Train-of-thought. That's what I would say if I were tasked with assigning Satoshi Kon's work a genre. He was a Japanese animation director who unfortunately passed away in 2010 and with only four feature films and a television series under his belt. However, each one of his works presents a vision so singular, so distinct that I would easily put him up there as one of the great directors of our time.
His films do not navigate narrative in any sort of traditional way. What Kon was clearly focusing on is delivering stories through intuition and feeling as opposed to having a concrete narrative, arcs, or even clearly defined characters. His films are more akin to a free-flowing drawing; each scene bleeds into the next without much rhyme or reason strictly logically speaking, but emotionally the ebb and flow just make sense. A narrative does come through, but not through any sort of mechanical storytelling but instead through the feeling Kon gets across with, at first glance, random collections of scenes and beats.
The first film I saw from Kon was his first feature, Perfect Blue. I heard of it through its allegedly enormous influence on Daren Aronofsky's Black Swan and I was immediately struck by how uniquely horrific and disturbing the film was. Like Kon's other work, Perfect Blue does not have a clear narrative structure, instead opting to evoke a hellish dreamscape to get across the main character's descent into madness and her identity crisis. At first, it starts out as a rather standard story about an up-and-coming pop idol but as the film moves along the narrative gets more and more disjointed to the point where the last 30-or-so minutes are complete nonsense to anyone who does not connect with the film on an emotional level. Disparate, unconnected scenes make up most of the runtime but each one perfectly portrays the character's deteriorating mental state, and the pacing and structure also reflect what is going on within her head.
This structure is brilliant for this film's narrative as one cannot simply logically explain a person's complete mental breakdown; it has to be experienced. Not only does Kon show the main character literally losing her mind, but the structure, shot composition, and overall visual atmosphere of the film put the viewer directly inside her head. Perfect Blue is a terrifying, unsettling film not because of any sort of scary monsters or jumpscares, but because it is deeply emotionally terrifying as Kon expertly puts the viewer directly into the main character's head.
Kon's second feature, Millenium Actress is similar in terms of its storytelling sensibilities but portrays an entirely different story with a different emotional goal. In the film, Kon weaves a tale of an old actress recounting her life experiences and, as the film goes on, her said life experiences and the films she starred in getting intertwined. She relives her entire life framed against the fictional films she was a part of and the film constantly switches between the said films without warning, yet every time it does it makes sense for the emotions being portrayed in said scene.
If one simply does not connect with Kon's emotional sensibilities and storytelling, this film will seem like a bunch of nonsense, for lack of a better word. However, I found myself deeply engrossed in the woman's story and I found that the point at which the film decided to switch to another one of her films to portray a different aspect of her emotional life experience to simply just make sense and flow beautifully. She also jumps from tangent to tangent just how a real train of thought operates within our heads. The narrative is not logical or clear, rather showcasing the train of thought of someone of that age recounting their youth, melancholy, longing, and all. The way the film switches between her different films and what is actually shown within them echoes how many people's brains work when they recount something they are close to in their head, as opposed to trying to coherently explain it.
Satoshi Kon's last film, Paprika, is arguably his most well-known due to the alleged influence on Christopher Nolan's Inception (a comparison someone who hasn't seen both is likely to make as they are really nothing alike beyond the basic concept). The comparison to Christopher Nolan is an interesting one as I would say he is almost the opposite of Satoshi Kon; his films are so mechanical and cold, they make a lot of sense from a narrative and technical perspective but do not offer up much in terms of an emotional experience. This one I do not have as much of a fondness for as I didn't connect with it on an emotional level, but it shows Kon's brilliance in many different ways. The film takes place in a literal dreamscape, something Kon has toyed with in his previous films and fully embraces here as the narrative crux. It is even harder to grasp than his previous work, more visually inventive, and even less logical or coherent due to a literal dream being the setting. The way our brains work when we are dreaming is portrayed beautifully and Kon's narrative and visual style fits the concept well. A story does fall into place by the end and various character arcs are subtly explored through the visuals and structure.
My main issue is that I do not get a central feeling or emotion out of this film unlike the previous two and, therefore, did not connect with it. His films are so untraditional in terms of their narrative structure they really have to hit you emotionally in order to grasp what is going on and this film is more obtuse than the previous due to the emotional core not being as strong.
The closest comparisons I can make for what I am trying to describe here are two directors: Hayao Miyazaki and David Lynch. Miyazaki is another Japanese animation director and he employs many aspects of dream-logic in his films. They are also very emotionally driven as opposed to mechanical but where I would separate him from Satoshi Kon is just the extent to which he pushes narrative logic. Miyazaki is a lot more accessible and his films have more clear-cut stories than Kon's work. They also have easily identifiable characters with unique and fun-to-watch personalities, one of the main factors in his enduring popularity. Kon's characters are more obscure, hard to identify with and understand and navigate films through vague feelings and concepts rather than clear motivations or desires.
David Lynch similarly makes films that do not concern themselves with narrative logic, but the main aspect that separates his work is that he works in live-action as opposed to animation. A lot of Lynch's work is brilliant (Mulholland Drive is one of my favourite films), but due to his choice of medium, there is more room for self-indulgence and loss of focus. Animation has to be coordinated and planned out among a group of people which makes all of Satoshi Kon's films very focused and short, while Lynch can afford to film more of his various tangents and ideas. Kon's work distills Lynch's best qualities into tight, focused films that never lose sight of what they are about or what he is trying to say with them.
The loss of Satoshi Kon is something I've felt deeply only recently as I went through most of his catalog. His vision was so singular, so unique, so human. He completely does not adhere to any sort of narrative logic, instead opting for a free-hand, organic way of telling stories. His films are comprised of scenes that just feel right interwoven together despite not offering a clear-cut, coherent narrative. His films will either make sense to you or they won’t, they can’t be explained or analyzed, it’s all about whether or not they make emotional sense to you.
Comments
Post a Comment