Weekly Recap 26 | Stoker, Paprika, Black Swan, Memories of Murder, Tree of Life & more

Sadly no Doctor Who this week, but I’ve continued my watch-through of all of Park Chan-wook’s films, while also starting new ones for a few other auteurs.

Ok, let’s begin by continuing Ruroni Kenshin, as I reviewed the first film last week. Kenshin has settled into his new life with Kaoru and his other friends when he is approached with a request from the Meiji government to take down Shishio, a former assassin like Kenshin, who is plotting with his gathered warriors to overthrow the new government. Against Kaoru’s wishes, Kenshin reluctantly agrees to go to Kyoto and help keep his country from falling back into civil war. I really don’t get why most people seem to like this more than the first, because I found it to be much worse. Maybe I just wanted more from this film than I had any right to expect, but while Part 1 was a self contained story that was enjoyable to me in spite of its flaws, Part 2 is just a convoluted mess that doesn’t even have the decency to end properly, to the point where I have very little motivation to finish the series.

I was initially hooked during the first act, which picks up the threads of a peaceful and happy life for Kenshin before reminding him how he can never truly escape his past because of how Shishio represents what Kenshin could have become if he hadn’t put down his sword. I especially found value in the light touches of political nuance: regarding the legitimacy of a unitary Japanese government versus the understandable grievances of those betrayed by the imposition of a new world. Certainly, Sanosuke was able to give voice to the villain’s motivations from the perspective of a hero, stripping away our biases of good versus evil to instead understand that Kenshin isn’t inherently fighting on the right side. It’s both a damnation of the government for trying to kill Shishio – as that’s what causes him to seek vengeance in the first place – while simultaneously justifying their need to protect the new world of law and order that they’ve fought so hard to create, even if it was always brought about by morally dubious means. It doesn’t say either side has 100% moral justification; it’s simply a matter of survival and protecting the peace that Kenshin holds so dearly. Honestly, there’s some good stuff in here once you dig past the cringey writing, but the film frustratingly tries its hardest to erode any semblance of maturity and thematic layers by portraying all of the villains as goofy murdererers who just want to kill for the sake of killing. It came so close to crafting well rounded, sympathetic villains that could have embodied the other side of the coin to the new government, acting not as evil incarnate but simply people with well-reasoned motivations that just happen to clash with what Kenshin – and, by extension, the audience – desire. A narrative free of reductionist morality towards something more captivating that dares to think outside of cliché. At the very least, it would have caused the fights to have some actual weight behind them instead of just being noise for the sake of noise, as pretty as that noise might be.

Honestly, I really liked how unabashedly Rurouni Kenshin wore its shonen routes on its sleeves in Part 1, but it just annoyed me to death in this film because I could actually see glimmers of a better film trying to break free of its immature anime shackles. Aside from the beautiful aesthetic and well choreographed fights, this film just had me bored by a plot with no interesting qualities, since the recurring cast felt lifeless and the new characters ranged from planks of wood to overacting buffoons. Maybe I just got lucky that I watched the first film on a day when my mood aligned perfectly for this sort of movie – so I won’t detract points from its objective quality – but I’m just no longer excited to finish this series as I completely lost my enthusiasm for the action and silly story.

Let us now move on to my weekly dose of Park Chan-wook with Stoker. After India’s father dies, her Uncle Charlie, who she never knew existed, comes to live with her and her unstable mother. She comes to suspect this mysterious, charming man has ulterior motives and becomes increasingly infatuated with him. What a disappointment this film is. To be honest, I’ve been dreading getting round to this film for a long time, as I already knew I didn’t like Bong Joon-ho’s directing in English, so rightly assumed Park Chan-wook would be just as bad. The screenplay isn’t exactly terrible, but it is incredibly weak, with stilted performances that would have been hilarious in a Yorgos Lanthimos film but are just annoying here. And while I normally adore Park indulging in artistic murder, it just did not hit me with any emotion this time – be it excitement or melancholy – since I just did not care for any of the characters. The only thing that kept me watching were the visuals, with Jeong-hun’s cinematography continuing to be some of the most sublime work I’ve ever encountered, edited together with a myriad of gorgeous cross-dissolves. But Park seems to be uncomfortable directing his American actors, so considering this isn’t even a story he had a part in writing, I feel his style just doesn’t shine through in the slightest.

