A Country Doctor

Koji Yamamura's experimental animated short film A Country Doctor (2007) is an adaptation of Franz Kafka's short story of the same name. Adapting Kafka is often problematic because it is nigh impossible to portray the peculiarities of Kafka's prose onscreen. Yamamura succeeds quite well by using weird techniques like distorting the characters throughout the film and the art design is sketchy and creepy. The absurd and delusional story is certainly interesting, but in the end the short film is not superb. It's "only" very good.

Score: 8 out of 10

PS: It's uploaded on YouTube in three parts.

The Pitfall

The Pitfall (1962) was Hiroshi Teshigahara's debut as a fiction film director. I've got to say that this is an incredibly ambitious film for a debut because it barely keeps itself together during the 90-minute running time. Initially the film seems like a story of two miners trying to make a living, but eventually it ends up becoming a cryptic mystery combined with a ghost story and social critique. There's also a (possibly unintentional) level of dark comedy that becomes dominant on a few instances. The narrative rushes between these different aspects at such a fast pace that I'm not sure what to make of this film even though there are obvious hints of brilliance scattered all over the film.

Even if you think the screenplay fails there's a lot to be enjoyed about the film's form. Takemitsu's sparse and experimental musical score sets the atmosphere all the way from the very first scene with its menacing tone. Segawa's striking black and white cinematography is guaranteed to pull anyone into the film's fascinating world.

The Pitfall was the first of three collaborations between the director Teshigahara, avant-garde novelist Abe, experimental composer Takemitsu and brilliant cinematographer Segawa (the first three collaborators would also make another film together afterwards). One of the other collaborations would be Woman of the Dunes (1964), one of my favorite films of all time. The Pitfall pales in comparison to this masterpiece because it is incapable of handling its own ambition in writing.

Score: 8 out of 10

The Fly

No, this is not the Cronenberg film. I'm writing about Ferenc Rófusz's experimental animated short film that was made in 1980. It is a 3-minute film about a fly buzzing around until it enters a house and ... you can probably figure out the rest. The sparse amount of frames per second gives it an intensive atmosphere - which is made even more tangible by the use of a "fake" fish-eye lens that has been used later in anime by Hideaki Anno for example. You could probably write a brief analysis of nihilism or terrible discrimination of insects if you wanted to, but this film is all about badass technical madness.

Score: 8 out of 10

PS: The film is uploaded on YouTube.

A Man with a Movie Camera

Dziga Vertov's A Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is an experimental silent film, the next logical step after Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) in silent Soviet cinema. The film begins by telling the audience that the entire film consists of real life footage and nothing was staged. We get to see two cameramen spontaneously film Russia in the 20's. The most obvious comparison must be made to Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi (1982) because the two are so similar in narrative and tone. Even though I'm not a big fan of Koyaanisqatsi, I utterly adored A Man with a Movie Camera.

The film uses pretty much every possible formal technique discovered by the time the film was made - and it was innovative by creating something new as well. Slow motion, fast motion, split screen, fast cutting, long takes, cross-cutting, kinetic compositions and unbelieveable camera movement - this film has them all. What is even better is that the film employs all these techniques flawlessly and smoothly.

Vertov explores the wide subject in a surprisingly precise and colorful way. At the same time it coldly observes, adores and criticizes the trends of its time.

Score: 10 out of 10

Love & Pop

Hideaki Anno is best known for his work as an anime director. Gunbuster, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion and His and Her Circumstances are brilliant and popular TV shows. However, after finishing those TV shows he decided to direct a few live-action films with a tiny budget. His experimental form and interest in touchy subjects were taken even further in these small releases. Love & Pop (1998) was the first one of these live-action films. It is a story of four Japanese schoolgirls who engage in enjo kosai to earn money.

Anno observes the phenomenon in a negative but honest way. There are a few cases where nothing harmful happens and everyone involved gains profit. But in most cases there are problems. Thieves, rapists, perverts and other freaks abuse the the service. And what does it tell that the girls succumb to enjo kosai only to get money? The society has become awfully materialistic. Anno also addresses a few other social problems: the effects of competitive education, the social pressure on adolescents and what has become of (too) many adults in Japan. However, the truly relevant thematic aspect is more universal. The main character, Hiromi, begins to questions her own identity when she compares herself to her friends.

Anno's highly experimental form is initially baffling, but once you get used to it, it's intriguing and magnificent. The entire film was shot with miniature digital cameras so the film automatically has a distinctive look. His offbeat camera positions are even more extreme this time - sometimes the camera is even attached to different body aparts (the most absurd one is inside a girl's skirt). The pacing is marvellous because he can so effortlessly move between places and switch from ridiculously fast cuts to long takes. This time he even plays with the aspect ratios of different shots. The most notable example of this trick is pictured below. Anno's strong hand and leg motifs appear in Love & Pop as well. Not a single scene passes by without a shot of shoes or feet. The hand motif serves as a brilliantly creepy way to describe Hiromi's "downfall". Anno's usage of the fish eye lens is more than obvious in Love & Pop and it is only one of the dozens of devices he uses to create more anxiety.

In overall, Love & Pop is a challenging and rewarding film. I have to admit that I did not appreciate a lot until the third time I watched it. First of all, its content seemed lesser when put next to Anno's other films, but even that is not entirely true. Secondly, once you get over the confusion created by the form and controversial content, it is easier to find the film's true brilliance.

Score: 10 out of 10

My Winnipeg

Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg (2007) is clearly one of the weirdest and most experimental films I have ever seen. It is something I would call a "dry hallucination": its absurd surreality is executed in an extremely dry and awkwardly self-aware way. Even though the form is very experimental, Guy Maddin seems to control it quite well although there are a few maddening inconsistencies in it, which breaks the flow. The form obscurely uses a lot of elements from silent films and I wont go into details on that, but it's certainly interesting. Combine that with the heavy-handed narration and you have a form that could be seen as awfully pretentious - and the film barely tiptoes the line between being good and pretentious. The content is supposed to Maddin's portrayal of Winnipeg, but it is filled with absurd and fictive "facts" which are explored quite aimlessly. Not that these incorrect facts are a flaw because Maddin certainly wanted to be dryly funny with this film, but I hardly had a good time with the film because I felt the content was way too over-the-top and incomprehensible.

Score: 6 out of 10