Hey folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’ve got an unusually on-brand collection of films for you all, as my house powered through both a recent anime romance and Satoshi Kon’s final masterpiece. It’s frankly kind of ridiculous that I hadn’t seen either of these films yet; it’s not actually that hard to keep up on distinguished anime film releases, and I’ve only got like a dozen or so left to check out, so I should probably go ahead and polish off that portion of the medium. Regardless, I had an excellent time with both Josee and Paprika, and have supplemented them with a couple intriguing live action additions for spice. Let’s explore the final work by one of anime’s greatest masters, as we charge through the latest Week in Review!
First up this week was a classic I’ve been meaning to watch for sometime, the ‘67 neo-noir film Le Samouraï. Jean-Pierre Melville’s film stars Alain Delon as Jef Costello, a hitman who’s fastidious in every element of his work and lifestyle. Costello is brought in as a suspect after performing his latest hit, but is released when the police fail to dismantle his airtight alibi. But with the police still suspicious and Costello’s own collaborators now wary of him, he will have to proceed with care if he wishes to survive the fallout.
Le Samouraï is without question one of the coolest films I’ve ever seen. Its every aspect shimmers with style and confidence, from the elegant geometry of Melville’s shooting to the sleek angles of Costello’s iconic ensemble. Delon moves through scenery like a tiger slinking through the jungle, eyes wary, expression reserved. He engages coolly with dangerous dames and career criminals alike, never letting his injuries show on his face, exit route always on his mind. It’s compelling simply watching Delon exist in this twilight world, navigating challenges with a sense of precision that’s clear in his every look and gesture.
The film’s plot is as graceful as its cinematography, elegantly positioning Delon between a rock and a hard place in spite of all his caution and skill. Though it possesses more dramatic urgency than your average noir feature, Le Samouraï is still suffused with that fatalistic melancholy endemic to the genre; every civilian Costello meets is desperate for something more, something vital and beautiful, but Costello cannot be the one to grant it to them. As a smoldering jazz backdrop rises and ebbs behind him, Costello makes forced play after forced play, performing with eminent skill even as the board constricts around him. You know he probably won’t make it, but like the women who can barely hold on to his mercurial surface, you still want to believe there’s a happy ending coming.
Le Samouraï is basically a perfect thriller, and creates such a compelling, stylish internal world that it basically begs to be stolen from. And it has been, to great effect – I doubt Leon the Professional would exist without this film, and Spike Spiegel’s background is essentially just this film with a few details rearranged. You can watch the film to see Spike’s clearest precursor in action, or just watch it because the film’s amazing – either way, watch Le Samouraï.
I then crept back into my comfort zone for another found footage feature, 2013’s The Borderlands. The film centers on three men who’ve been sent to investigate an alleged miracle that took place in a rural church, stress-testing the claim with all the cameras and sonar equipment they can muster. Though all three are skeptical for their own reasons, the steady accumulation of potential evidence keeps them on the job, until things go haywire with predictably messy results.
The Borderlands’ central and greatest strength is the care with which it establishes and contrasts the personalities of our three investigators. Tech specialist Gray has no religious faith, but is willing and almost eager to believe in supernatural occurrences. His first collaborator Deacon has firm religious convictions, but has also been doing this job for a while, and is thus highly attuned to any trickery used to fake a miracle. And Father Mark, the ostensible leader of their operation, believes this is all a waste of time, drawing the church back towards an unscientific past it should best be discarding.
The three of them bounce off each other to great dramatic effect through the film’s early stages, lending a sense of human specificity to the genre’s usual weird noises and bumps in the night. Campfire stories regarding the investigation of prior “miracles” keep tension high without forcing the film to reveal its hand too early, and when the final calamity arrives, it makes great use of the chapel’s winding subterranean tunnels. I felt the film needed just a dash more genuine horror seasoning, with perhaps one more supernatural payoff both early on and during the final run, but otherwise felt fully satisfied by The Borderlands. Found footage films often skimp on characterization, and this film proves the folly of that choice, elevating wobbly camerawork into genuine human drama.
We then checked out a recent anime romance, Josee, the Tiger and the Fish. The film bills itself as a romantic comedy, and that’s how it tricks you – it lulls you into a false sense of security with charming meet-cute shenanigans, before bringing down the hammer of tragedy again and again.
The film centers on Tsuneo, a young man about to graduate college who dreams of continuing his education in Mexico, and Josee, a woman who’s been wheelchair-bound since birth. Forced to stay home by her fearful grandmother, Josee can only sit and paint the world as she imagines it to be – until Tsuneo stumbles into her life, and introduces her to a much broader world.
It takes a while to break through Josee’s tsundere shell, but soon enough, Josee and Tsuneo are gaily gallivanting about town, each of them reveling in this exploration of life from a new perspective. Then, just as it seems like each of our heroes are making strides towards achieving their dreams, tragedy strikes for each of them. On the cusp of stepping out into the wider world, each has the wind taken from their sails, leading them to bitterness and the abandonment of their dreams.
