Games are for people who don't care enough

SUMMER WARS (2009)

Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars finally made its way to the top of my Netflix queue and its timing couldn’t be more appropriate. In the midst of Japan’s recent disasters, it’s hard not to reflect on themes pertaining to family, and the relationship between the quake and Wars correlates not only in the importance of pulling together as a unit, but also – coincidentally enough – in the way of a nation faced with a nuclear crisis.

That is where Hosoda eventually navigates this family-driven drama, and although the events that lead up to its finale seemed a bit arbitrary, I suppose watching Wars in the thick of the mess overseas sort of raised my appreciation for Hosoda’s second feature film. It’s as cliché as they come – which was to be expected from an anime of this nature – and the family in question was more often than not unbearable to put up with, but all in all Hosoda’s harbinger of the pitfalls of a ubiquitous social network is simply a heartwarming treat to experience; now, perhaps, more than ever.

Wars could possibly make a case for being the more relevant social networking film of 2010 – in the states – because unlike Jesse Eisenberg’s star vehicle, Hosoda’s allegory actually takes aim at the consequences a society dependent on technology could potentially face in the near future. It’s a great concept executed in the most refreshing way, but beyond the spectacular eye candy that is OZ – the story’s endangered social network – lies the rather poor execution of themes; they’re heavy-handed thanks to the characters’ melodramatic handling of family matters. If only the brilliance that lied dormant somewhere in this innovative plot could have flooded out the constant preaching imbued in the dialogue, we could have had ourselves a top-shelf anime classic.

What we have is a scrawny, mathlete protagonist named Kenji (Michael Sinterniklaas) who’s taken up a summer job as an IT guy for the interactive computer world OZ. When summer crush Natsuki (Brina Palencia) bombards him with a second “job opportunity” that entails traveling to a historic estate in Ueda – a city in Japan – to celebrate her grandmother’s 90th birthday, he accepts the proposal failing to realize that said proposal happens to be one of marital proportions.

After catching on and considering opting out of the agreement, Kenji is introduced to Natsuki’s family consisting of a couple-dozen strong, including her no-nonsense grandmother Sakae Jinnouchi (Pam Dougherty). Growing an attachment to the Jinnouchi clan compels Kenji to follow through with Natsuki’s scheme, but after solving a mathematical code sent to him via e-mail, Kenji becomes a public enemy overnight when an A.I. program called Love Machine hijacks his account and begins orchestrating a large-scale assault within OZ’s mainframe that puts the network’s several million users at risk.

The film’s Achilles' heel comes in the form of Hosoda’s staggeringly poor representation of women. I can only assume that he was inspired by traditional perceptions of gender roles and perhaps by how he found his own family particularly “hard to deal with” – as he stated while promoting the film – but the women of the Jinnouchi clan are just insufferable; especially in their coarse attitude toward Kenji.

An uncle of Natsuki’s (or perhaps a cousin; keeping track of them all is a chore) mentions that the family is brimming with “take charge women”, yet when the technological world is on the brink of collapse, we find these bold ladies watching baseball games and making catering plans. They’re so distracted in their materialistic pursuits that they remain oblivious to what’s happening right up until the very end. Without exaggerating, I can genuinely say that the lot of them make up the most frustrating, self-interested group of characters I’ve ever seen put on screen.

Obnoxious elements aside, the story arcs that unfold in Wars are solid enough in structure to hold one’s attention for the film’s two hour runtime. I found myself more irritated by the world outside of OZ than bored with it. The sequences that dazzle colorfully on screen within OZ serve as gorgeous throwbacks to Hosoda’s Digimon days, but viscerally, the film as a whole doesn’t quite meet the bar his debut film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time set back in 2006. The amount of product-placement seems wildly misplaced and the overt anti-American connotations may not sit well with the Western crowd, but the message behind Wars remains genuine and heartfelt despite the story’s shortcomings.

7/10

We don't need other worlds. We need a mirror.

SOLARIS (1972)

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

My first experience with Solaris was bogged down a bit by a minor issue regarding Tarkovsky’s decision to open the story on Earth – detailing psychologist Kris Kelvin’s (Donatas Banionis) nostalgic saunter around his childhood home before embarking on a journey into space – instead of following the novel, which jumps directly into the meat of the plot and focuses entirely on the titular planet. It wasn’t until I revisited Tarkovsky’s sci-fi epic that I came to fully appreciate Kelvin’s lengthy farewell and was able to better evaluate the environmental effects of both Earth and Solaris, and their impact on Kelvin’s psyche.

