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Visually one of the most inventive films of the last decade, but ex-promo director and fashion photographer Kazuaki Kiriya’s movie debut is rather like watching a two and a half hour long music video – unintelligible and actually a bit dull…
In a near-future a fifty-year war between the Eastern Federation and Europa has finally come to an end, with the federation taking control of the Eurasian continent. And yet the war goes on, with a new rebellion breaking out in one former Eurasian zone.
Amid this ongoing chaos, Dr Azuma (Akira Terao, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, Ran) proposes a solution to depleting armed forces, the invention of a neo cell that can regenerate any human tissue. Kaoru Naito (Mitsuhiro Oikawa), a representative of Nikko Hairal Inc., soon helps him get the cells into production, yet his experiments seem fruitless until a mysterious lightning bolt stimulates the cells, and regenerates the cells into new mutants, who call themselves ‘neo sapiens’.
That same night Azuma’s son, Tetsuya (Yusuke Iseya, After Life, Memories of Matsuko) body is returned home, a casualty of war. Azuma tries the neo cells on his body and brings him back to life, though it takes the father of his fiancé Luna (Kumiko Aso, Bare Essence of Life, Kaidan), Dr Kozuki (Fumiyo Kohinata), to build him an ectoskeleton to allow his body to survive it’s new abilities.
With the leader of the neo sapiens, Burai (Toshiaki Karasawa, 20th Century Boys) and his surviving associates including Barashin (Jun Kaname, Blood, Goemon) having reanimated a dormant army of robots, now only Tetsuya, having adopted the name of legendary Eurasian saviour Casshern, stands between them and their goal of annihilating mankind…
Casshern was one of the first films to be shot almost entirely against a green screen, with all but the actors and costumes themselves actually composites of 2D and 3D computer generated graphics, alongside contempory films like Sin City, Able Edwards and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Visually easily the most ambitious of the films, it’s a fascinating vision of a futuristic world, if not as successful as Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s ‘comic book-ification’ of Miller’s Sin City.
Indeed director Kiriya takes many of his visual cues from the original series, including those cheap ‘anime’ style battles where the animators would show a still of the participants against a moving background. It’s the closest I’ve seen to a proper live-action version of an anime, and yet it doesn’t help the narrative, with Kiriya more interested in plaintive conversations between combatants than the fights themselves.
It’s Kiriya’s convoluted take on the original story – which from all accounts appears to have simply been Casshern versus the robots – that is the real problem here. Too interested with how the film looks, he introduces to many elements into the narrative without really wanting to take them to their conclusion. Kiriya may have publicly counted Shakespeare’s Hamlet amongst his influences for the film (and there sure is plenty of family tragedy), but this is far harder to follow.
Accidently or not, themes of endless wars begun for nefarious reasons, with hints of a larger corporate companies behind them, is reminiscent of Japanese author Hiroshi Mori’s work, recently adapted by anime supremo Mamoru Oshii as The Sky Crawlers. Interestingly the look of the military uniforms, so obviously Nazi-based, is all too reminiscent of those in Oshii’s Jigoku no banken trilogy, culminating in Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Kiriya’s futuristic vision is also evocative of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (much more than Blade Runner), of which a 40s adaptation by Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka had only recently remade when the film was originally released.
Those who’ve seen Kiriya’s latest film Goemon will recognise the director’s declamation of the needless perpetuity of war. Fair enough, but he does seem to go on about it. And the film is way too long, though the US cut removing 20 minutes definitely doesn’t help.
Casshern is a beautiful movie that proves the strength of using green screen if you have a powerful imagination behind it. In this case that mind may be a little too distracted to follow an narrative, but it’s still impressive. In spite of the film weaknesses, if not because of them, Casshern will take repeated viewings well, as there really is so much going on.
Just don’t expect to enjoy it too much.
Goemon (cert. 15) is released by Momentum Pictures and will open at selected UK cinemas this Friday, 23rd July 2010.
DVD details
Distributor: Momentum Pictures (UK)
Released in both single and double disc editions, this original UK edition is still pretty easy to get hold of.
The main feature disc has a good transfer of the film in both video and audio quality, and the second disc is packed with extras, included 10 deleted scenes (what, more?) and extra footage, both with the director's commentary subtitled. There's also interviews and trailers.
