,
a second contact has been made! While Katsuhito Ishii and Aniki are not
in participating in this excursion into the wild blue yonder, we have
the third member of the
directorial triumvirate, Shunichiro Miki, to guide us through the dense foliage of surreal, fleshy and hilarious delights.
So rest assured, while Ishii and Aniki's involvement will most certainly be missed, The Warped Forest will no doubt conjure up even more memorable sexual surrealism then you can shake a Cronenbergian fetus puppet at.
“Miki brings us in a universe where giants, nipple sucking fuzzy
creatures and flying time traveling devices coexist with totally normal
people. This is an essential work in the new wave of radical,
rainbow-coloured, hallucinogenic Japanese comedies that blend deadpan
humour, delirious dream logic, creeping paranoia and empathic, easygoing
optimism into the strangest of cinematic brews!”
“Settle into your chair and be transported to a place both
familiar and alien; where a giant shop-girl can barely fit in her store,
there’s a weird green pod in every bedroom, and terrifying wood nymphs
provide a heartbroken woman with the anatomically correct fruit everyone
seems to covet. In the end we are left, like Alice, with the Red King’s
conundrum: are we dreaming them or are they dreaming us?” - twitchfilm
Initially, the pic appears normal as three drinking buddies talk
about a strange forest they've heard about. Switching from
black-and-white to color, Miki zooms into the woods where fruit grows
from the limbs of alabaster-skinned nymphs and a nearby village is home
to eccentrics including full-sized baker's wife Yuppo (Rinko Kikuchi,
"Babel") and thumb-sized pregnant lady Makko (Mako Satoh). The passing
parade of curiosities includes furry critters oozing goop and a punk
girl toting a ray-gun. Beautifully designed and decorated, this
one-of-a-kind pic makes no apparent sense, but is compelling in the
strangest of ways. Some viewers may feel that somehow it all adds up at
the end -- sort of. Effects work and other tech credits are topnotch. -
A few years ago, intrepid cinema-goers may have come across a film traversing the festival circuit entitled
(2005). It was a wild, 150 minute journey through bizarre
non-sequiturs, anachronistic dance sequences and disturbing scatological
humour. Shunichiro Miki – one of three credited directors – gave us the
most memorable moment from that film; suffice to say it involved a TV
with an orifice and a Japanese schoolgirl. In
(2011), solely Miki’s creation this time around, we get a double dose of
anatomical analogies but also a magnificent sense of whimsy that comes
way out of left field.
opens in black and white with a droll
conversation between three Japanese men sitting around drinking sake.
Very swiftly the film shifts into colour, and also what appears to be an
alternate dimension. In this bizarro reality, money (which appear as
chestnuts) is stored in one’s belly button; small, Lilliputian-type
characters interact casually with regular sized people; guns that
resemble aspects of the male anatomy are bought by young girls; trees in
the shape of women bear a sweet, alcoholic fruit that appear as a cross
between an apple and a vagina; and all the while, a giant upturned
pyramid hovers over the village like some supernatural observer.
is weird, but it’s a good kind
of weird. What begins as a parade of relentless, Dadaist non-sequiturs
slowly turns into a very clever – and tightly structured – play on the
idea of blurring dreams and reality.
Shunichiro Miki has a unique cinematic voice echoing elements of
Cronenberg body-horror and Gondry whimsy with a Japanese sensibility
that is all his own.
but it does manage to create its own wholly realized world. By the end
of the film, it may not all make sense but that doesn’t mean it’s
incoherent. Ultimately
is a genuinely sweet and wonderfully bewildering experience unlike anything you have seen before.-
transports you to a land with an upside down
pyramid in the sky, where giants and tiny people coexist peacefully and
everyone seems addicted to anatomically correct fruit. The characters
become obsessed with the idea of manipulating their dreams so they can
attain their wildest desires but there are rumours that to do so has
dire consequences in reality. Made entirely from the director’s personal
savings, it deals with one major question – is this reality or is this a
dream?
It started off reminiscent of H. G. Wells’
,
with a man desperately trying to convince his friends of a story that
seems more than farfetched. It has hints of other classics too, with an
style sense of the technicolour absurdity of a world completely different to our own and
giants and little people, but these aspects feel clumsily mashed
together at times and lack the finesse of the original classics.
Most of the acting felt mostly improvised and stilted and, while I’ve enjoyed Rinko Kikuchi in other films - in
Bang Bang was my favourite character – she didn’t grab me in this. The
music was odd and in parts didn’t seem to fit at all, especially the
scene where one of the characters asks another for a gay relationship in
exchange for gifts.
