Searching For Shinji: Wild Life and EM: Embalming
Title: Wild Life
Director: Shinji Aoyama
Actors: Kosuke Toyohara, Mickey Curtis, Akiko Izumi
Year Released: 1997
Genre: Yakuza, Comedy
See Also: Eli, Eli Lema Sabachthani?, Shark Skin Man And Peach Hip Girl
Title: EM: Embalming
Director: Shinji Aoyama
Actors: Reiko Takashima, Yutaka Matsushige, Seijun Suzuki
Year Released: 1999
Genre: Thriller
See Also: Vital, Synesthesia
Shinji Aoyama, where did you come from? I know all about the apprenticeship with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the experiments with 8mm film. But how did you go from Wild Life and EM: Embalming to Eureka and Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani? How did you go from barely competent genre director to world-class film star? I need to know. I must know.
I can't remember how I first came across Eureka. Maybe it was a rental on Greencine. No matter how I first heard of it, its effect on me was unmistakable and everlasting. The nearly four-hour, sepia-toned meditation on post-traumatic stress disorder was about as perfect a film as I had ever encountered. Here was a strong hand, a sure vision, a unique take on film that refused to compromise on presentation, length, or structure. It took its time and delivered. Eureka is a film to be enjoyed again and again; despite its length, it never grows tiresome.
And then I saw Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani? That this film is not on every hipster pair of lips from here to Tokyo is a major crime, for Aoyama has certainly tapped into something rare here. I show this movie (about noise musicians whose music keeps a suicide-inducing virus at bay) to my musician friends, and we all agree that this should be our testimony. Anyone who makes music (or any art, for that matter) will immediately recognize the loving attention paid to the creative process, and its ultimate participation in the will to live. Take away my will to create and I am dead. It's no small stretch then to see how the characters of Eli, Eli face the virus that threatens their existence, how each owns up to their own experience and will to live. If I'm having trouble explaining the film it's because this is the intangible stuff of life itself. When you're knee-deep in it, it's better to just revel in the experience than bother to jot down what's happening.
You can imagine that I would want to repeat such a heady experience. To find its source and drink deep of it. So I went in search of other Shinji Aoyama films, other forms of this cinematic expression that so mirrored my own experience. What I found were two films so removed from Eureka and Eli, Eli that they may as well be from an entirely different filmmaker. What gives?
Wild Life, from 1997, is a comedic yakuza film in the vein of Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl, a light-hearted deconstruction of the venerable crime genre that unfortunately overextends its reach. Hiroki (Kosuke Toyohara, whom I had previously seen in the TV version of "Densha Otoko") is a pachinko needle man, who spends his nights resetting the pins in pachinko machines. His skills as a former boxer are brought into play when a mysterious package throws his life out of whack. The plot gets out of control faster than the characters do, leaving the viewer to wonder how Aoyama is going to take control of the situation.
EM: Embalming, a 1999 film that presages both Vital and Synesthesia, sees Aoyama stretching into the realm of the psychological thriller. Like Wild Life, there's more plot than seems necessary, with Aoyama spending more time playing catch up with the plot points than developing mood, a move that seems at odds with his apprenticeship with Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Doppelganger), the undisputed king of atmosphere. EM: Embalming is like any number of mediocre, similar psychological thrillers—its uniqueness only arises when you consider it as part of the body of work of the man who made Eureka, which was released just one year later.
So how did Shinji Aoyama go from the hackneyed scripts and straight-to-video-like production of these two films to full-on artistic brilliance? I like to think it happened like this:
Late one night, in the midst of a shaman-induced psychedelic experience shortly after the release of EM: Embalming, Aoyama had a revelation: less is more. His busy, over-burdened scripts should be discarded, thrown on a bonfire. He should concentrate on minimalist screenplays, seemingly empty musings on what it means to be alive; on the meaning of family; on the mysteries of the universe. After emerging from this formative, psychedelic tunnel, he set about writing the script that would become Eureka. A chance meeting with avant-garde musician Jim O'Rourke cemented the title and set him on a path towards renewed forms of artistic expression.
OK, maybe it didn't go like that. Maybe Aoyama simply woke up one day and said, Right, time to get serious. That's cool too. No matter why he made the shift, the fact remains that he did, and, man, is the world ever a better place for it.
Otaku Alert: Shinji Aoyama was discovered by Kiyoshi Kurosawa at film school.
Comments