Country: Japan
Original title: Mogura no uta - sennyu sôsakan: Reiji
Director: Takashi Miike
Year: 2014
I didn't like this movie one bit. But I'm glad I watched it because it made me clearly realise something I wasn't able to put my finger on for quite a long time - the fact that, in my personal opinion, there is a huge, almost intransgressible gap between Japanese manga & anime and Japanese live-action films. It may sound weird, but let me explain.
I love both anime and Japanese live-action films. Not all of them, obviously. I've seen many that were downright horrible but that's a natural thing. The point is there are plenty that I really love and I'm always happy to check out more. Many different kinds of them too. Different style, atmosphere, genre, pacing. But somehow I never enjoyed live-action adaptations of manga and anime. As is always the case, there are exceptions (review of one coming in near future) but in general, I find those kinds of production somehow... really lame. Anime and manga aesthetics just translates really poorly onto physical world and real people in most cases. The effect is very unconvincing and entire film feels like a bad mockup.
For a long time, I thought it's because I'm watching live-action version after seeing the anime. There's just no way in hell human actor can successfully don all quirks, mannerisms and even look of average anime character so knowing the animated version just makes me focus on how miserably he/she fails. If I haven't seen the anime I might not be bothered by it and just accept the craziness as it is. After all, I've enjoyed several quite eccentric and peculiar live-action films with a larger-than-life approach. That's what I thought. But The Mole Song disillusioned me completely.
I didn't know it was a manga adaptation. They mentioned something about 'crazy manga style' in the description but I didn't pay attention to it because it's one of those corny phrases they use to advertise most of Japanese stuff that aren't plain and deadly serious. I only knew it's a film by Takashi Miike. He hasn't exactly left a very good impression so far but I thought that it's a good opportunity to give him one more chance. So I chose The Mole Song as my closing film of Warsaw International Film Festival hoping that some whimsical and racy entertainment will help me get over all the artistic drama I was exposing myself to over the past few days. I didn't expect I will shift in my chair much more than in any of those existential and slow-paced movies.
Basically, the whole movie felt like it was trying too hard. As if the crew decided to set a new record of world-famed Japanese weirdness and was calculating all the time what will make it crazier than other crazy Japanese movies released in last 5 years. I can almost see them having a meeting in a committee to discuss how to achieve maximum gaudiness in costumes and outfits. It planned to be a whirlpool of sheer craziness but it failed on all fronts to pull me in. I just sat there, bored crazy, and thought to myself "were they seriously thinking I'm going to fall for that?". Everything was so unbelievably ridiculous I just don't have enough words to describe how I felt about it. Neither in English nor in my mother tongue. Every character, every plot twist, the entire setting was more irritating than the lonely mosquito buzzing in the darkness of my bedroom at 2 a.m. or my pants getting between my buttocks when I'm having a public presentation and can do nothing about it.
And when some time after watching it I've finally learned that The Mole Song was a manga adaptation I realised that if it was an anime I actually might have loved it. Or at the very least I would have accepted with ease all the things that annoyed me so much in the live-action version.
I'm perfectly aware that such things are extremely subjective. Generally, the more character something has the further from the safe zone it is. The line between brilliant and ridiculous is very thin and such movies are all about balancing on it. There is no way to predict if it will strike someone's fancy or quite the contrary. I'm sure many people will love this movie. It's not impossible that I'll watch it in 5 years and decide it's a masterpiece. Such things happened in the past.
Okay, this was probably the messiest review so far. But these are really the most important thoughts I wanted to share about this movie. The plot is really irrelevant. Reiji becomes an undercover agent who infiltrates the yakuza. A lot of crazy things happen. That's it. Acting is hard to judge. It's all overemoting and screaming.