This next one – Three… Extremes – is actually an anthology movie of three different horror short stories from three different asian countries (Japan, China and South Korea). Obviously, I only watched this for Park Chan-wook, and he definitely made my favourite of the three since it was the only one that properly engaged me. I still think it was bad though, which just speaks volumes to how poor the rest were. I wouldn’t say they’re atrocious or anything, just incredibly boring for the most part and dissapointingly lame in their attempts at horror. Although I will say that they were visually fantastic, so props to the DoPs and Production Designers for crafting some rather nice imagery even when the directors failed to bring it all together in a satisfactory manner. 

The first film is Dumplings, the Chinese film by Fruit Chan. An aging woman seeks a way to look younger and finds a horrific way to do it by going to a woman who makes dumplings that supposedly have regenerative properties, but contain a gruesome secret ingredient. Eh, this one didn’t really do anything for me. The ‘horror’ was rather tame, as while it certainly made me never want to even try dumplings, it’s just presented in such a boring way that I ultimately didn’t care for what was going on. The acting is certainly good though, so I wouldn’t say it’s a bad short film, just not something I was particularly enthused by.

Cut is the reason I’m here, since it’s the South Korean film by Park Chan-wook. A successful film director and his wife are kidnapped by an extra, who forces the director to play his sadistic games; if he fails, his wife’s fingers will be chopped off one by one every five minutes. I think I enjoyed this one more than Dumplings, but that might just be because I’m biased towards Park Chan-wook. Even so, this one probably has worse writing, since it completely loses the plot towards the end. The bad guy amusingly reminded me of Jack Black though, so paired with how great Park is at bringing out the absurdist humour from within the horror, Cut did manage to keep my engagement. Plus Jeong-hun crafted some very nice cinematography inside a gorgeous set, making the weak screenplay at least beautiful to look at.

And now for the final film, Box is the Japanese film by Takashi Miike, the director who I intend to be reviewing soon with Audition and Ichi The Killer. In Box, a soft spoken young woman has a bizarre recurring nightmare about being buried in a box in the snow. Searching for her long lost sister, she realizes her dreams and reality may possibly be connected. Ok, this one was just excruciatingly slow. I suppose it feels more like a traditional horror in contrast to Fruit Chan and Park Chan-wook’s more absurdist and immediately gratifying takes on the genre that is supposed to unsettle, but Box just bored me to death since I had no clue what was going on even after taking an eternity to reach its plot beats. It certainly looks beautiful though, I’ll give it that, even if its visual beauty came off as agonisingly pretentious.

Let’s move on to the films that I thought were actually good this week. After all, what’s Weekly Recap without some anime? Paprika is my first film by Satoshi Kon: when a machine that allows therapists to enter their patient’s dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose; only Paprika, a young female therapist, can stop it. Even though I only watched Paprika because I’d already heard good things about it, I was definitely not expecting this film to be such a mind-bending experience. This is essentially a blend between Inception and Spirited Away, only a lot weirder and creepier with an almost Neon Genesis Evangelion inspired climax. And to be honest, everything I liked and disliked in this film reflect my feelings on those three that I’ve just mentioned, since I adore the playing about with dreams, but found the Miyazaki-like imagination too fantastical for my tastes and the ending too nonsensical to be satisfying. While I think it’s clear I’m not as enamored by this film as most people, the animation is certainly deserving of its reputation, so despite the plot being a jumbled mess of random things happening too quickly to be comprehensible, it looks so pretty and is brought to life with so much damn passion that I couldn’t help but be engrossed from start to finish. I’m intending on watching Perfect Blue soon as well as Takashi Miike’s films, and Paprika has left a much better first impression on me than Takashi’s contribution to Three Extremes did.