The film is plenty charming in its early stages, but it is Josee’s exploration of loss, grief, and picking up the pieces that makes this story special. Neither Josee nor Tsuneo alone have the strength to carry themselves out of their low points, but each of them are capable of shouldering more weight for the other than they can handle for themselves. Once tragedy strikes, happiness no longer seems inevitable, or even particularly likely – most dreams remain unfulfilled, and most lives are characterized by at least some major regrets. Though Josee embraces melodramatic twists and turns, these choices are in service of demonstrating the genuine fragility of our ambitions, rather than obstacles to demonstrate the unerring strength of our heroes. These leads do not possess unerring strength – their happiness and confidence are fleeting at the best of times, and they must martial these moments of courage in service of carrying each other forward.
The film is also simply beautiful, delighting through both its character-rich animation and warm, intricate background art. Josee the character’s own art is an additional highlight, with the simplified shapes of her eventual storybook somehow tripling the emotional impact of her plea to Tsuneo. The sequence where she uses her art to urge Tsuneo to pick up the pieces had me bawling in my seat, struck by both the world-weary determination of these characters and the ways they complete each other. A heartwarming, heartbreaking romance for any saps like me.
We then checked out the last Satoshi Kon film I hadn’t seen, his final work Paprika. Beyond the similar aesthetic sensibilities shared by all of Kon’s films, Paprika also falls directly within his thematic wheelhouse. Like in Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and even Paranoia Agent, Kon once again finds himself preoccupied with the distance between actor and performance, simulacrum and truth – this time, in the context of a device that allows people to invade your dreams.
Megumi Hayashibara stars as Doctor Chiba, a scientist working on a device to allow for invasive dream therapy, as well as Paprika, her alter ego in the world of dreams. Chiba is staid, distant, and often dismissive of her partner Tokita (the manchild genius behind the dream device). Paprika is rambunctious, flirty, and imaginative, flitting between forms and realities while exulting in the freedom of dream worlds.
Things pretty much immediately go wrong, as a terrorist begins using a copy of their device to implant nightmares and melt the minds of anyone else using the device. In spite of its fantastical premise, Paprika’s overt plot is a conventional crime thriller, as our heroes chase down leads and attempt to extract clues from the decaying minds of the villain’s victims. Frankly, I felt the film’s last act was easily its weakest – the ultimate villain has little of thematic interest to add to the narrative, with the film ending on a more conventional action setpiece than its concepts deserved.
But man, what a ride to get to that point! Every moment spent in Paprika’s dreamscapes is an overwhelming celebration of the power of animation in bringing the far reaches of our imaginations to life. Paprika’s nightmarish visions and playful transitions between dreams are utterly astonishing, making me feel newly frustrated with how much of anime is content with simply imagining “what if a guy could punch really hard” or “what if someone wanted to have sex with me.” In the face of Paprika’s creativity, the creative paucity of modern anime is laid bare – we might get an occasional Kyousogiga or Flip Flappers, but so little of the industry is dedicated to doing anything of genuine creative ambition, using the unique capabilities of animation to explore identity and reality. In Kon’s hands, it seems clear that animation is the medium for exploring our increasingly simulated reality, as media saturation and the internet force us to experience rapid shifts in culture and identity. Paprika simulates the winding, psychologically-driven logic of dreams with incredible success, offering an experience unlike anything else in anime, while quietly demanding that more anime try to be like this.
And all of that’s aside from Kon’s usual thematic territory! Paprika also playfully expands on his usual preoccupations with performance, public versus private identity, and the emotional experience of a life defined by external media. As in Perfect Blue, Kon is deeply suspicious of the culture that makes gods and idols out of “dream girls,” here realized in the literal form of a girl who only exists in dreams. Kon rose up through otaku culture, but he is not beholden to it; he addresses it from the deeply skeptical perspective it deserves, questioning just what percentage of a fully realized person is lost in their surrender to such a trivial, indulgent ethos. As ever, Kon’s interrogation of these cultural instincts is also an interrogation of himself – he is here realized through the twin avatars of Tokita and Detective Konakawa, representing both his seedy intrusiveness as a purveyor of beautiful women laid psychologically bare, and also his attempts to elevate that pursuit through his cinematic education and conventionally respectable genre framing.
The film is so rich, so smart, and so stunningly creative that it makes me feel newly crestfallen by Kon’s premature death. The anime industry needed Kon, needed someone so willing to interrogate the unconsidered assumptions of anime convention, yet so arresting in his talent that he could not be ignored. And the world at large is poorer for not receiving decades of brilliant films like this, that embody the true potential of animation like little has before or since. Kon was riding at the forefront of what animation can achieve aesthetically and intellectually, and there is no one who can replace him. I weep for this medium’s lost masterpieces, but take solace that we still have Paprika.
