The Host

Joon-ho Bong, 2006, 119 mins

This has been stamped with a minor SPOILER warning.

Joon-ho Bong's The Host with an upbeat musical score by Byeong Woo Lee is a wonderful mixture of family drama, comedy and scares, broke a number of South Korean box office records when initially released.

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On a military base within Seoul, an American Scientist orders his reluctant Korean assistant to pour bottles of excess formaldehyde down the drain, leading into the Han River. Years later, in broad daylight, a mutated amphibian-fish creature emerges from the river to menace the locals. The Korean government quarantines the locals under the pretense that the creature is host to a lethal virus.

Most monster-movies are content with a slow reveal of their creature, expanding the myth and tension while also reducing costs, but The Host, at no disadvantage, deals the cards face-up with a reveal 10 minutes in. On a parkland at the side of Han River, passersby hurl beer cans and rubbish, feeding the beast swimming beneath the surface of the river. The creature emerges from the river in search for better quality food, the passersby themselves. It is lumbering and clumsy yet still threatening, which sets the tone of the film. There won't be any Stockholm-like Syndrome here as it callously attacks those trapped within a trailer or spews out the human bones of the eaten.

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LEFT: Run, boy, run

RIGHT: Just another hurdle in life

The film focuses on the charmingly dysfunctional powerless Park family as they clumsily attempt to rescue Gang-du's schoolgirl-aged daughter Hyun-seo trapped in the creature's lair. Gang-du, though bumbling and somewhat inept, is an adoring father who persistently searches for his daughter. His sister Nam-joo, an indecisive professional archer, brother Nam-il, a drunk unemployed college grad and their tired father, Hee-bong, make up the rest of the family. There is an early scene in a shelter as the family mourns the presumed death of Hyun-seo that becomes comical as they writhe and squirm on the floor trying to out-mourn each other with the media swooping in.

The film is somewhat critical of the United States, of its hostile foreign policies, but more so of authority in general. The Korean government is portrayed as submissive, reckless, unwilling to listen and unable to help. As a government representative in a bio-hazard suit enters, he pratfalls and unsuccessfully endeavors to regain composure. Unable to provide answers he then attempts to find them on the TV. Its satirical look at politics extends also to the media and youth protesters who are portrayed as naively courageous as "Agent Yellow", a reference to Agent Orange, envelops them. Furthermore, Nam-il, a former student activist, bemoans his past fighting for democracy to witness the government turn antagonistic to his family.

RATING

Highly Recommended

Night And Fog

Alain Resnais, 1955, 32 mins

It's a documentary about the Holocaust, but I'll issue a SPOILER warning anyway.

Resnais' 1955 film written by Jean Cayrol, a concentration camp survivor, documents the life of the Nazi concentration camps using both black and white archival footage and colour footage filmed by Resnais in Auschwitz and Maïdanek. The colour footage takes us on a tour of the compound while intercutting to the archival footage beginning with the construction of the camps, following through to the torturous day-to-day living, building up to disturbing and harrowing footage of the extermination. Mountains of human hair and personal possessions are collected while their lifeless owners are thrown as rag-dolls into human pits. It's imagery and narration are direct and to the point, set to Hanns Eisler's somewhat lyrical yet still haunting score. Although loaded with strong imagery, the narrator frequently explains the viewer's inability to comprehend the unthinkable reality.

The documentary asks us who is responsible. The officers denounce their responsibility, shifting the blame. The gas chambers and crematoriums now lay run-down and decaying. It ends with a warning of the inevitable.

Francois Truffaut has been quoted as saying: "The effective war film is often the one in which the action begins after the war, when there is nothing but ruins and desolation everywhere .... Alain Resnais' Nuit et brouillard [Night and Fog], the greatest film ever made."

RATING

Highly Recommended

Warning: Video contains some graphic imagery

Stalker

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979, 163 mins

A SPOILER warning has been issued.

Loosely based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic, Tarkovsky's 1979 film depicts the journey of three men, unnamed but referred to as the Stalker, the Writer and the Professor, through a mysterious wilderness named The Zone, travelling towards The Room which is said to fulfill the deepest wishes of anyone who enters.

The lush green wilderness of The Zone is scattered with decaying buildings, remnant broken-down tanks, rusted firearms, and religious iconography. Outside The Zone is filmed, mostly, in a grim black and white within an industrial and somewhat post-apocalyptic setting. Tarkovsky fills the movie with slow, lengthy tracking shots and frames each shot in deliberate, meticulously choreographed compositions of each actor's movements, standing and faces. The laborious, troublesome journey is supplemented with a haunting score by Eduard Artemyev.

LEFT: Can't figure out the metaphor

RIGHT: Needs a little dusting

Each of the three men have their own motivations for travelling into The Zone, the Professor: for knowledge, the Writer: for inspiration and the Stalker: as a duty. By the time they arrive at The Room deeper motivations are exposed. The story of a previous Stalker is revealed, a mentor named Porcupine, who became rich from entering The Room. Porcupine's brother died while within The Zone and everytime Porcupine asks for his brother's life back, he instead receives more riches. He hung himself soon after.