Hmmm, it seems I’m watching a lot of Asian cinema recently. Well, here’s an American movie to give you some respite from all that. Black Swan is the journey through the psyche of a young ballerina whose starring role as the duplicitous swan queen turns out to be a part for which she becomes frighteningly perfect. I’d heard that this film is similar to Whiplash in the way it presents an individual’s admirable yet harmful ambitions to reach perfection, but I must say I was not expecting her to be a schizo. Natalie Portman was fantastic and undoubtedly the highlight of the film: her amusing weakness at the start gives way to an explosive phase of rebellion, before turning into terror at herself for the way she’s irrevocably changing – both physically and mentally, in many moments that straddled the line between paranoid delusions and poignant metaphors. Certainly, the best scenes were when I was questioning what was real and what wasn’t, with her ultimate transformation being quite beautiful in the way it merges reality with her twisted mind. And yet I found the whole thing rather boring. It probably doesn’t help that I don’t give a damn about ballet, but neither do I care for drumming and yet I still adored Whiplash. Aside from the final act, the film just felt like it was lacking drive, so I would just drift off until it arduously covered another beat in the plot and her character. I certainly saw the quality within the writing, performances and visuals, but the energy was sadly unable to reach me. I really do think that this is an objectively great film, which is why I’m so dissapointed I was unable to enjoy it as thoroughly as I was hoping to. 

Ok, back to the Asian stuff, this time with the second feature film by the one and only Bong Joon-ho. Memories of Murder is set in 1986, when a string of murders starts to terrorise the Gyunggi Province. In a country that had never known such crimes, the dark whispers about a serial murderer grow louder. Finally: a detective movie that isn’t made in Fincher’s boring style! From the opening scene with the mimicking kid, I WAS HOOKED. The story – which is hardly imaginative considering all of these types of films are about catching an elusive serial killer – is suspenseful before every murder, thrilling with every discovery of a new lead, tragically hilarious with every absurd twist, and utterly captivating in its ambiguity. The characters tend to make or break a lot of long-winded plots for me, but I can safely that they’re all so brilliantly defined here with their different attitudes and clashing methods that get tested and strained, with Song Kang-ho shining above all of them with another stellar performance to mark the whole experience as immensely enjoyable. The reason I liked this film so much more to the usual crime thriller is probably because Bong employs a more fluid directing style to juxtapose against Fincher’s clinical approach, which has frustratingly come to dominate this genre. But I simply love the way this entire film is shot – in spite of the uninviting setting – as it feels much closer in style to Parasite. As someone who was dissapointed by The Host, Snowpiercer and even Okja for their more cartoonish depictions of reality, Bong Joon-ho has reminded me just how great he’s capable of being when he grounds himself in a more subdued but still stylish aesthetic and narrative. This is definitely the directing style I want Bong to keep making his films in, because it was so well crafted.

I’m afraid I have no series this week to double the length of the episode, but I will be ending this Weekly Recap with a masterpiece. The Tree of Life is the impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. As the title suggests, The Tree of Life is quite possibly the most comprehensive film about life, exploring that enigmatic concept in all its intricacies: from human life in the complexity of growing up and the strains of familial relationships, to the life of the world that breaths and flows and builds in perpetual transience, to cosmic life in the grandiosity of all it represents and the questions it forces us to ask about ourselves as we see our own lives reflected in the deep emptiness where God resides. Such powerful ideas are explored with the most magnificent nuance, and almost all of it done silently. Well, “silently” except for the gloriously loud music played over Lubezki’s mesmering cinematography. I already knew that this film has a reputation for being amongst the most divinely beautiful works of art to have ever graced this Earth, but nothing could have prepared me for the emotional powerhouse that would enchant me so profoundly. Could it have been better paced? Yes, most definitely. But does it matter that it’s such a slow experience? No, because no amount of my usual superfluous adverbs and adjectives can do the beauty of this film justice for its narrative and visual perfection.