality to the acting styles and dialogue that (I felt) mimics the specific artificiality of the late 60s.

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Sunday, July 17, began early for me. I went down to the Hall Theatre to watch Parasyte: Part 2 (I’ve written about it here, along with Part 1), then took care of some personal errands before returning to the Hall to watch a documentary called Beware the Slenderman, about a case of attempted murder and its apparent inspiration in internet stories about a shadowy monster. After that I planned to watch In a Valley of Violence, a Western starring Ethan Hawke, John Travolta, and Karen Gillan. Then I’d go across the street to see the world premiere of a Canadian film called The Unseen, which promised a new take on the idea of the invisible man.

Beware the Slenderman, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, is an examination of a crime that took place in small town in Wisconsin on May 31, 2014. Two twelve-year-old girls took a mutual friend out to a nearby forest and stabbed her fourteen times before leaving her to die. The girls believed they were acting in the service of a terrifying creature called the Slender Man. Brodsky’s film examines the causes of the crime, presenting the background of the stories of the Slender Man before analysing the family life and mental health of the two girls, and then following the girls for a time through the justice system.

Doubts about the film immediately arise. There are elements of mystery in its structure — why did these children do this thing? — that really does it no favours. The film ends up focussing on the girls’ mental states, so the mystery aspect ultimately feels superficial at best and exploitative at worst. It’s hard as well not to notice that there’s no involvement from the victim or her family. One might wonder if the film also exploits fears about the neurodivergent. The narrative it settles on, the explanation of what led to the killing, involves undiagnosed mental conditions on the part of the two girls. This is a plausible analysis, to say the least, but what’s the film doing by presenting it? What is the point of telling this story?

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Friday, July 15, began early for me. I headed down to Fantasia’s De Sève Theatre to watch a 2 PM press conference with the winner of this year’s Cheval Noir Award, Guillermo del Toro. I’d already decided that afterwards I’d head to the festival’s screening room and watch one of the movies I’d be unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict, a German suspense thriller called The Dark Side of the Moon. Then I’d go to the Hall Theatre to watch Creature Designers — The Frankenstein Complex, a documentary about the makers of movie monsters in the 1980s and 1990s. That was to be followed by a master class on monsters given by del Toro to the Creature Designers audience. I’d wrap up my night with Rupture, a suspense movie with science-fiction elements.

You can watch the hour-long press conference with del Toro here. A few things struck me, then and also now as I look back in the light of hindsight and of other movies I’d see at Fantasia this year.

As del Toro recalled his start as “part of a monster-kit geekdom,” I found him remarkably and indeed touchingly open about his love for monsters. From his discussion of learning English by reading issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland with a dictionary, to his analysis of Frankenstein’s monster as a holy figure (and it’s worth noting that he never simply said “Frankenstein,” but always “Frankenstein’s monster”), del Toro emphasised the power and meaning of the monstrous and how the idea of the monster has inspired him and his filmmaking voice. He recalled making Blade 2 where he told star Wesley Snipes that he didn’t understand Blade or why Blade was killing vampires — Snipes should take care of Blade, and del Toro would handle everything else.

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Thursday, June 14: as good a day as any to begin an adventure. I walked downtown that afternoon under looming clouds to Concordia University’s EV Building, where I picked up my accreditation for the 2016 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival. I’d been looking forward to writing about this year’s festival for Black Gate virtually since last year’s had ended. Now things were finally about to begin. A laminated press pass, a festival schedule, a thick program book: the guide to the adventure unfolding over the next three weeks, to fantasy and horror and science fiction and a lot more.

Fantasia is a genre film festival that traditionally has a strong focus on Asian film. I’ve covered it for Black Gate both of the last two years, and I’m looking forward to doing it again, especially since this year marks the twentieth edition of Fantasia (spread over twenty-one years). Once again I’ll be posting in a diary format, covering the films I see in the order they’re shown while also reporting on special events accompanying the screenings — interviews, presentations, and whatever else comes along. I’ll try to get the posts up as quickly as I can, but realistically I’ll be seeing so many movies from now until the festival ends on August 3 that I don’t know when I’ll have time to type up my notes. There’ll probably be scattered posts from now until then, with a flood of posts following through August. We’ll see.

The festival proper began for me that Thursday evening at the De Sève Theatre, the smaller of the two main Fantasia theatres. I saw a western named Outlaws and Angels, which intrigued me since one of the leads is surnamed Eastwood. In this case, that’s Francesca Eastwood, daughter of Clint. I thought the casting choice was fascinating, and was also struck by writer/director J.T. Mollner’s decision to shoot the movie on 35mm film. I wondered how these things would work out; and besides, the only other movie showing at the same time was Kickboxer: Vengeance, a relaunch of the Jean-Claude Van Damme series from the 80s. Having seen the first three seasons or so of Community, I knew I’d only be able to think of that movie as Kickpuncher. Outlaws and Angels seemed like the clear choice.

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