With that said, heed this: Solaris requires revisiting. Unquestionably. However, it’s amusing to note that, while I sit here advising my readers (now that’s amusing) to watch this film twice for better elucidation, the film itself actually berates man’s quest for understanding. Contradictory, yes, but as a drunken Dr. Snaut declares in the film, “we shouldn’t write off what we don’t understand.”

The actual meat I referred to earlier, which the novel knives right into, finds Kelvin on board an unkempt space station orbiting the eerie, oceanic planet of Solaris. It can be said that this is where the action, or lack thereof, really kicks off, however – after my revisit – I found that Tarkovsky’s prologue really lays the groundwork for the plot, adding proper insight into what exactly occurs on this mysterious planet and the effects it has on those who seek to understand it. After a leisure stroll in his backyard, Kelvin is met with words of caution from Henri Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky), a former space pilot who witnessed peculiar sightings on the surface of Solaris. His testimony – including video of his findings; cloudy, fogged images – raised several eyebrows and was dismissed on grounds of absurdity, mere hallucinatory effects. Kelvin also dismisses the astronaut’s claims, follows through with his mission on Solaris – which is essentially to prod the planet with radiation beams and see if it flinches – and inevitably discovers “hallucinations” of his own, later confirmed to be quite real by the amicable Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) and the standoffish Dr. Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn). The doctors refer to these figures as “guests”, and Kelvin’s "guest" happens to be his dead wife, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk).

Solaris is embedded underneath a mound of themes, but only two really jut their heads out: fear and knowledge, and the motif of fear adds disturbing weight. Once we find ourselves hovering in Solaris’ atmosphere, we pick up on an unearthly silence that heavily denotes the bizarre events ahead. Tarkovsky cleverly enforces a sort of vacant cinematography – cold long-takes, little dialogue – allowing the audience to absorb the same hollowness Kelvin experiences on board. Eduard Artemyev’s score, sparsely, but effectively employed, also serves as a fulcrum for Tarkovsky’s fear motif. Adding to my fanaticism, and maybe even sadistic amusement, is how fear virtually depletes the astute psychologist’s morale gauge; here’s a shrink questioning his own sanity, buckling under layers upon layers of trepidation. It’s a fascinating reminder that, regardless of our sharp intellect and advanced technology, we remain a vulnerable race. He later comes to treat “guest” Hari as humanely as possible after learning that his own thoughts and memories are what created her, via the enigmatic oceans of Solaris, which is never thoroughly explained, and perhaps doesn’t need to be.

Fear seamlessly ties into knowledge, naturally and inescapably. Dr. Snaut reveals himself as a firm advocate of anti-exploration toward the end of the film, stating that, as humans, “we are in a ridiculous predicament of man pursuing a goal that he fears and that he really does not need.” The juxtaposition of Snaut’s practical mindset against Sartorius’ zealous, analytical mindset is vital. At one point, Snaut sardonically refers to Sartorius as “Faust, seeking a remedy against immortality.” A reverse Faust, Sartorius is determined to approach ultimate truth, attaining some form of zenith, while Snaut only seeks introspection, and holds the opinion that a race incapable of understanding themselves has no business analyzing alien life-forms. Solaris symbolizes a dead end of sorts, a barrier Sartorius’ divine intelligence is unable to penetrate. Attempts at understanding the planet’s phenomena prove futile, and that frightens Sartorius to the core. Snaut reminds us, “the happiest people are those who aren’t interested in cursed questions.”

Solaris’ set design is beyond words; the undulating stillness of those eerie long-takes in the station’s interiors and the debris-cluttered corridors immediately set the film’s tone. Picking back up on the comparison of Earth and Solaris, Tarkovsky juxtaposes the two by displaying Kelvin’s childhood home as dreamy, vibrant with life, opposed to the cold, austere space station in order to imply the emotional transition Kelvin makes. Scrap-ridden and desolate as the station may appear, a couple of rooms have been furnished with refined taste. Several works by the Old Masters not only reside in the station, but also subtly give away the film’s ending. We can only infer that Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus foreshadows Kelvin’s descent to one of Solaris' newly formed islands, while Kelvin and his father practically mirror Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son during their bittersweet reunion. Touché, Tarkovsky.

Solaris, slow-paced and rightfully so, is one for the ages, a film every cinephile should add to their queue. Calling it thought-provoking would be an injustice. Haunting, visceral, it’s one of those rare diamonds in the rough of Hollywood kitsch I’d love to see more of.

9/10