For most of the film I was incredibly confused over what I was
watching, which makes it hard to review. I am generally a Science
Fiction fan but in most Sci-Fi texts, while you may not be able to
relate to the world, you can form a connection with the characters and
their motives. In this I felt disconnected with the characters and
ultimately disinterested with the outcomes of their stories. I felt that
underneath all the random, shock-value aspects – like the gun which
ends up revealing a penis – there was probably a meaningful story in
there, unfortunately Miki made it unnecessarily hard to access and I
didn’t think it was worth the search he forced us to take to access it. -
“Only appearing in your dream. Distorting every sound to create a
world like to other. This is what they live for; jumping from one
person’s dream to another. Once you have been chosen, you will lose all
control of your dreams.”–from the script of
Funky Forest: the First Contact
DIRECTED BY: Katsuhito Ishii, Hajime Isimin (AKA Aniki), Shunichiro Miki
FEATURING: Tadanobu Asa (“Guitar Brother”), Ryo Kase (“Takefumi”), Susumu Terashima (“Homeroom Teacher”), and a large ensemble cast
PLOT:
Funky Forest
is a series of absurdist skits—including both computer generated and
hand drawn animation segments and musical interludes—sharing some common
characters and situations, thrown together in a blender. The movie
features the interwoven antics of two squabbling TV comedians, a trio of
brothers who are unpopular with women, an English teacher in love with a
recently graduated student who sees him as a friend only, and a school
where strange bloodsucking creatures are growing , among many other
threads. The comic nonsense sketches and dreams are loosely tied
together by references to visitations from “alien Piko-Rico.”
BACKGROUND:
- There is little hard information on this production that is
available in English. Of the three credited co-directors, Katsuhito
Ishii, who directed the majority of the sequences, is usually given most
of the credit for assembling the collaborative project.
- Ishii composed the animated sequences for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003) and had a minor arthouse hit with The Taste of Tea (2004).
- Funky Forest is the first movie directing credit for Shunichiro Miki, whose only previous movie credit was a small acting role in The Taste of Tea. Miki directs commercials in Japan. He is responsible for the “monster” segments of the film.
- Prior to Funky Forest, Hajime Isimin (who is also known as
Aniki) had released one direct-to-video comedy in Japan and worked as
the musical director on The Taste of Tea. He is responsible for the “Notti & Takefumi” sequences that contain the film’s major musical and dance numbers.
- Funky Forest won the “Most Innovative Film Feature” award at the 2006 Toronto After Dark film festival.
INDELIBLE IMAGE:
The still of the Japanese schoolgirl with a tube jammed into her navel
hooked up to a strange machine encasing a large orifice while two
strangely costumed men look on, from the segment titled “Wanna go for a
drink?”, has already become an iconic image on the Internet. It’s the
picture people post or email when they want to illustrate either 1. how
weird the movie
Funky Forest is, or 2. assuming the picture is
from a mainstream Japanese soap opera, how weird they think the Japanese
people in general are.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: As the trailer indicates,
Funky Forest‘s weird credentials are unimpeachable; if anything, this is a movie that’s almost
too weird
to be comprehensible, which is why it’s nice that it’s divided into
small bites that can be digested independently. It works like a
surrealist version of Altman’s
Short Cuts.
COMMENTS: The opening paragraph of every review of Funky Forest is where critics get their
chance to deploy their metaphorical skills in a gambit to get quoted on
the cover of the next DVD release, and I’m not above this temptation.
For their convenience, I’m going to bold the part that VIZ Pictures’
marketing division should consider when designing the next special
edition release. Watching Funky Forest is like peeking
inside the skull of an American schizophrenic stranded in Tokyo on a
three day meth and mescaline binge, nodding off into dreams and blacking
out in periodic epileptic fits as he flips through the local channels
at 4:30 AM, all the while unaware that aliens are attempting to jam the
local airwaves with subliminal propaganda designed to prepare us for an
imminent encounter with advanced beings our brains are still eons away
from being able to comprehend.
Having made my bid for boxcover glory, I can now tell you what I really think about Funky Forest.
