FantAsia 2003: Aragami
Jul. 20th, 2003 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaSo - extremely pretty film in the historical-fantasy-manga mode, and funny too. Everyone on my lj-friends should by rights find it enjoyable, so I'll spoiler in less detail; that and I have to preserve my stamina. It's a movie a day, every day until August. ^^;
The concept behind the end product, as commissioned by the production company: two characters, in one enclosed setting, engaged in a battle both mental and physical. It's a neat idea. In fact I thought about issuing it as a fanfic challenge for, oh, the five seconds it took me to realise what the yaoistas, RPSers and assorted perverse minds of my acquaintance would do with it. Too predictable is no fun. Though... I mean, feel free if the idea inspires you. XD
The director of this particular entry parlayed limits into advantages. For one thing, if you've only got one set, you can pretty much afford to drench it in baroque detail and gorgeous atmospherics. We're talking a temple murky with shadows and glinting richly with gold, gleaming dark woods, cobwebs and draperies, statues and carvings and flickering candles of white wax, lightning flashing through rice-paper screens, squiggly Bouddhist runes inked all over the walls, etc., etc. ad practically infinitum. The first few minutes draw one into the narrative through force of atmosphere alone, which is a good thing because the inhabitants spend quite a lot of that time sitting opposite one another, talking incomprehensible samurai Japanese in wide-angle view. And what inhabitants?
Names are, thinking back, not exchanged (except for one plot twist we will not unveil). On a dark and stormy night that would do Bulwer-Lytton proud, two wounded samurai seek refuge at a temple; they are let in by a lovely but somewhat creepy servant girl, of the type one expects to speak only when she's whipping a chainsaw out of her obi. One of them wakes up 48 hours later and is invited to dinner, upon which he is told his companion is dead. His host (who in dress, appearance and general body language rather reminds one of Oriya from Yami no Matsuei, actually) makes various pretexts for keeping him through the night, serving up an increasingly context-funny array of foreign liquor. He tells our young samurai that a tengu lives on the mountain - except "tengu" is really a clumsy mortal term for "aragami", or a divinity of battle and violence.
Samurai: So doesn't this aragami constitute a danger to your temple?
Host: Not particularly.
Samurai: Oh?
Host: Because I am the aragami.
Samurai: ...
Host: ...
Samurai: ...
Host: ...
Samurai: ...
Host: ...
Samurai: ...
Host: ...
(Yours truly, sotto voce: FATALITY!)
Samurai: Hahaha! Had me going for a while there. That's real funny.
Host: Yes, it is. How many people have you killed, by the way? You smell like blood.
Of course it turns out to be true. Immortality is weighing heavily on the host, who asks the samurai to send him off in a properly fighting manner. Samurai is understandably reluctant, until - well - he finds out what really went into those maki rolls. For one. And then they do battle: several times over, interspersed with more booze, more talk, and more shocking (and often quite comedic) revelations.
It's in the fight sequences that the pervasive sense one has of watching a live-action version of some classy historical-horror-fantasy manga truly comes into focus. Pure katana duels, give or take a bit - "You have to cock the hammer on that to make it work." "...Oh." - but behaving more like RK Kyoto Arc or, indeed, YamiEi vol.8 than any Mifune-Kurosawa flick. Trust me, if you have any fondness for the swordplay in either of those series, it's a serious amount of the same kind of pwetty. Embroidered kimonos whirl, bindings come off the hair, sparks fly... you know that thing they do in Kenshin where the lights go out, and all you see of the next attack is an arc of blue? I always figured that was just a trick to ease the animators' burden. Possibly the samurai dramas I've been watching have all been overly realistic.
Certainly it's not a massively unpredictable film plot-wise, but neither is nummy imagery its only interesting aspect. The protagonists engage in a dialogue regarding the nature of divinity that reminds me of nothing so much as an earlyish M. Night Shyamalan piece, called Unbreakable. It was about superheroes, who think of themselves as ordinary people until they survive a catastrophic accident or bench-press 300 pounds, and realise that they're not people at all. This is perhaps closer to the meaning of 'kami' as used in Aragami than anything remotely resembling a capitalised deity.
