Black Gate

Late in the evening of Tuesday, July 24, I made my way to the J.A. De Sève Theatre for my one film of the day: Violence Voyager, an 83-minute animated feature by Japanese writer-director Ujicha. We follow an American schoolboy in Japan, Bobby (Aoi Yuki), as he and his friend explore some hills near his home. They find a strange, nearly-abandoned amusement park, but upon entering find themselves caught up in a terrible scheme. They and other children are captured, mutilated, mutated, and (in many cases) killed. Can Bobby free himself and others, and destroy the horrible place called Violence Voyager?

The first and overwhelming impression of the movie is of a dissonant strangeness. There’s a tone like a children’s story that seems destined to give way to something darker, and indeed it does, but then that darkness itself is hardly taken seriously. There’s a weird unconcern with traditional narrative effects at the same time that the structure’s remarkably tight. It’s not like much else I’ve seen, for better and worse.

Consider the animation style. It’s an unusual form called gekimation, which involves moving flat images. Lips don’t move, faces don’t shift. Shapes are moved about, and cuts give a further illusion of movement. This works better than one might think, especially once a few minutes have passed and the viewer’s assimilated the approach. Occasionally actual fluids or the like are used as visual elements as well, but mainly one watches painted pieces of paper slide over backgrounds. The art style’s intriguingly organic, with every brushstroke visible. I personally thought it was interesting without being attractive, but I can see how it could appeal more strongly to others.

As a story, there’s a sort of tension between horror and satire. It is genuinely transgressive, with all sorts of horror inflicted on children. There are genuinely surprising images here, as for example a rack of dead nude children (and the explicit nudity in some sequences is occasionally more surprising than the violence). And yet it feels muted, almost, by the thoroughgoing irony of the film. It avoids outright death-metal grotesquerie in place of its own kind of strangeness, and somehow never feels as confrontational as it seems to aim for. The early air of an optimistic children’s cartoon is never wholly abandoned, and rather than heighten the air of monstrosity, I find it functions as an alienation effect — it swathes the movie in a distancing irony, lessening the immediacy of everything we see.

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It’s unfortunate that Alpha was delayed for a year, given little promotion, and released among more attention-grabbing late summer fare, because it is a literally awesome film — as in the jaw drops in awe at the beauty of it.

The story is a basic one: the young hunter out to prove his leadership who goes through an ordeal trying to get back home with the help of a dog companion. The basic beats of the tale won’t surprise most viewers. But Albert Hughes (the first time he’s directed without his brother Allen) shoots it with intense passion, as if he’s striving for 2001: A Space Odyssey levels of vast transcendentalism — while also appreciating the action/adventure qualities of One Million Years B.C.

It’s rough, strange, dream-like, and both one of the best dog movies and prehistory movies ever made.

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Yesterday I reviewed three of the movies I saw on Monday, July 23. Today I’ve written up my notes on the post-film question-and-answer sessions with the director of all three, Shinsuke Sato. All of what follows comes from my handwritten notes, and so may contain errors that crept in due to my hearing or transcription skills. Further, Sato spoke in Japanese, which was translated into either English or French depending on what language the questioner used, and while my French is competent enough that I caught most of the answers in the first two sessions, by the time the third session wrapped up it was near or past midnight.

First came zombie-apocalypse horror film I Am a Hero. Sato was asked how the movie was accepted by the producers and backers, and he said that it was rare to have this sort of film in the mainstream in Japan. Since roughly 2000, TV stations have been financing films, and they prefer material aimed at a more general audience. This film was backed by Toho, who wanted to make something that could not be made by a TV station. It was a good fit for Sato, as he’d made the two live-action Gantz films with Toho a dozen years before.

Asked if it was important to him to be respectful of the manga, he said the manga was unique; the film ran the risk of coming off as a simple zombie movie. Sato wanted to make a zombie film a little unlike any made before, while the manga creator put a certain amount of pressure on him by asking him simply to make a zombie film he would like. Asked about how he came up with the idea of zombies with a personality (carrying on with what they were obsessed with in life), Sato said that was in the manga, although he imagined a few of his own for the film. He said it was important for him to make Japanese zombies, creatures in some way distinct from American zombies. Zombies often come as hordes, individuals indistinct from each other, but he wanted to have each be individual.

He was asked about an early scene in the film, when Hideo has to confront his girlfriend, Tekko, who has been turned into a zombie; and specifically how he created her uncanny movement. Sato noted that Tekko was a high jumper in the original, and that he wanted to capture that energy. As the first zombie to appear in the film, she would have a high impact. He said he used three people to get her across, the actress, a stunt double, and a contortionist who is in the Guinness World Records. Asked about the lack of narrative payoff for the character of Hiromi, Sato said he’d cut a scene at the end that would have explained she was a hybrid who was the key to curing the virus. He decided it was more important to keep the focus on Hideo’s character arc rather than ruin the flow with explanations.

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