Survive Style 5+, The Man Who Laughs, King of the Ants

Survive Style 5+ (2004). Dir. Gen Sekiguchi. This film defies genreic classification. It almost appears as if the plot elements are chosen by thematic similarities, and not by coherent narrative concerns. But, don’t let that sound like a critique.

There are several reasons why this will become one of your favorite films:

1) Tadanobu Asano – Absolutely my favorite Japanese actor, he’s appeared in everything from Ichi the Killer (2001) to the even more bizarre Funky Forest aka Naisu no Mori: The First Contact (2005) to period samurai drama Taboo aka Gohatto (1999). Great range and incredibly expressive with what is almost a stone-face. Like Kitano “Beat” Takeshi or even the great Toshiro Mifune, there is an obvious elegance to his acting that lends gravity to his on-screen presence.

2) The color palette, set design, and costumes. This film looks like the crew had a Ouija Board on set and called up the Ghost of Mario Bava and forced him to possess Dario Argento. And then they were introduced to a warehouse full of brightly colored bric-a-brac and told to design sets. One way to describe the visuals in the film is gaudy. Resist the temptation to say that, the word you’re actually looking for is ‘Lush’. I doubt that I could do this any justice, but just take my word for it, this movie is filled with the most daring use of color.

3) The use of comedy to create meaningful drama. This is harder to describe without spoiling the plot, which I urge you not to do on your own. Don’t read any plot synopses, and don’t talk to anyone who’s seen this movie before you see it. The final third of the film is a well orchestrated tying up of the earlier comic elements into a whole that is greater than the sum of the humor.

The Man Who Laughs (1928). Dir. Paul Leni. I cannot recommend this film enough. Following the life of the son of a nobleman disfigured by the comprachicos (whose name literally implies the purchase of children). The eponymous man who laughs has had his face cut by a chirurgeon to give the impression that he is always smiling.

The amazing Conrad Veidt (the great german actor in such films as Hands of Orlac) stars as Gwynplaine the disfigured nobleman who is in love with the blind foundling raised by the traveling philosopher Ursus. Following a number of political and personal manuevers for power the film finds its melodramatic stride and draws the viewer deeper and deeper into the experience of tragic necessity.

King of the Ants (2003). Dir. Stuart Gordon.

Another Stuart Gordon let-down. I think that this is a director who would benefit from collaboration with someone who was a cold eye to script pacing, or a magnificent cinematographer. It is obvious that he knows how to highlight the breakdown of reality, places where the normal rules of cause and effect are not applicable.

As is the case in all of his greatest work, anytime that reality’s rules are suspended and the physical nature of humanity begins to degrade, that is the point at which the visual and artistic skills of Stuart Gordon dominate and override any and all faults that the film has. That is not the case in King of the Ants. I found about 20 minutes of the film to be riveting, and those were the same sequences that almost all the criticism cited, they neglected to mention the 80 or so minutes of unbelievable tying together that was ‘necessary’. I would have killed for a dream-like Lynchian approach to narrative that incorporated all of the surreal and unrealistic aspects of the story as it lay. But, ever the slave to beginning-middle-end structure Gordon cuckolds his strengths by needing his basic set-pieces to necessarily contribute to a greater story structure.

The problem here is that the greater story structure isn’t groundbreaking, I could care less about the ’statement’ of the film. I watch films for their substance, a re-hashed statement on violence need not apply for my fandom.