The fact is, that although the film’s wire-to-wire, maxed-out
bizarreness makes it a must-hit title for dedicated weird-o-philes, it’s
not the apex of the genre that some have proclaimed it to be. It’s far
too scattered a work for that sort of an honor. Funky Forest is a series of short surreal films made by three directors and edited together into an overlong feature. If you hear that description prior to seeing Funky Forest,
you’ll probably predict a film experience that’s a lot like attending a
festival of experimental short features: the occasional standout image,
brilliant touch, or unexpectedly moving moment surfacing from a sea of
experimental noodles that are just interesting enough to keep you
watching, but which wear out their welcome quickly. That is basically
what you get when you venture into Funky Forest, although it
has a big advantage over the short film festival marathon experience due
to its consistently high technical quality.
Funky Forest is a work of pure
Surrealism. With it’s steadfast refusal to make any sort of rational
sense, and its use of incongruity and unexpected juxtaposition to keep
us perpetually off guard, it’s in the spirit of the 1920s-1930s European
Surrealist works of
Buñuel
and Cocteau, although updated in modern pop colors (bright, beat-heavy
pop music and theme-song introductions that evoke episodic television).
After cinema’s initial intoxication with the incomprehensible
Surrealist form in long works like
L’age d’Or and
Le sang d’un poète
(both 1930), feature length works of this sort have been largely absent
from moviehouses for decades now. The practice of the art of pure
Surrealism has fled to short films by directors struggling to be
noticed, and to a small core of underground filmmakers who keep the
faith despite popular and critical indifference. There are very good
reasons for this trend, and
Funky Forest illustrates the most
important: without some sort of organizing narrative to hold our
interest, the wild, bewildering cascade of unconnected images we find in
a dogmatic Surrealist work can try our nerves. Pure Surrealism works
better in short films where it doesn’t try our patience; even Buñuel and
Cocteau abandoned Surrealist rules as they grew as artists, moving on
to Neo-Surrealist works that featured stronger narratives and organizing
principles while still effectively harnessing the power of the
irrational. No matter how successful
Funky Forest is in the
end as art, it will always remain a laudable and welcome experiment in
reviving and modernizing a film style too long abandoned for dead.
Takefumi, one of the recurring characters in
Funky Forest,
is an amateur DJ and mixmaster who likes to put vinyl records on two
turntables at once and fiddle with the volume knobs, hoping to create
unexpected synergies between the beats and melodies. His mashup
aesthetic is as good an image of what the creative forces behind
Funky Forest
are aiming at as anything. Takefumi believes there is “a universe in
each album” and seeks to create a “mixed-up mix” by playing them
together. The three directors here mix their talents and interests to
create something new and unique, but also something that’s truly
“mixed-up.” Ishii focuses on creating absurd, mildly humorous
situations with characters such as the Mole Brothers, the Unpopular with
Women Brothers, and the Babbling Hot Springs Vixens. Isimin creates
the surreal dance sequences that pepper the movie. Miki, whose work
appears only in the second half, is the weirdest of them all. He
created the various monsters—a mix of puppetry and CGI, with
disturbingly realistic human faces overlaid over some of his
creations—that are being bred in the halls of the school. These fleshy,
breathing beasts call to mind the organic, animatronic abominations
created by
David Cronenberg for
Naked Lunch and
Videodrome.
Although Ishii directs most of the movie
and comes into the project with the grandest resume, his segments can be
the most tedious. For example, the aptly named Babbling Vixens tell a
series of deliberately pointless stories about alien encounters and
slanted ginkgo trees. The girls charmingly characterized by the trio of
actresses as sexy professional women who are seem vapid because they’re
out on a carefree lark of a holiday, but they ladies out their welcome
quickly. Frustratingly, a scheduled singles picnic is planned in early
scenes and set up as an event the film might build towards, but when we
get there nothing happens; the buildup seems to be nothing more an
unwelcome joke at the expense of the audience. Watching Ishii’s
segments, there’s the constant suspicion that there must be some sort of
clever untranslatable wordplay or parody of a Japanese cultural
institutions going on that just isn’t coming across to the Western
viewer; it’s hard to imagine that the subtle absurdities he relies on
were meant to carry the entire comic load. The too-infrequent segments
that he created set in a milky white outer space swimming with asteroids
and amoeba-like creatures are his most memorable contributions to the
project, although the elongated anime cartoon “The Transfer Student”
falls flat.
