This
is a quick bit I wrote about seeing SHUTTER in a theater upon initial
release. I hope to write more
extensively about it in CRAZY ABOUT MOVIES.
The coherence or lack thereof of it all is relative.
Of course, even before entering
the theater, I knew that going to check out the latest J-horror film Shutter
would involve putting up with fifty 10-14 year olds shrieking out fake
screams of terror, making snide comments at the screen loud enough for
everybody in the theater to hear, and texting and talking on their cell phones
throughout the picture. This is just an
extension of school, or the mall, or a friend's basement. The idea that the cinema could be a place
housing art as important as any museum doesn't occur to kids this age. Of course, it doesn't occur to most adults
either, and in combing through about twenty online reviews of this film I see
it doesn't even occur to many people who are paid to write about the movies for a living. Too bad; if most films are given a chance
they certainly repay the effort. Shutter
definitely does.
The film begins with the wedding
reception of a young American fashion photographer, Ben (Joshua Jackson) and
Jane (Rachel Taylor). The shallowness of
Ben's personality is telegraphed immediately, the very first time he speaks - he
tells the wedding guests, "Thanks for coming, let's all eat some
cake." His character flaws are the
linchpin on which the whole picture hangs, so this is important. Immediately after the wedding and consummation
the couple whisks off to Japan ,
where Ben has a gig, for a combination
of work and honeymoon. While driving on
an isolated country road at night Jane hits a young woman, but no trace of her
can be found afterwards, even by police search teams. In due course a strange white streak of light
starts showing up in Ben's photographs.
His assistant suggests this looks like 'spirit photography' in which the
spirits of the dead show up in photos, usually looking for revenge. As it happens, the assistant's ex boyfriend
runs a well known Japanese magazine devoted exclusively to this subject. When Ben and Jane visit him he says the
spirits that show up in these photos often do so because of'unrequited love',
which will eventually turn out to be the case here. The mysterious girl whom they hit on the road
is Megumi, a translator with whom Ben had an affair on an earlier assignment in
Japan . He just wanted a fling, but she was looking
for much more, and when he dumped her she
started stalking him. Ben's friends Bruno and Adam - American expatriates who live in Japan - got
involved. It all ended very tragically, and now her ghost is back for
revenge.
Although this is allegedly a
'horror' film, that is a superficial classification. There really isn't a single truly scary
moment in the entire picture. My
personal opinion is that it is no longer possible for any film - not just this
one - to scare audiences in the way that, say,Psycho could when
it was a new type of cinematic experience.
So in order to have our cinematic hunger gratified we have to look for
other things.
I've always felt that the
existing body of films from the past can provide us with a way to participate
actively in a new film,and that is either through obvious direct visual quoting
or through a scene that at least awakens a memory in us of a prior film, even
if this is not the director's actual intention.
One example in Shutter : the characters see images in
photographs of things that were not physically present in the time and place of
the photograph. This immediately
conjures up the scenes in The Omen where the exact same
phenomenon prophetically occurred.And, of course, the truth and/or falsity of
what a camera can capture has been a cinematic peroccupation since Blow
Up. And an image that Kubrick
played with in The Shining - that of a woman who appears to be sexy and beautiful
from the front but who is revealed in actuality to be a decomposing corpse when
we see her from the back - shows up here as well. And these are just three examples that I
caught in just one viewing,in a theater with sixty screaming kids around me
throwing popcorn. And I don't think it
really matters very much if the director (Masayuki Ochiai) has the specific
intention of quoting or referring in this manner, or not. If he does, fine; if he doesn't, it speaks to
the power of the images in their own right and for their own sake. And it jostles the viewer's imagination into
making connections for itself.
We hate to dabble in cliches, but
as directed by Ochiai and photographed by Katsumi Yanagishima the poetry of the
images is breathtaking. Aerial views of
both New York and Tokyo
are outstanding (and the natural beauty of Mount Fuji
too). The visual style is very cool, very
steely and detached, very ice blue in tone.
I mentioned Blow Up earlier, and I think the way the
hipness of 1960s London
was portrayed there is a very definite influence on the way a sort of
international, boundaryless hipness of today - personified by the sensational
Maya Hazen in female mode and by the
near brilliant James Kyson Lee in the masculine example - is done here. Ochiai, like Michael Mann, has the gift of
being able to speak volumes of exposition without dialogue. As an example, Jane's jealous nature is
communicated twice by facial expressions, reactions she makes to how Japanese
women approach Ben, with crystal clear clarity without a single word being
spoken.
This film is really about things
like, How much should you know about your spouse's background? What is the nature of stalking? Of taking justice into your own hands? And finally it's about the blending of
cultures into a true kind of internationalism.
Again, a lot of this is visual.
The Tokyo
skyline could just as easily be the skyline of an American city. The young Japanese professionals throughout
all speak English and dress like Americans, just as Ben and his friends move
easily and fluently through the Japanese language and customs. Not overtly political at all, but definitely
functioning in a manner as to indicate we're all going to be moving deeper and
deeper into Global Village mode as the twenty first century advances.
Shutter is pretty
capable moviemaking. Don't believe the
(negative) hype.
COPYRIGHT 2015 by Peter Quinones, all rights reserved.
