Last Friday afternoon brought heavy rains and a press screening in Akihabara -- not typically where I find myself catching previews of upcoming films. The venue was the state of the art Akiba Theater in the Fujisoft building. Definitely one of the better screening facilities I've been to.
Exhibitor-distributor T-Joy set up a showing of Kagerou Touge (『蜉蝣峠』, literally "Mayfly Pass"), a 167-minute stage play directed by Inoue Hidenori (いのうえひでのり) of Gekidan★Shinkansen fame and written by punk polymath Kudô Kankurô (宮藤官九郎), captured on high-definition video for cinema presentation.
The cast includes Furuta Arata, Tsutsumi Shin'ichi, Takaoka Saki (recently seen in The Harimaya Bridge, also T-Joy), idolish actors Katsuji Ryô and Kimura Ryô, Kajihara Zen, Takada Shôko, Awane Makoto and Hashimoto Jun.
For a bit of background on the outlandish brand of theatre that troupe Gekidan★Shinkansen produces see this interview in The Japan Times from earlier this year. Regular troupe writer Nakashima Kazuki brought a manga sensibility to stories based on characters from history and legend, creating a style now dubbed "Inoue Kabuki". Nakashima's film credits inlclude Takita Yôjirô's Ashura and animation series Oh! Edo Rocket, both adapted from his plays. Now Kudô Kankurô joins the Gekishin fold with this sprawling jidaigeki.
Furuta plays Yamitarô, a mysterious lone swordsman with a Blackie Lawless bouffant and a little memory problem as to why he's resided up in the titular mountain pass for a quarter century. When a cocky young traveller (Katsuji) convinces him to come down, they wander into a crumbling, lawless town right in the middle of a showdown between two rival factions (sound familiar?). As Yamitarô susses out the lead scoundrels (Tsutsumi and Hashimoto) on both sides, he re-connects with the girl (Takaoka) he left behind as an adolescent. As he pieces together the grim truth of his past a bloody finale looks inevitable.
Kudô Kankurô's script has all the hallmarks of his kitchen sink style -- heavy use of music, slapstick, characters that scream and mug a lot, and a supply of "touching" moments as protagonists come to terms with their failings. Combine this with the already hyperactive Inoue Kabuki style and you have a fun, if draining, experience. The violence ranges from cartoonish limb amputation to somber, crimson-soaked massacres that recall the more extreme samurai classics of the 60s and 70s. Toss in a karaoke interlude and a bubble-era musical number and you have all you ever wanted from Japanese entertainment, or more than you ever needed.
HD presentations of stage performances are nothing new. Those following Japanese cinema may be aware of Shochiku's Cinema Kabuki series (see here and there). Shochiku's famed Kabuki-za venue closes out this year ahead of its massive renovations with a 4K digital presentation of Franco Zeffirelli-directed Turandot. (On a Kabuki-za tangent, I was recently told by a Shochiku rep that the new office tower will be set back far enough that you'll still be able to take unobstructed photos of the old façade from the sidewalk.)
But the original techniques developed by stage-to-screen production company E!oshibai and the Geki x Cine label push the format further. Starting with a battery of 16 high definition cameras, they stitched together three different performances of Kagerou Touge from earlier this year.
Inoue Kabuki is already on stage steroids, with amplified sound effects during fights and animated visuals projected on a fine netting that descends during flashbacks in the story. The movie version both displays what's seen by the theater audience but also fully integrates animation sequences into the editing. The flashback to the hellish village slaughter of Yamitarô's childhood was particulary effective, with locals getting their heads lopped off in silhouette.
The soundtrack riffs on everything from Morricone (particularly Zamfir's pan flute work on M's soundtrack for Once Upon a Time in America) to Goblin's legendary music for Argento's Suspiria.
You can get a sense of the film's blending of media in the trailer. Click the seesawing 予告編 link on the right side of the official site's main page.
What's the market for content like this? Distributor T-Joy, a pioneer in the territory in terms of digital projection, is a big believer in ODS ("Other Digital Stuff"), namely rock concerts, live sporting events and special animation contents. They previously distributed other Geki x Cine productions such as SHIROH. As a Toei group company T-Joy manages and co-manages nationwide multiplexes including Shinjuku's Wald 9 and Umeda Burg 7 in Osaka.
Kagerou Touge opens on February 13, 2010. Fantastic fest programmers might want to take a look but I'm not sure whether this 3-hour beast will get subtitled for export.
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