A film beyond film; the rarest transfusion of worlds a step thru the rift of definition, into the realms of the sublime. Poetry of the unknown chasms of existence perfect reflections of the ghost and its flight. A journey, a search, beyond incidents, externalizations, time and space; emotions striving to hold on, to decode something of the abstraction of consciousness; of reality; of life (both on the basic primordial level and on the modern plateau). Aoyama has achieved a transcendtion of form, function, media, matter and expression; as if all the years of brooding had channeled into these three hours and forty minutes.
A deal no doubt must have been struck with time and space themselves; to allow themselves to be exposed and laid bare before the camera to be carved out of each other and shaped and molded by human hands; sculptures made of moments and distance. Claustrophobia with the known universe. Movement coerced into a go-between, relaying messages from the outer rims.
Intensity is felt with every frame; the intensity of ambiguousness the intensity of simply living thru time, at existing at the hands of the confusion of existence. Characters sift thru a war of existence. The individual; the self contained star drifting thru space, and the rootless feeling permeating the universe are here held open and dissected as if the individual's confinement were a show of fireworks. Isolation comes as natural drift, as if expected as wind thru the leaves of a tree, never forced or romanticized. Communication is reborn, and language held at bay; its deceiving tendrils plucked from their hold within the brain. The irrational is once again confronted face to face instead of by way of masked handshake in the dark. Open spaces and landscapes externalize the internal scope; playing out a disenchanted dream of reality. Roads, buildings, yards, construction sites, parking lots, fields, sky; all seem to drip with answers beyond their forms. They remain still, but hold the longing out with both hands; one step away from the void.
The world has been caught, stripped to the bone; rendered poignant in sepiatone colored fever-(day)dreams (surely here, and to a fishier degree in von Trier's The Element Of Crime (1984), now proved to be the color of at least some part of heaven). Modernity has been deflated, time and space orchestrated, society has been shown limbless, history has retreated to the wastelands, and man is man as he has always been. Aoyama has pierced the skin; broken thru to the inner chambers. The surface has been dissolved and only the hopeful depths remain.
A deal no doubt must have been struck with time and space themselves; to allow themselves to be exposed and laid bare before the camera to be carved out of each other and shaped and molded by human hands; sculptures made of moments and distance. Claustrophobia with the known universe. Movement coerced into a go-between, relaying messages from the outer rims.
Intensity is felt with every frame; the intensity of ambiguousness the intensity of simply living thru time, at existing at the hands of the confusion of existence. Characters sift thru a war of existence. The individual; the self contained star drifting thru space, and the rootless feeling permeating the universe are here held open and dissected as if the individual's confinement were a show of fireworks. Isolation comes as natural drift, as if expected as wind thru the leaves of a tree, never forced or romanticized. Communication is reborn, and language held at bay; its deceiving tendrils plucked from their hold within the brain. The irrational is once again confronted face to face instead of by way of masked handshake in the dark. Open spaces and landscapes externalize the internal scope; playing out a disenchanted dream of reality. Roads, buildings, yards, construction sites, parking lots, fields, sky; all seem to drip with answers beyond their forms. They remain still, but hold the longing out with both hands; one step away from the void.
The world has been caught, stripped to the bone; rendered poignant in sepiatone colored fever-(day)dreams (surely here, and to a fishier degree in von Trier's The Element Of Crime (1984), now proved to be the color of at least some part of heaven). Modernity has been deflated, time and space orchestrated, society has been shown limbless, history has retreated to the wastelands, and man is man as he has always been. Aoyama has pierced the skin; broken thru to the inner chambers. The surface has been dissolved and only the hopeful depths remain.