By then offcourse one had seen some Japnese Cinema in the media appreciation classes of Rashmi Duraiswamy and Shohini Ghosh so one knew what Mizoguchi and Kirosawas of the world.But this(starfish hotel) was a different paradigm alltogether. It was made by John Williams a British Guy and no trailer of the film would have made me interseted in it. I went in by what they call pure coincidence! And the first viewing a sharp gasping cut on my person~It was unlike anything I had seen before! It was vague, haunting beautiful and full of breath!
Think of story like this which comes in snatches. You are not even sure if you are sitting to follow the story or collectr it in your litttle palm at the end of it! It just flies away like dust in the air!
A mystery novelist selling his dark books,A growing ennui in a restless city of Tokyo. A sober graceful man with a waif like wife who loves him and is absent on him all the time. A distance growing in their marriage that steaming lunch of avocados and bubling tea in an electric kettle dont seem to cure. A woman, another woman! Young, Vulnerable and hellishly beautiful like a fox. A landscape of dollops of ice over and above every house and a dark lunatic Rabbit haunting every train ride of a man always sombre even when making love to a starnger in a dark tunnel!
What about it was reverbrating so deep? I shuddered. Avoided. And finally started exploring..I knew there would be no easy answers to this one. Just like I know It could have been a hit film in any part of the world. It was a crazy film!
For one the cinematography was magical. The red blinking sign of the hotel where all the dark fantasies of Arisu came true was beyond this world. The red starfish hotel neon had a blinking O. The big O that flickered, blinked, sparked and caught fire. The lonely train stations which were so claustrophobic that one palpitated in a overtly cooled Sirifort Audi 1. There were times, long streches when you felt nothing was happening. You could just breathe in the Ice Of Tokyo and the dark town the man went to meet his mistress. The times the itching Villian in the film( half rabbit half man) jumped into gutters and scratched his skin blotch. The pretty poker straight wife with a peaceful face who kept hinting at having lost that spark in the marriage and yet never said it loud enough to make the husband take notice that she would walk away one day. To a brothel and no place less!!!
The strange thing that the film doesnt rest on the skelton of a story. For there is hardly a story. Its just a situation. A man, a wife and another woman. The wife who ceases to be a woman. And an other woman who is half child, half a geisha, half a spirit from the unconscious world.
The eternal darkness brewing within everyone. Something that cant be defeated. Only calmly breathed in and accepted. Just like in the film, where you try and get knocked in off trying to get the hang of it..You walk out dumb, numb and acutely aware that you know something about yourself now thats not good news and yet its not something that you could defeat avoid or run away from.
PS- I love Japnese Cinema. I think they should stick to making films rather than low grade cameras and Nippo Batteries
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