The two lesser known directors fare
better. Miki’s “Wanna Go for a Drink?” segment is the most successfully
surreal piece of the film. Dripping with transmuted eroticism, it
seems to be the schoolgirl’s naive and confused dream of sex, complete
with strangely obsequious men, the desire to be gazed upon, obscure
physical rituals and spurting fluids, orifices, and eventually giving
birth to a bouncing baby sushi chef. It’s also quite funny, as the two
men—one dressed as a yellow Muppet, the other in schoolboy shorts too
sizes too small—frequently ignore the girl and interrupt their important
ceremony to converse among themselves about trivialities. Miki’s other
sequences don’t have quite the same punch, but his creatures (which
range from lobsterlike beings with huge noses and moustaches to a bunch
of doll-like men who sprout like low-hanging fruit off the legs of a
woman’s torso) are always interesting to look at.
Despite the inherently frightening nature
of these monstrosities, it’s important to note that the characters never
fear them, even when one attaches itself to the underside of a tennis
player’s arm and starts sucking the girl’s blood. The schoolchildren
and staff not only accept these creatures as natural parts of their
environment, but nurture them and help them grow. There’s a small tinge
of fear that we bring to the experience due to the strangeness of these
inventions, but the scenes give us only the slightest nudge towards
body horror
and never generate undue fear and revulsion. This is crucial, because
darker imagery would upset the admirably light and comic tone of the
rest of the film. The directors deserve credit for keeping the film
surpassingly odd, but never going down the dark nightmare alleyways that
most weird films feel the obligation to trod. That path, while welcome
at times, has become a too well worn over the years, and its nice to
see a weird film that confounds our expectation that dreamlike must
necessarily equate to nightmarish.
Isimin’s dance sequences, which are like
isolated music videos stuck into the picture, also supply some high
points and break up the absurdist monotony. The first one, Takefumi’s
beachside dream where he is forced to dance with a series of real and
animated partners, has an intoxicating J-pop sensibility at first, but
goes on for one too many tunes. The second number is more magical:
Notti’s dream, in which she is dressed as a furry white creature playing
classical violin in an empty forest. As she draws her string across
the bow, the violin starts making the sound of a didgeridoo. Out of the
corner of her eye she notices three nymph-like creatures, who are
playing with dials embedded in mossy rocks and branches to alter the
sound of her instrument. As she plays on, electronic bleeps, elephant
trumpets and tribal chants chime into a rhythmic rhapsody which rises to
a frenzied crescendo, until the spell is broken when a grooving
spectator’s unfortunate sneeze causes the spirits to flee. The sequence
is a wonderful blend of pastoral myth, modulated beats and hyperactive
editing that works on its own and stands out from the rest of the film
(and probably inspired the title).
Not only is that scene, the film’s
penultimate sequence, a standout, but it should be pointed out that
throughout the film the musical accompaniment—an eclectic and tasteful
mix of cool jazz, dub, Japanese pop and electronica— is one of the
film’s greatest assets, a selection of aural treats that helps to
sustain our interest when the narrative fails to do so. Sadly, the
soundtrack is not currently in distribution; we can only hope that as
the film’s cult following grows, a release will be forthcoming.
It is both depressing and heartening to hear so many critics and fans proclaim that you’ll never see anything like
Funky Forest. It’s depressing because it implies that they find
Funky Forest‘s
randomness to be sui generis, arising from out of nothing and nowhere.
There is a whole rich history of weird film that came before
Funky Forest,
not only in the Surrealism of the 1930s, but also the avant-garde
experiments of the 1960s and the underground films of every era, of
which people seem to be ignorant. Could someone familiar with Buñuel,
Cocteau or the wilder works of Fellini, not to mention
Jodorowsky‘s relatively well-known
The Holy Mountain, really believe that there was nothing quite like
Funky Forest in existence? On the other hand, the nothing-in-the-world-like-it comment is heartening, because it indicates that
Funky Forest created the impression it set out to: to create a sense of wonder in the viewer. The slowly growing
Funky Forest
cult suggests that there is a longing for—and more importantly, a
market for—works that break the mold, that lunge forward with
imagination as their only guide. We can only hope that those people who
have never seen anything like
Funky Forest will be filled with
a yearning to see more like it, and will look backwards to encounter
the great weird works of the past, while simultaneously encouraging
filmmakers to give them more new films like this one.