Tarkovsky's Stalker is generally concerned with the nature of faith. The journey towards The Room, the Stalker, representing a holy clergyman, applies seemingly arbitrary rules to follow which end up being constantly broken. He eventually confesses that his Stalker role provides himself a sense of purpose in an otherwise mundane life. It is telling that as they arrive to the edge of The Room no one is willing or able to step inside and avoid confronting their beliefs. Would the power of The Zone exist without their belief? The final moments reveal that the Stalker's daughter, born disfigured from his constant trips within The Zone, possesses supernatural ability.

RATING

Highly Recommended

My Neighbor Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki, 1988, 88 mins

With most posts going private, I thought I'd post some movie reviews. What better way to start than with one of my favorite films: Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. Consider a SPOILER warning issued.

Set in the late 1950s rural Japan, at a time when television sets weren’t in every home, Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animated feature follows the lives of two sisters and their father as they move into a new home to be closer to their hospitalized mother. Miyazaki’s own mother was ill with tuberculosis when he was a boy, the mother’s disease, though never specified in the film, is what is alluded to.

Beautifully painted watercolor-like backgrounds accompany detailed hand-drawn animation of the characters, noticeably the two young girls Satsuki, 10, and Mei, 4. Drawn in a typical Japanese animation style, for instance, impossibly large mouths when laughing or crying, both sisters behave and play more convincingly than many of their live-action counterparts. Disney this is not. There are no villains, no nonsensical musical numbers, no twists or big revelations and no moralizing at the end. There’s barely much of a plot. A typical movie this is not. And yet, this narrative simplicity chronicles how the young girls deal with the illness of their mother that is remarkably effective. It is a delightful tale with an all-encompassing sense of wonder and imagination.

LEFT: Your friendly neighborhood Totoro

RIGHT: One of the many uses of Mosquito netting

The movie opens with a cheesy upbeat credit sequence clearly stating that it is aimed at young children. Whether its the trepidation in moving into a new home or inability to understand the severity of their mother's disease, older viewers are provided a unique perspective into the world through the two young girls.

Satsuki, Mei and their father move into a dusty, dilapidated and possibly haunted house. The young girls run around and play and soon discover Susuwatari or soot spirits in the darkened corners of the house. Though cautious and apprehensive, they radiate a playful curiosity towards the spirits and the father lightheartedly states how he always wanted to live in a haunted house. He suggests laughter to alleviate their fears during a particularly stormy night and before long the soot spirits leave the house.

One morning, Mei, while out exploring the nearby forest, encounters a small white rabbit-like creature which she promptly follows and, reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, stumbles into a hole and lands on a sleeping large furry raccoon/owl-like creature that she eventually names Totoro. Showing no concern over the creature’s gaping mouth and abundant teeth, Mei falls asleep on the belly of the beast.

Mei soon wakes to find the Totoro gone and drags Satsuki and their father to find him, all the while insisting that its real. What is remarkable about this film is that the adults do not speak down to, distrust or brush-off these fantastic sightings. At the base of a large camphor tree the father offers the explanation that Totoro is the ‘Keeper of the Forest’, a Shinto forest spirit. They all bow and thank the spirit for taking care of Mei. There are also a number of Buddhist iconography scattered throughout the film, a scene in particular has Mei being watched over by a row of Ojizō-sama statues traditionally seen as the guardian of children.

LEFT: An inconspicuous Totoro

RIGHT: Tour Japan within the belly of a cat

In one marvelous scene, Satsuki and Mei wait for their father at the bus stop out in the pouring rain. Cold, tired and alone after Mei falls asleep, Satsuki, who has acted as a surrogate mother throughout the movie, finally meets the Totoro, towering over them as a guardian and protector. She offers Totoro their father’s umbrella who then proceeds to enjoy the sound of large droplets falling onto it. Before their father’s bus arrives, Totoro’s own transport appears in the form of a Catbus, similar to the Cheshire Cat or a cat in Japanese folklore, that reaches old age obtains supernatural powers.

A theme common in many of Miyazaki’s works, as in this film, is that of nature and the preservation of the environment. There is a scene where Satsuki and Mei plant some seeds given to them by Totoro and proceed to dance and will it to grow, that then sprouts and grows to the massive tree that it will eventually become.

The final third of the film deals with Mei’s lone attempt to trek to the hospital to give her mother an ear of corn that she had picked. Their mother had become further ill unable to leave the hospital for the weekend. Satsuki attempts to find her with the help of Totoro and Catbus. At the end as the Catbus departs it fades away. Miyazaki has said that Satsuki and Mei never see Totoro and Catbus again. The credit sequence shows them playing with other children and their mother having returned home, without Totoro within the same shot, but knowing that he’s always watching over them.

What is interesting is that whether Totoro is real or imaginary is left ambiguous, opening it to different interpretations. Irregardless, Totoro is real to the children.

Deserving of mention is Joe Hisaishi’s wonderfully buoyant musical score, who has worked with Miyazaki since Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, that evokes much of his later works.

RATING

Highly Recommended