Bunraku 2010
Bunraku is a traditional form of Japanese puppet theater, but I know very little about it so I will instead discuss the 2010 live action film
Bunraku.
Bunraku is a revenge and violence tale that draws heavily on Japanese traditions such as
Kabuki theater, Bunraku and samurai, but it also blends in heavy doses of the Western genre and modern revenge flicks. This is a truly stylish film that is fun and light hearted, playing around within the tropes and ideas common to the genres and histories it both parodies and celebrates. It delivers this style through fantastic fight scenes, creative green screen and CG effects, music, sound, direction and narration, but despite all the spectacles throughout the film it is somehow a little dry and uninteresting. Style to me can make up for flaws bigger than wooden acting and poor pacing and this film had style enough to overcome a plot that was written in crayon by a kid wearing a helmet. Every aspect of this film draws in references from film, video games (a top down GTA scenes and numbered enemies), comics (Spiderman-ish pop-up book, comic dialogue boxes for subtitled sections) and pop culture. These can be distracting (video game dings), but overall are fun and referential humor is a win in my book. The creative mish-mash of genres and styles comes together to create a feeling of a cross between a stage production of a Western and a puppet version of a traditional samurai film.
The director,
Guy Moshe, deserves the credit for the successes in this film. Drawing together the desperate styles had to be done by a true artist. The film has some writing missteps, but it mostly falls down due to the acting. The narrator (apparently stylistically straight out of Bunraku theater), voiced by
Mike Patton, is heavy handed and over used despite sounding awesome. The acting leaves a lot to be desired, even by some of the actors that originally drew me to the film such as
Woody Harrelson and
Demi Moore. I can't bring myself to like
Josh Hartnett despite him doing great in this film and several minor characters seemed to be miscast. Other actors saved the film from becoming an artist, stylish bore.
Ron Perlman as the antagonist woodcutter Nicola was great. Perlman really nails roles where he needs to be a likeable bad guy (see him in
Sons of Anarchy he makes the show). The androgynous Japanese actor
Gackt plays the second protagonist Yoshi spectacularly. His acting, makeup, and costuming bring to life the Japanese aesthetics. Killer Number Two (I mentioned numbered enemies right?), Kevin McKidd of
Grey's Anatomy fame, was a great cold, analytica bad guy who reminded me of the awesome antagonist the Swede from AMC's
Hell on Wheels.
The technical side of the film shocked the film to life with great effects, style in spades and cool sound, but the best technical parts of the film where without a doubt the crazy, violent and fun fights. The fight scenes throughout the film that mix of stylized western gang fights (like
Gangs of New York), violent fights of modern revenge flicks (
Kill Bill), stand-offs from Spaghetti Westerns (
Dollars Trilogy), stylized shadow fights from
Asian theater, puppet violence and duels straight out of Samurai films (
Yojimbo). The beautiful and stylized fights come right out of the gate with digital paper cut-outs showing warfare and downfall of man. Again it was stylish, fun, and comical if a bit dry. One set of simultaneous fights played well with the ideas of shadow theater, tying the two fights together by showing sections of the action purely or partially through shillouettes and shadows, but these clips were quick and underutilized. Another fight during a prison break is reference to side scrolling video games. A bare knuckles fight towards the end of the movie was a stunning fight with tremendous use of the soundtrack and sound effects.
The multidimensional and layered fights combining comic scenes, beauty, and violence are the core of film. The writing and acting try to justify the collection of fight scenes, but fail to prop it up completely. On the other hand the style and art direction manage to hold up this crazy, make shift, CG paper construction of a film despite the movie's flimsy substance. I am not sure how highly I can recommend this film as it might have a niche audience and despite very competent construction of the film it lacks too much in the pacing and story to keep it interesting. I fear despite my strong attraction to the film most audiences will find it a simple, if stylish, bit of popcorn spectacle. I would recommend
Bunraku to fans of Samurai Westerns and fans of
Quentin Tarantino or
Guy Ritchie.
Perhaps breaking the film down will add clarity? I doubt it, but here I go... Valhalla Rising has some beautiful vistas. It was shot in Scotland and many of the shots are just beautiful and filled with imagery. On the other hand it has some horrible 1978 style effects during flashbacks and flash-forward scenes combined with a synth musical track that seems equally out of date. The writer/director Nicholas Winding Refn deserves some props for making a film with deep religious themes while having minimal dialogue and a cast of basically unnamed characters. The film is broken up into sections or acts with each act having a title. This seems like an odd choice and breaks the film up into six acts. I feel this has to have some deeper meaning that I just missed. Is it some biblical or christian reference that flew over my head? Some reference to Danish theater perhaps? If this doesn't have some grand import behind it, I think this little nugget of oddness can be added into the fail pile. Refn succeeded in bringing some brutal, short and intriguing violence to the screen, but much like the landscapes the action can't really carry the film past all the dead space filled with bad music.
The protagonist is called One-Eye because he only has one eye is silent or mute, I know that is soooo deep. He is played really competently by Mads Mikkelse, but it is hard to get behind a murderous semi-godlike slave when he refuses to explain anything. Never a line mumbled or a sound made. Not even a communicative grunt. This badass makes his wishes known with meaningful looks and staring off in the distance like all real men should. His woeful stares are translated into dialogue by the apparently telepathic child side kick listed on the credits simply as "the Boy". The rest of the cast is filled out with warriors and a priest-like general. Of course the priest-general wants to take his merry band of killers to the Crusades, but they get trapped in some fog only to be lost in a strange land where they are chased and hunted by some "pagan primitives". Can God save this band of crazed Norsemen or will One-Eye be the savior? That is the main crux of the story, but it never fully develops. So a mute protagonist that isn't mute because an emotionless kid speaks for him has to save a bunch of murderous zealots from what is obviously Native Americans. Yep that sums it up pretty well.