Funky Forest may be its own incomparable universe, but there are plenty more incomparable universes where that one came from.-
366weirdmovies.com
There is nothing that can prepare you for the
weirdness that is “Naisu No Mori: The First Contact.” It is a work
that defies description. Katsuhito Ishii, the co-writer and co-director
of the film, is best known on these shores for the animated sequence in
“Kill Bill Vol. 1,” as well as the girls + guns movie “Sharkskin Man and
Peach Hip Girl” starring Tadanobu Asano. He worked with Asano again in
both “Party 7” and “Taste of Tea,” the latter film taking home the
Audience Award for Best Film at the SF Indiefest last year. But “Taste
of Tea's” observational exploration of family relationships is a far
departure from “Naisu No Mori's” non-stop whacked-out insanity. It is
now clear that the gigantic disembodied heads and forehead-piercing
trains found in “Taste of Tea” were just Ishii's warm-up for the
Cronenbergian flesh pods, extended dance numbers, and alien body fluid
expulsion that comprise his latest grab-bag of filmic weirdness.
Two men dressed in white argue comically with one another, game
show style. During their banter, jarring jump-cuts and fade-to-blacks
fragment any sense of cohesion. Meanwhile, in the expanse of space
(space being all-white with floating white asteroids), a white blob with
blue lights emanating from it changes in size and fires black-sphere
projectiles at a girl dressed in a vinyl-black body suit. The girl in
question is Mayo Banno, the young actress who played the daughter in
“Taste of Tea,” and she is just one of several Ishii regulars who
populates this film. As Hataru, she uses her mind to fire ray beams out
of her forehead that eliminate the spinning spheres. Apparently, this is
how Hataru relieves her boredom (instead of doing her homework), and
her fantasy ends with a matter-of-fact declaration regarding studying
for school: “Screw it.”
And so begins “Naisu No Mori,” where Ishii and his friends Hajime
Ishimine and Shin'ichiro Miki (the other writer-directors) all appear to
be saying a collective “Screw it!” to narrative form and sequential
structure, not to mention conventional filmmaking presentation and tonal
consistency. Rather than a film, this is more like a collaborative
project unfolding as a series of shorts, animation, and music / dance
performances that shift frequently among alternating groups of
characters, who are introduced using intertitles and recurring theme
music.
First, there is a high-school-age couple named Notti and Takefumi, who
hang out and listen to music, attempt to define their relationship, and
discuss the dreams they've had about each other. Then, there are the
“Babbling Hot Spring Vixens” who, true to their namesake, talk non-stop
about the importance of wearing fake smiles and telling amusing
anecdotes to win people over. The three “Unpopular with Women Brothers”
appear next. There is Tadanobu Asano, who practices off-key acoustic
guitar ballads while his overweight Caucasian younger brother offers
one-line feedback and chows down on Snickers bars. In the adjacent room,
the eldest brother practices a ridiculous fan dance routine in the
hopes of attracting women. The brother segments are mostly played for
laughs, but on the whole, the introduction of these various characters
and their eccentricities builds upon itself in amusing fashion, and we
can clearly see Ishii in “Taste of Tea” mode, finding delight in the
unique attributes of his characters at the expense of plot development
or progression. After one of the vixens plays ping-pong with one of the
brothers, he invites her to a “singles-picnic,” and this forthcoming
gathering appears to be the event that the rest of the movie is moving
towards.
But then comes Takefumi's dream, which begins with him waking up on a
beach at night time. Car headlights shine in his face, gigantic
speakers blast out music, and his pseudo-girlfriend Notti is dressed in a
winking bird suit and striped tights. “Show me your dancing!” she
demands, and what follows is a bizarre 20+ minute music-video-like
exhibition with many types of dancers: small girls dressed in red devil
suits with blue hearts and braided hair, a giant animated pink woman
wearing pasties, and synchronized dancers in matching yellow suits with
hats shaped like laced boots. In the midst of their constant dancing,
there are gunshots, hair loss, an orange bug chair, voice-overs in
Chinese, and Notti giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down depending on how
much each dance performance pleases her. By the time the dream ends and a
three-minute intermission rolls around, the film has shifted away from
idiosyncratic character moments to instead focus more on its science
fiction elements that play out like an absurdist ode to David
Cronenberg.
The second half of “Naisu No Mori” is like watching Japanese people
in school classrooms play with the props from “Videodrome,” “Naked
Lunch,” and “eXistenZ.” A series of “Homeroom!!!” segments weave
together previously introduced characters with new ones, as they make
speeches, goof off, and run a series of bizarre experiments utilizing
the aforementioned Cronenbergian devices. These experiments involve
fuzzy yellow suits with long penile appendages that need to be pulled. A
school girl is asked to stick a fleshy tube into her navel, which she
licks before insertion. The tube is connected to an ass-television,
whose ejaculating fluids are somehow related to saving the planet of
Piko-riko. The class president rubs the ultra-long nose hairs of a
parasitic amoeba pod that must be tongue-licked like the reed in an
oboe. Miniature men have multiple hanging tentacles that need to be
stroked in order to activate them as functional musical instruments. Are
you confused and/or disturbed yet? The combination of sexual imagery
and flesh-colored alien forms seems to be paying homage to Cronenberg,
while at the same time seriously perplexing the viewer by moving away
from the character moments found earlier in the film. Each progressive
sequence seems like a contest to out-weird the previous one, which is
not without its built-in entertainment value, but becomes somewhat
questionable as a storytelling method when strung together as a film.
