Symbol (Hitoshi Matsumoto)

[Stay Puft]

Hitoshi Matsumoto's sophomore film, Symbol, premieres in Japan on September 12th. Described, briefly, as an absurd and outlandish comedy about a man trying to escape a unique dilemma.

Teaser trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGtiOTp6_dw

Posters:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y127/jasongtokyo/symbol_poster.jpg

http://www.tiff.net/blogs/image.axd?picture=2009%2f8%2fs ymbolposter_250.jpg

Hello Kitty promotion stickers:
http://www.tiff.net/blogs/image.axd?picture=2009%2f8%2fS ymbolKitty2_250.jpg

More promotion material:
http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/photo/index.php?n_id=68408&p_id=p002009081301101960012501 59988L

Love Hitoshi Matsumoto. Love Big Man Japan. Can't wait to see this.

[number8]

It's also playing at Toronto Film Festival.

[Stay Puft]

Oh, yes, in Midnight Madness. I saw Big Man Japan there two years ago. Gonna do my best to get tickets for this one.

[Russ]

If we only had a bunch of random clips at the end, we'd have no context for the ontic reality of the film's universe.

Not true. We have our own experiences and worldviews in which to contextualize the various introduced ontic realities of the film's universe. Case in point: I don't need to see the wrestler's laborious backstory to understand the absurdity of the climactic situation.


It has less to do with plotting and more to do with the conceptual experience of the film, of being able to take the viewer back and forth between those worlds (which are binary opposites) in preparation for the cosmic conclusion. The structure of the film reverberates in that way on micro and macro scales.
I think a more effective way to achieve the same result would have been to cross-cut scenes of all the examples of divine intervention (not just the wrestler). Matsumoto could have interspersed one or two brief, introductory scenes of the Russian magician, the guy with the dogs, the KISS-knockoff band (instead of only including the wrestler's entire prologue). I also think the film would have worked better with two equal separate halves (the white room and the gray cylinder room) instead of two parallel stories. The second half in the gray room should have been a bit more fleshed out (it seemed a bit rushed, didn't it?). Then, you could have sprinkled in the scenes of the various ontic reality bits into Matsomoto's comedy routine. The padding wouldn't have been as apparent, and I think it would have reinforced the theme of randomness even more than having just the one side story.


Matsumoto's ascension and divine revelation echoes the structure of everything that precedes it, the binary interplay and montage; and so the interwoven narratives that introduce the film echo (anticipate) the absurdist causality of that punchline conclusion, that everything is connected but without some grand capital-M meaning (we as the audience wait to see how they collide, only to get a nonsensical answer). And those reverberations go in each direction, as the scale of signification gets wider (Matsumoto shows causality on a global scale) as the formal technique is truncated in its temporality (the respective chapters get shorter, the montage editing becomes rapid fire).You're reading a lot into the film and I'm not sure if it really earned it.


I think it's a brillianly structured film, so of course I'll argue that it's important for the film to have that interwoven narrative, to allow sufficient room for the film's binaries to be established and explored in the conceptual performance space I'm trying to describe. The entire film for me is in the way Matsumoto plays the audience as part of his performance (no mistake that he routinely breaks the fourth wall), and how he articulates a worldview specifically through that formal structure and performance methodology (Matsumoto's character spends the whole time interacting with the audience and trying to problem solve his way out of a confusing situation, only for him and us to be met with cosmic confusion). There's a necessary relationship between form and content, though perhaps all I can really offer is a justification of those concepts and not necessarily an argument as to the quality of execution (obviously we're not going to see eye to eye on the problem of padding or whether or not Matsumoto was belaboring a point, if only because I was pissing myself laughing the entire time).
I'm glad you liked it so much and are so passionate about it.

[Russ]

Mods, can this be moved to the General Film Discussion forum?

For all my griping about this film, I am intrigued enough with the filmmaker/comedian to check out some of his other work. He is definitely an original.

EDIT: Danke!

[Stay Puft]

Huh, neglecting my own thread again. Apologies if Russ was expecting another timely response! The truth is that I haven't seen the film in over a year so I'm not sure I could elaborate much more on what I already offered, but I'll make two points of clarification:


I think a more effective way to achieve the same result would have been to cross-cut scenes of all the examples of divine intervention (not just the wrestler). Matsumoto could have interspersed one or two brief, introductory scenes of the Russian magician, the guy with the dogs, the KISS-knockoff band (instead of only including the wrestler's entire prologue).

I don't think that would have the same result simply because it would change the narrative expectations. The game might be given up too soon, so to speak, and then we'd have an already established set of expectations for the other "stories" or whatever (i.e. we'd simply be waiting for the inevitable payoff for the other plot threads). Moreover, it would alter the way our sense of time operates in the film; as long as the two plots remain parallel, we assume linearity and concurrent action, and that doesn't change until the "game" changes. It would otherwise be a functionally different film.

The way it is now, we have no idea what is going to happen next and to whom, or where, which leaves the audience dangling alongside the protagonist, our understanding of space and time changing alongside his. The experience is centered around the importance of that first discovery in the cylinder room, the first time we see the two worlds intersect, when Matsumoto pushes the "button" and he doesn't immediately understand what happens, if anything, though we see the effect it has on the parallel plot: the rest is variation and discovery along the same comedic principles established in the first part of the film.

Moreover...


The padding wouldn't have been as apparent, and I think it would have reinforced the theme of randomness even more than having just the one side story.

I don't think it would work the same because I don't see the theme as being "randomness" but rather absurdism.

The universe is absurd, but not necessarily random: as I previously argued, there are organizing principles at work that the symmetry of the two plots in the first part of the film establishes, and that's again why I think that structure is key. Having other characters appear along with the wrestler in the first part wouldn't work because it's not simply a matter of establishing different scenarios or different relationships but rather establishing a specific dialectic. The symmetry between the wrestler's world and Matsumoto's world establishes and clarifies the binary principles that organize the universe, as they function in opposition. Matsumoto's prison is white, clean, isolated and perfectly self contained, and the wrestler's world is dirty, poor, open-ended and connected to a community. Matsumoto attempts to reason his way out of a square box through comedic performance, and the wrestler prepares himself to enter the square ring and perform for an audience in the film; his entrance to the ring is parallel to Matsumoto's eventual escape from the box, when we see them both walking down hallways, in different directions and for different purposes (though I don't remember if this was actually at the same time or not), but about to collide.

[Stay Puft]

Oh and I should admit that I was attempting to clarify/modify/add to my ideas there in light of Michael Sicinski's review, who I was ecstatic to discover has seen the film and admires it. (I remember that both he and Mike D'Angelo saw Big Man Japan in Toronto a few years ago and neither thought much of it; D'Angelo has apparently chosen to avoid Symbol for the time being or never put it on his radar).

Here's the review: http://academichack.net/reviewsApril2010.htm#Symbol

I would encourage people to read it because he's smart and writes good and I am the opposite. He articulates some of the things I was originally trying to say, and a lot more, and a lot better.

[Stay Puft]

Also for the sake of posterity or completionism or something, for anybody lurking in this thread, this is where the dialogue began:

soitgoes says he liked the film:
http://www.match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=313632&postcount=49582

Russ says he didn't like the film:
http://www.match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=314130&postcount=49664

I say no way it's totally awesome:
http://www.match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=314189&postcount=49680

Russ is all like dunno about that:
http://www.match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=314199&postcount=49683

I decide I've had enough with spoiler tags:
http://www.match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=314229&postcount=49688

And the rest is in this thread.

Hey, is there a way a mod could put those posts in this thread or something? That would be neat.