Original craziness and manga/anime derived craziness are two different things and manga/anime aesthetics doesn't work for live-action films are both working theses. And a first thing I always do with working thesis is challenging it. If I've seen someone else writing such things I would immediately point out that not all manga and anime are over the top, many are very calm and realistic. Yeah, I pretended to forget about it. Generalisations are just bad. I promise to avoid them more in future and just focus on the film I'm writing about.
I love both anime and Japanese live-action films. Not all of them, obviously. I've seen many that were downright horrible but that's a natural thing. The point is there are plenty that I really love and I'm always happy to check out more. Many different kinds of them too. Different style, atmosphere, genre, pacing. But somehow I never enjoyed live-action adaptations of manga and anime. As is always the case, there are exceptions (review of one coming in near future) but in general, I find those kinds of production somehow... really lame. Anime and manga aesthetics just translates really poorly onto physical world and real people in most cases. The effect is very unconvincing and entire film feels like a bad mockup.
For a long time, I thought it's because I'm watching live-action version after seeing the anime. There's just no way in hell human actor can successfully don all quirks, mannerisms and even look of average anime character so knowing the animated version just makes me focus on how miserably he/she fails. If I haven't seen the anime I might not be bothered by it and just accept the craziness as it is. After all, I've enjoyed several quite eccentric and peculiar live-action films with a larger-than-life approach. That's what I thought. But The Mole Song disillusioned me completely.
I didn't know it was a manga adaptation. They mentioned something about 'crazy manga style' in the description but I didn't pay attention to it because it's one of those corny phrases they use to advertise most of Japanese stuff that aren't plain and deadly serious. I only knew it's a film by Takashi Miike. He hasn't exactly left a very good impression so far but I thought that it's a good opportunity to give him one more chance. So I chose The Mole Song as my closing film of Warsaw International Film Festival hoping that some whimsical and racy entertainment will help me get over all the artistic drama I was exposing myself to over the past few days. I didn't expect I will shift in my chair much more than in any of those existential and slow-paced movies.
Basically, the whole movie felt like it was trying too hard. As if the crew decided to set a new record of world-famed Japanese weirdness and was calculating all the time what will make it crazier than other crazy Japanese movies released in last 5 years. I can almost see them having a meeting in a committee to discuss how to achieve maximum gaudiness in costumes and outfits. It planned to be a whirlpool of sheer craziness but it failed on all fronts to pull me in. I just sat there, bored crazy, and thought to myself "were they seriously thinking I'm going to fall for that?". Everything was so unbelievably ridiculous I just don't have enough words to describe how I felt about it. Neither in English nor in my mother tongue. Every character, every plot twist, the entire setting was more irritating than the lonely mosquito buzzing in the darkness of my bedroom at 2 a.m. or my pants getting between my buttocks when I'm having a public presentation and can do nothing about it.
And when some time after watching it I've finally learned that The Mole Song was a manga adaptation I realised that if it was an anime I actually might have loved it. Or at the very least I would have accepted with ease all the things that annoyed me so much in the live-action version.
I'm perfectly aware that such things are extremely subjective. Generally, the more character something has the further from the safe zone it is. The line between brilliant and ridiculous is very thin and such movies are all about balancing on it. There is no way to predict if it will strike someone's fancy or quite the contrary. I'm sure many people will love this movie. It's not impossible that I'll watch it in 5 years and decide it's a masterpiece. Such things happened in the past.
Okay, this was probably the messiest review so far. But these are really the most important thoughts I wanted to share about this movie. The plot is really irrelevant. Reiji becomes an undercover agent who infiltrates the yakuza. A lot of crazy things happen. That's it. Acting is hard to judge. It's all overemoting and screaming.
Original craziness and manga/anime derived craziness are two different things and manga/anime aesthetics doesn't work for live-action films are both working theses. And a first thing I always do with working thesis is challenging it. If I've seen someone else writing such things I would immediately point out that not all manga and anime are over the top, many are very calm and realistic. Yeah, I pretended to forget about it. Generalisations are just bad. I promise to avoid them more in future and just focus on the film I'm writing about.
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