Admittedly, part of the joy one receives from watching a film of this
nature is the disoriented feeling of being enveloped by the madcap
imagination of the filmmakers involved. When Asano-san practices
air-guitar while doubling as a tennis instructor for a girl whose blood
is being sucked out of her armpit by a fleshpod that opens up to reveal
levitating fluid-spurting midgets…well, what else is there to say
really? It's hilarious, it's undoubtedly over-the-top, but is it
imaginative genius or tripped-out drivel? Audiences will most likely be
divided (as the festival audience appeared to be), and while the actors
attack the individual character performances with great gusto, the film
is not paced properly, and its two-and-half hour length makes it often
feels like it's meandering. Furthermore, the constant fluctuation
between super-silliness, time-consuming music numbers, and unexplained
sci-fi elements never quite reaches the delicate balance necessary to
act as any kind of pay-off. It's more like a mish-mash of
strewn-together ingredients that contains portions of brilliance mixed
together with portions of tedium. Perhaps it's a testament to the
writers that I wanted to spend more time with the primary characters and
their odd attributes, or get to watch them interact with one another
some more, instead of being treated to another long stretch of
dialogue-free musical interludes in the funky forest where costumed DJ's
spin monotonous breakbeats that add nothing to the narrative arc.
I haven't seen “Party 7,” which many find to be an incoherent mess;
“Naisu No Mori” could certainly be described as such, although that
would be an incomplete (if not unfair) assessment. It is a film that,
despite its shortcomings, exudes style, energy, and creativity like few
other films of late. To be sure, it is not in the same league as Ishii's
masterpiece “Taste of Tea,” but it's unique enough to be of interest to
those who make an effort to seek out unconventional cinema. If nothing
else, this is truly an unconventional work. - Jungwhan Lah
The Japanese have a reputation for being entertainment extremists.
Whether it's deserved or not, they tend to turn everything - their
television, their music, their entire popular culture - into a mishmash
of kitsch, art, commerce, and craziness. Of course, this is a decidedly
Western view, the perspective of an audience on the social outside
looking way past and within. Yet the concept has become so clichéd that
we actually have spoofs (MXC, Super Big Product Fun Show)
of such insanity. Anyone looking for a perfect example of this
histrionic oriented Hellsapoppin' position need look no further than Funky Forest: The First Contact.
A crazy quilt collaboration between three prominent Japanese filmmakers
(Katsuhito Ishii, Hajime Ishimine, and Shunichiro Miki), this cracked
comedy is like a series of sketches gone psycho. Between the CGI
fantasies, extended musical numbers, hilarious high school riffs, and
repeated visits with a trio of talentless brothers, we get weirdness
wrapped in the bizarre, idiosyncrasy drenched in the disturbing. Sounds
like your typical Tokyo treat, huh?
The Plot:
Frankly, there isn't one. Instead, we begin with a visit from the Mole
Brothers, a white suited comedy team who seem more interested in
insulting each other than making us laugh. Then a little girl envisions a
fantasy world where she is master and homework is nonexistent. Three
brothers, noted for being "unpopular with women" interact with each
other in typical sibling ways, though one is inexplicably obsessed with
his guitar. A former student and a young teacher play at having a fling,
while the "Babbling Hot Springs Vixens" tell unusual stories of human
fallibility. The previously mentioned instructor describes his dreams,
while the Moles return to deliver - maternity style - their miniature
friend from the orifice of an alien television. The horrors of high
school homeroom are uncovered, while various polymorphous shapes and
biological abominations demand intimacy and gratification. If it all
sounds like David Cronenberg via Shinya Tsukamoto, you're only partially
correct. Like
Pee Wee's Playhouse soaked in blowfish venom, this is one filmic forest that truly lives up to its funky namesake.
