20131018: Horror Review--Strange Circus

Strange Circus

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Japanese live action feature length film, 2005, 108 minutes, NR.  Spoken word is in Japanese with English subtitles.
2. IMDB: 6.9/10.0 from 2,339 users.  Aspect: 1.85
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 80% liked it from 1,627 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 33,245 users.
5. Written and directed by: Shion Sono.
6. Starring: Masumi Miyazaki as Mitsuko / Sayuri / Taeko; Issel Ishida as Yuji, Rie Kuwane and Mai Takehashi as Young Mitsuko (at slightly different ages).


2. Setup and Plot
1. This film reminds me most of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1998.  Strange Circus has about as much cohesion and steady reference to a timeline.


2. The whole of the film seems to be the musings and ravings of a successful author who is also certifiably nuts.


3. During the film, the author fills in her story, or what she wants to present as her story. The back story is thrown at the viewer in broken pieces, rather like the piles of junk present in so many rooms recurrently visited.


4. The mythology starts around when the protagonist, Mitsuko, is twelve.  She unintentionally sees her parents having sex. Then her father forces her to watch from inside a cello case.  After several sessions of this, her father lets his wife know that Mitsuko has been watching.  Then he forces the mother and the daughter to switch places.  The mother grows to resent this; when the father is out, the mother abuses Mitsuko.  Not much later, Mitsuko 'accidentally' pushes her mother down the stairs, resulting in the mother's death.  Later Mitsuko attempts suicide and fails.  The cello case follows her around in the movie as she continues life from a wheelchair.


5. Those events are referred to again and again.  The resulting length of time in a wheelchair seems a bit variable.  Perhaps she's permanently there; perhaps not. 


6. As the film advances toward the end, the rate of scenario switching increases.  Did the mother fall down the stairs, or was it the father?  Was the child's suicide attempt just a part of the plot in a novel?  Was the father the mastermind who triumphs at the end, or did the mother and daughter stump him (cut off all limbs) and chain him for additional sport?


7. The subtitle of the film is 'Reality is the mystery,' and the film does a bang-up job of conveying that.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Matricide child grows down to be a delusional author, or did she?
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Soft, grainy focus is all too common; the filters in the circus scenes are at least as detrimental. Add in a dash of jerky camera movement.  To make things for interesting, the movie has scenes where walls are covered in blood (revolting and ugly), and rooms with very little furniture, but plenty of unorganized dross on the floors.  This is ugly for the sake of ugly.


2. Sound: 8/10 No particular problems.


3. Acting: 7/10 Tough call.  As with the actors in the films of Cronenberg (Existenz, Crash, Videodrome) or Lynch (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks), one has to figure the actors in Strange Circus are doing what the detail-oriented director wants.  On the other hand, several performances seem wooden or amateurish.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Watching this film is like watching someone do a finger painting.  The painting is done when the canvas is covered or the painter just quits.  Also like a finger painting, one can gaze at it at length, trying to figure out what it means, even though no fixed meaning was intended.