Midori
VS
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
Brutal. Bizare. Repulsive. A gory mess. 'Midori' starts innocently enough. A young girl is walking the streets trying to sell flowers to raise money for a school trip. About a minute later you get a taste of the nightmare you are about to endure. She returns home to find her ailing mother has died and rats are devouring her body. With no where to turn she takes up an offer from a man on the street to join the his freak show. Once there she is abused, raped and denigrated by grotesque freaks. Through all of this pain she finds a savior in a dwarf who shoves himself into bottles. An odd romance in a twisted distopia ensues, until things once again take a turn for the worse.
Hiroshi Harada created this disturbing animated nightmare single handily, using a primitive animation style. While the images are vividly graphic, the animation is minimal, mostly consisting of still frames, in a storyboard like fashion. This does not make it any less difficult to watch. Harada is a virtuoso of vivid visual vulgarity, not shying away from the most heinous depictions of rape and violence. He throws you off guard by juxtaposing these horrifying images with innocent, serene images. It is effective, but altogether untoward.
It is like watching a version of Tod Browning's 'Freaks' on acid. I couldn't get past the feeling that this was just an exploitation film and I do mean to put a negative connotation on that. Putting an audience through the visuals that he displays should be earned, and I never feel like this film reaches that level. It just leaves you feeling dirty. When Harada first released this film, he made a spectical of it, shrouding the showing in mystery, hiring live side shows, music and creating a chaotic environment. I get the feeling from this film that Harada is just trying to extract a reaction of repulsion from his audience, but when you pull back the layer of disturbing imagery, there is nothing of value left. I don't mind being shocked by a film, but I want something else to be there as well.
In the twilight of his career, Akira Kurosawa directed this surreal film broken up into eight vignettes. Each is of a dream that he has had over his life. The dream sequences are in chronological order, starting with the dreamer as a boy and advancing to adulthood. There is no narrative to speak of and the segments are only loosely tied by some repeated themes. There is an overarching sentiment of man versus nature, and how man is killing themselves and nature with technology and wars.
This is a very slow film. There are some beautiful scenes, but I can't say that it was worth it. I think it works better admiring the work in still captures than sitting through the sluggish pace of the movie. Kurosawa certainly takes his time. Some of the interpretative dance sequences seem to go on for an eternity, and I'm not one that gets anything from artistic dancing so it was especially grating. I really wanted to appreciate what Kurosawa was trying to do, as I knew there was a lot of artistry at work, but I couldn't help getting restless and bored with the monotony.
There were a couple segments which did hold my attention. 'The Blizzard' where a climbing team gets caught in a white-out snow storm, and the struggle to stay alive, captured my imagination. This was the most divergent of all the sequences, since it was the least visual. In fact, you could hardly make out anything that was going on. In contrast I also enjoyed the beautifully vivid sequences such as 'Crows' where the dreamer steps into a Van Gogh painting, and has an encounter with the artist. The way in which the dreamer strolls through the impasto of Van Gogh's works is mesmerizing. I only wish more of the film was as captivating.
One segment I thought was particularly relevant today is 'Mount Fuji in Red' where a nuclear reactor near the volcano starts to melt down, and scores of Japanese people jump into the ocean to escape the fallout. The stupidity of man is blamed for the disaster. Given the current nuclear crisis in Japan, this message is even more ominous. Kurosawa makes the case for returning to a simpler time, and enjoying the nature around us. This is a sentiment I can get behind.
I wish I could say I enjoyed this more than I did. It has its moments of beauty, and there are some great vignettes, but it was a chore to get through. Kurosawa is a cinematic legend, but even masters miss sometimes.
Verdict: This was closer than I would have ever imagined. I'm not sure you could get two films as different as these two. I guess the one connecting through line is that both are dreamlike fantasies. Midori is visual abuse, and Dreams is eye candy. Unfortunately both didn't do all that much for me. I was really pretty disappointed by Dreams, which makes it even harder for me to send it through. Honestly, neither one belongs in round 3. If it weren't for the
puppy stomping part in Midori I might be tempted to send it through. It's there though, and revolting, so I give it to Kurosawa by default.