The DVD:
Brilliant to look at, impossible to understand,
Funky Forest: The First Contact,
is like a resume reel for a group of struggling, soon to be discovered
underground artists. It's a performance piece as a personal cry for
help, the fever dream musings of men who should know better, understand
little, and yet choose to pay attention to neither. It's experimental
and exasperating, confusing and completely of its own. If you enjoy
having your brain freaked as much as tweaked, if you don't care that
linear narrative is addled or absent, if imagery and imagination move
you - cinematically - as much as characterization and plotting, this
film will definitely fit your aesthetic. But be warned, this is not an
easy ride. Ishii, Ishimine, and Miki aren't out to open your eyes or
show you the ugly underneath. Instead, they hope to free your mind,
using visual flair and the jarring juxtaposition of form and function to
broaden your horizons. And one does have to admit - it's a Heck of a
ride.
At first, the over the top goofiness and incoherent shrillness are
off-putting. The Moles are like prop comics who forgot their bag of
tricks...or punchlines. They shout and stutter, playing on Asian
stereotypes in an almost offensive manner. There are plenty of nods and
winks to keep things in perspective, but it does start the film off on
an odd footing. Then we get the weird animated battle between Little
Hataru and some pulsating blob. Yet the ending turns out to be a jokey
non-sequitor. The Unpopular with Women Brothers include a mature
worrywart, an axe strumming hippy type, and a grade schooler who can't
stop shoveling chocolate into his mouth. Their moments have an
observational wit to them, that is, when
Funky Forest doesn't
overplay their part in the effort. Indeed, there are several sequences
that go on for far too long. When we learn about the almost-affair
between teacher Takefumi and a young student, we are intrigued. But then
their storyline shifts into a nearly 40 minute musical pastiche,
including numerous interpretive dance numbers and some Power Station
like animation. By the end, we are desperate for a rationale.
By the time we reach the finish of Side A (like an album, the movie is
divided in two with a near three minute intermission), we are spent -
and
Funky Forest still has 75 more minutes to go. The switch over sends in more illusions of body horror, homages to moments from
Videodrome,
a true slip into ultra-surrealism, and additional bumbling Brothers
material. Like the ultimate experiment in motion picture one-upmanship,
Ishii, Ishimine, and Miki seem to be challenging each other, pushing the
very limits of their imagination and originality to come up with
stranger and stranger set pieces. As the credits roll, we wonder what
the purpose was, the point to all the madness and mayhem. With the
frequent blackouts and introductory title cards, one envisions the pilot
to some perverted primetime comedy cavalcade. There is a soiled
sacrilegious
SCTV appearance to everything
Funky Forest: The First Contact
attempts. For the most part, the concept works. As long as you don't
demand that it make a lick of sense or stay within the bounds of
reality, you'll be greatly rewarded - creeped out and made nutty, but
rewarded nonetheless. -
Bill Gibron
The annals of strange just got thicker with the arrival of "Funky
Forest: The First Contact," a surreal sci-fi-musical-whatsit whose
resistance to thematic or narrative logic renders viewers thoroughly --
but not unpleasantly -- bewildered for 2½ hours. Breathtakingly, often
hilariously bizarre, it's nobody's idea of a commercial sureshot. But
pic merits attention from adventuresome fest programmers, and will
doubtless accrue a cult following on DVD.
First team effort for writing-helming-editing trio of Katsuhito Ishii
("Shark Skin Boy and Peach Hip Woman," "Taste of Tea"), TV commercial
directors Shin'ichiro Miki and Anika aka Hajime Ishimine is a series of
deadpan, oft-fantastical non sequiturs and goofy plot threads. Latter
occasionally intersect, but scarcely hint at any game plan. Recurrent
elements include idiot TV variety show-style comedy duo "The Mole
Brothers"; three hapless "Unpopular With Women Brothers" who look
unrelated; three pretty young women first identified as "Babbling Hot
Spring Vixens"; a nerdy high school teacher-cum-DJ involved with his
star student; and sitcom-style "Homeroom!!!" chapters from a Dadaist
school life. Plus peppy choreographed dream sequences, unidentifiable
puppet-or-CGI creatures, Cronenberg-style queasiness, and UFO
visitations. Delirious, disarming pic is sharp in all tech and design
departments. -
Dennis Harvey
A film review should contain a number of key elements. It's always good to
start with a brief description of the film's plot. Following this, there should
be a critique of the picture's various qualities, discussing both good and bad
points. Finally, following a brief summary, a verdict should be given,
expressing the reviewer's ultimate feelings on the movie.
