Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/15/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)

Cast: Haruhiko Kato, Kumiko Aso, Koyuki, Kurume Arisaka, Masatoshi Matsuo, Shinji Takeda, Jun Fubuki, Shun Sugata, Sho Aikawa, Koji Yakusho, Kenji Misuhashi. Screenplay: Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Cinematography: Jun'ichiro Hayashi. Production design: Tomoyuki Maruo. Film editing: Jun'ichi Kikuchi. Music: Takefumi Haketa.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse is a quietly unnerving movie about the apocalypse, which comes not with a bang but with a slow (very slow) fading away. It seems to be brought about by technology, particularly the internet, which causes people to become lonely and isolated. The film is also a ghost story, which posits that the afterlife is a place of intense loneliness and isolation. As the film progresses, cities thin out and some of the characters simply fade into blurry splotches on the wall. One crumbles into flakes and is blown away by the wind. Unfortunately, we expect more from movies than melancholy disintegration, so the impact of Pulse disintegrates too, as it takes its long slow time to create a mood at the expense of telling a story.