| MLF | 4 | |
| Ordell Robbie | 1  |
Disappointing... |
| Ghost Dog | 0.5 |
Let us say frist that we saw this movie in a version longer than the one shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Due to its drawbacks, it is easy to see why the awaited movie of cult in France director Kurosawa Kiyoshi was such a big disappointment for lot of attendants especially after the brilliant Kairo.
The main problem of the movie is its editing: the elliptical narrative is a pervalent element of japanese arthouse cinema but what can be said about a movie pushing the ellipse so far it obliges the spectator to make ALL the work of reconstructing the story, putting so many things outside the frame that what's in it seems empty? We guess what Kurosawa meant thanks to the usual heavy metaphors present here like in lots of his movies: the videogames about shooting on cans symbolizing capitalism, the split screens showing the generation gaps, the attacks of kids wearing a Che Guevara T Shirt, the jellyfish symbolizing the bright future of the title. But all of these themes (generation gap, fear of technology, Japan being amnesic of its past) were already treated in a more inspired way in other movies by Kurosawa, which means he's not really renewing himself. And like in his other movies, he seems to film philosophical concepts rather than flesh and blood characters -the contrary of Kubrick-. The style of directing is here more diversified than usual -classical, documentary, slow- but it doesn't lead to a visually coherent universe. Among the actors, only Fuji Tatsuya is great, the others are only average. Dialogues are less pretentious than usual for the director but emptiness has replaced pretentiousness.
Just like Charisma, it's an atypical Kurosawa for its avoiding of the genre cinema. But this movie could refresh many unconsiderate enthousiasms about him, especially his highly overrated french status of "New Kitano" whereas he didn't make a movie of the scale of Kitano's movies.