When presented with a film as unique as
Funky Forest: The First
Contact, such structure is revealed to be woefully inadequate. For one,
writing a plot synopsis would be, shall we say, difficult; the film is a
collection of loosely (if at all) connected sequences, with no narrative or
arrangement to speak off. Secondly, trying to describe the collision of ideas
that are on show here would be nigh on impossible. I could write a million words
and yet never come close to describing just what
Funky Forest: The First
Contact actually is; let's try anyway, shall we?
Part musical, part comedy, all weird,
Funky Forest sees directors
Katushito Ishii, Hajime Ishimine, and Shunichiro Miki (who also all wrote the
screenplay) leaving logic, traditional film structure, and any other restricting
boundaries at the door. What they have produced is the movie equivalent of
Wario-Ware, a collection of short and fast vignettes that have little to
no bearing on what has gone before or what is to come.
Since I was unsure of what to expect,
Funky Forest initially proved
to be a perplexing experience, almost headache inducing. Given time, though, the
film gradually—and totally unexpectedly—began to win me over.
Perhaps that is the key to enjoying the movie; you need to go into this with a
completely open mind. Any preconceived notions you have on how things are likely
to play out are only likely to hinder your viewing of the film.
While I try to keep reviews as spoiler-free as possible, with
Funky
Forest, there are no real plot developments and therefore no spoilers to
give. Of course, due to the lack of a cohesive plot, the question of how to
provide a description of the film arises. So, in no real order, I present a few
choice moments from
Funky Forest: Two men, one dressed in a strange
animal costume and the other wearing the tightest shorts I've ever seen, pull a
miniature sushi chef from out of a giant anal sphincter in a box. A bizarre
dance routine with a giant animated woman takes place on a beach at night. A
man, alone in his room, performs a dance with fans. A classroom full of
foul-mouthed pupils berates each other over a missing shoe. Two pupils perform a
bizarre procedure with strange-looking alien creatures, with one pupil sticking
an alien tentacle up the other pupil's rectum.
Even if you are able to get past the film's oddball nature, its running time
could certainly become a stumbling block. At two-and-a-half hours, there is no
question
Funky Forest is far too long. Admittedly, thanks to being a
collection of individual moments, the film could easily be watched in a couple
of sittings; a convenient intermission even provides a perfect breaking-off
point. But because the movie has as many strikeouts as it has hits, I can't help
but feel a reduced running time would have produced a more consistent and
entertaining picture.
Viz Media have turned out a quality DVD release; a 5.1 soundtrack that
really steps up during the dance sequences, supporting a clean and colorful
picture. Chief amongst the extras on this two-disc set is a fairly extensive
making-of. Going into some depth on what went into the film, it offers no real
answers as to what the hell it's all about, but still proves to be interesting
and entertaining.
Providing a verdict on whether you should rent or purchase this movie is, in
all honesty, not viable.
Funky Forest: The First Contact is a totally
original piece of work, like traveling through someone else's dreams at 100
m.p.h.; it's something you won't have experienced before and are unlikely to
again. Fans of the strange and the avant-garde should give it a shot; everyone
else is advised to approach with caution. -
Paul Pritchard
OFFICIAL SITE: Funky Forest: The First Contact 
Gance
put that pure emotional power in the service of a big idea. When the
ghost of Robespierre tells Napoleon, “We have realized that the
Revolution cannot prosper without a strong authority. Will you be that
leader?” “Yes!” answers Napoleon, and Gance has brought the audience to a
point where they flood with gratitude. Napoleon will save the
Revolution! Gance built his movie from moments that force an audience to
feel, cast with faces that magnify those feelings. He drew performances
of eerily credible intensity, balancing epic and intimate, action and
tableau in a mesmerizing blend. When critic Charles Champlin saw Napoleon the last time it was shown in this country, 30 years ago, he said it was “the measure of all other films, forever.”
Watching
a movie we experience every moment twice, from our own point of view
and from the character’s. We judge the characters even as we lose
ourselves in them. This dance drives the movie forward. Eisenstein
intensifies the tension by choosing shots that force us to feel, then
juxtaposing them with faces, so we see them through his characters’
eyes. Gance, by comparison, plays Napoleon’s game of hats almost
entirely in a few static wide shots. When Gance uses flurries of shots
to exploit the tension between the audience’s point of view and his
character, he’s not pushing the story forward, he’s pushing the audience
inside his character’s head. Gance’s climactic moment, his Marseillaise of the image, is a wildly ambitious attempt to plumb Napoleon’s soul.