The concept behind the end product, as commissioned by the production company: two characters, in one enclosed setting, engaged in a battle both mental and physical. It's a neat idea. In fact I thought about issuing it as a fanfic challenge for, oh, the five seconds it took me to realise what the yaoistas, RPSers and assorted perverse minds of my acquaintance would do with it. Too predictable is no fun. Though... I mean, feel free if the idea inspires you. XD
The director of this particular entry parlayed limits into advantages. For one thing, if you've only got one set, you can pretty much afford to drench it in baroque detail and gorgeous atmospherics. We're talking a temple murky with shadows and glinting richly with gold, gleaming dark woods, cobwebs and draperies, statues and carvings and flickering candles of white wax, lightning flashing through rice-paper screens, squiggly Bouddhist runes inked all over the walls, etc., etc. ad practically infinitum. The first few minutes draw one into the narrative through force of atmosphere alone, which is a good thing because the inhabitants spend quite a lot of that time sitting opposite one another, talking incomprehensible samurai Japanese in wide-angle view. And what inhabitants?
Names are, thinking back, not exchanged (except for one plot twist we will not unveil). On a dark and stormy night that would do Bulwer-Lytton proud, two wounded samurai seek refuge at a temple; they are let in by a lovely but somewhat creepy servant girl, of the type one expects to speak only when she's whipping a chainsaw out of her obi. One of them wakes up 48 hours later and is invited to dinner, upon which he is told his companion is dead. His host (who in dress, appearance and general body language rather reminds one of Oriya from Yami no Matsuei, actually) makes various pretexts for keeping him through the night, serving up an increasingly context-funny array of foreign liquor. He tells our young samurai that a tengu lives on the mountain - except "tengu" is really a clumsy mortal term for "aragami", or a divinity of battle and violence.
Samurai: So doesn't this aragami constitute a danger to your temple?
Host: Not particularly.
Samurai: Oh?
Host: Because I am the aragami.
Samurai: ...
Host: ...
Samurai: ...
Host: ...
Samurai: ...
Host: ...
Samurai: ...
Host: ...
(Yours truly, sotto voce: FATALITY!)
Samurai: Hahaha! Had me going for a while there. That's real funny.
Host: Yes, it is. How many people have you killed, by the way? You smell like blood.
Of course it turns out to be true. Immortality is weighing heavily on the host, who asks the samurai to send him off in a properly fighting manner. Samurai is understandably reluctant, until - well - he finds out what really went into those maki rolls. For one. And then they do battle: several times over, interspersed with more booze, more talk, and more shocking (and often quite comedic) revelations.
It's in the fight sequences that the pervasive sense one has of watching a live-action version of some classy historical-horror-fantasy manga truly comes into focus. Pure katana duels, give or take a bit - "You have to cock the hammer on that to make it work." "...Oh." - but behaving more like RK Kyoto Arc or, indeed, YamiEi vol.8 than any Mifune-Kurosawa flick. Trust me, if you have any fondness for the swordplay in either of those series, it's a serious amount of the same kind of pwetty. Embroidered kimonos whirl, bindings come off the hair, sparks fly... you know that thing they do in Kenshin where the lights go out, and all you see of the next attack is an arc of blue? I always figured that was just a trick to ease the animators' burden. Possibly the samurai dramas I've been watching have all been overly realistic.
Certainly it's not a massively unpredictable film plot-wise, but neither is nummy imagery its only interesting aspect. The protagonists engage in a dialogue regarding the nature of divinity that reminds me of nothing so much as an earlyish M. Night Shyamalan piece, called Unbreakable. It was about superheroes, who think of themselves as ordinary people until they survive a catastrophic accident or bench-press 300 pounds, and realise that they're not people at all. This is perhaps closer to the meaning of 'kami' as used in Aragami than anything remotely resembling a capitalised deity.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-07-20 08:24 am (UTC)lol
Honestly, you need to do this professionally....
no subject
Date: 2003-07-20 12:16 pm (UTC)-Mari