I saw two films here. One i cared about, and another one that made me bore.
the city:
there are strong visual ideas behind the good Japanese animations. This is a feature that has two sources, according to my interpretation: one is very notion of image int art and Japanese culture. Japanese art produces now and for many centuries before images which are as complex as pleasant, they have abstract concepts, but they are visceral in the way they touch the viewer. So, art in Japan (when really good, and really Japanese) has this double component, of being highly intellectual and highly attached to the public it hits, no matter where that public comes from. That's why it's been relatively easy the process of turning Japanese culture into an universal matter (at least the 'image'(s) of the Japanese culture). The thing that amazes me is how quite different Japanese creators from different areas and different forms of expression tend to be highly coherent between them, even if not directly related. The other source comes from a certain form of expression which, once, cinema explored. i'm talking about expressionism, and the direct influence that the German films from the 20' had in so many creations afterwards. Metropolis might be the most visible face of this influence, but films like Der Golem have today still a strong impact. This film is basically a product of these two (main) influences. We have a city, which is magnificent, coloured but dark (and, as the two main characters, 'black' and 'white'). This city is worth exploring. It's powerful, and it's visual. It's visual in a false two dimensional perspective. That's because the images are more based in texture, color, and framing, than on 3d distances, point of view or perspective. So it has more of Metropolis than of Blade Runner. But it is false because the Japanese are very strong in reducing the means without loosing content. Which is to say, the deepness is all there, even though the image is apparently flat. So, this is a city worth visiting, and, no doubt, the strongest point in this film.
storyline:
this was, on the other hand, quite disappointing. It made me bored to follow the threads here. Black and White, the film revolves around the connection between them, and we have some other lines to follow around. The old moral gangster, his almost-sun who is forced to kill him, and the superior forces (those who live on the sphere above everything. The concept was quite simple, a kind of ying-yang (as in fact is shown along the story in the shirt of our Black), trying to understand how opposites get attracted (and repulsed) and how the bounding between those opposites creates a 'perfect' relation. But there was too much noise. The kind of 'noisy silence', 'dark coloured' city we had, is totally gone in what concerns narrative devices and storyline. There is only one point of interest, because it's visual and worked with the possibilities of the medium. The visions of White, which he draws, become often animations, with a totally different expression from the rest, allowing us to take it as something really drawn by hand. Those were powerful moments. But the rest wasn't pleasing or interesting to follow, and in the final minutes, the whole thing falls apart, precisely when the city is gone of our site, and the whole graphic expression changes into something that doesn't fit.
My opinion: 3/5, check it for the city...
http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com
the city:
there are strong visual ideas behind the good Japanese animations. This is a feature that has two sources, according to my interpretation: one is very notion of image int art and Japanese culture. Japanese art produces now and for many centuries before images which are as complex as pleasant, they have abstract concepts, but they are visceral in the way they touch the viewer. So, art in Japan (when really good, and really Japanese) has this double component, of being highly intellectual and highly attached to the public it hits, no matter where that public comes from. That's why it's been relatively easy the process of turning Japanese culture into an universal matter (at least the 'image'(s) of the Japanese culture). The thing that amazes me is how quite different Japanese creators from different areas and different forms of expression tend to be highly coherent between them, even if not directly related. The other source comes from a certain form of expression which, once, cinema explored. i'm talking about expressionism, and the direct influence that the German films from the 20' had in so many creations afterwards. Metropolis might be the most visible face of this influence, but films like Der Golem have today still a strong impact. This film is basically a product of these two (main) influences. We have a city, which is magnificent, coloured but dark (and, as the two main characters, 'black' and 'white'). This city is worth exploring. It's powerful, and it's visual. It's visual in a false two dimensional perspective. That's because the images are more based in texture, color, and framing, than on 3d distances, point of view or perspective. So it has more of Metropolis than of Blade Runner. But it is false because the Japanese are very strong in reducing the means without loosing content. Which is to say, the deepness is all there, even though the image is apparently flat. So, this is a city worth visiting, and, no doubt, the strongest point in this film.
storyline:
this was, on the other hand, quite disappointing. It made me bored to follow the threads here. Black and White, the film revolves around the connection between them, and we have some other lines to follow around. The old moral gangster, his almost-sun who is forced to kill him, and the superior forces (those who live on the sphere above everything. The concept was quite simple, a kind of ying-yang (as in fact is shown along the story in the shirt of our Black), trying to understand how opposites get attracted (and repulsed) and how the bounding between those opposites creates a 'perfect' relation. But there was too much noise. The kind of 'noisy silence', 'dark coloured' city we had, is totally gone in what concerns narrative devices and storyline. There is only one point of interest, because it's visual and worked with the possibilities of the medium. The visions of White, which he draws, become often animations, with a totally different expression from the rest, allowing us to take it as something really drawn by hand. Those were powerful moments. But the rest wasn't pleasing or interesting to follow, and in the final minutes, the whole thing falls apart, precisely when the city is gone of our site, and the whole graphic expression changes into something that doesn't fit.
My opinion: 3/5, check it for the city...
http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com