Eating While Standing

Saturday afternoon, two o'clock. It's opening day for director Mamoru Oshii's latest film, Tachiguishi Retsuden. Oshii and his cast are wrapping up their comments to the crowd before the show begins. "The more seriously you take this film," he concludes gravely, "the funnier it is." Press cameras flash. The lights dim. And we're off and running through two of the strangest hours I've ever spent in a Japanese cinema.

Nearly everything about Tachiguishi Retsuden defies easy explanation. Like the title, for starters. It literally means something like "The Legendary Masters of Eating While Standing," while Production I.G. has apparently gone with the more spirited "Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of Fast Food Grifters." Unlike the majority of his other films, it's a parody. It's animated, but it isn't anime. It's comprised of still photos of actors and settings that have been digitally animated into life, stop-motion style. But that being said, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of motion, either. Major portions of the film consist of long (long) stretches of narraration over grainy, colorized black and white stills.

Sounds confusing? I haven't even gotten to the plot. It's like Tampopo meets Jin-Roh, a sprawling (and totally fictional) documentary chronicling dine-and-dashers in Japan's postwar era. The story opens in the tiny standing room only noodle shops that sprang up during the occupation, and ends among the hamburger stands, beef bowl joints, and curry restaurants that serve up the majority of Japan's fast food today. The various protagonists aren't cast as criminals, but as anti-heroes and springboards for social satire. Sounds simple enough on the surface, but this is Mamoru Oshii we're talking about. Their "amazing lives" unfold in an incredibly dense narrative, crammed full of trivia, pop-culture references, and Japanese urban legends, the vast majority completely unknown to foreign audiences.

The cast reads like the invitation list to an otaku cocktail party. "Gyudon" Ushigoro is played by Gamera SFX director Shinji Higuchi. Kenji Kawai, who scored Ghost in the Shell and Innocence in addition to this film, is the ravenous "Hamburger" Tetsu. Production I.G. president Mitsuhisa Ishikawa tackles the role of Crying Inumaru. Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki is noodle-slurping Hiyashi-Tanuki no Masa. And in the most insane casting decision of the century, Macross mecha designer Shoji Kawamori is Sabu, a turbaned, curry-crazed "Indian" that makes Apu from The Simpsons feel like a new pinnacle of cultural sensitivity.

If this all sounds totally esoteric and impenetrable, that's the whole point. Critics of Oshii's philosophy-heavy approach won't find any reason to change their minds here. You'll need your otaku thinking cap and a healthy knowledge of old-school anime to make heads or tails out of the bulk of the references. Only about a quarter of the audience seemed to get any given joke, leaving the rest of us scratching our heads and waiting for a chance to climb back on board with the next bit. Tachiguishi Retsuden is a parody with a learning curve.

How much will you enjoy it? Depends on how much time you enjoy spending inside Mamoru Oshii's head. Tachiguishi Retsuden is the director at his most self-indulgent. At its hip and ironic best, it's an offbeat arthouse present to himself and his most hardcore fans. But the lack of any single main character makes the narrative difficult to navigate for Oshii neophytes; watching the film is like drinking from a cultural firehose. If you weren't born and raised in Japan, you'll need a native pal to help you consume the decadent feast Oshii has left for his viewers. Just don't forget to pay on the way out.

Official Tachiguishi Retsuden Website

Production I.G.'s English Site

Japanese-Language Trailer

Comments

[Ginrai]

Wow, that sounds even more obscure and humorous in a deeply self-referential way than Oshii's "Red Spectacles", which also featured a weird obsession with stand up noodle bars, even though it was live action.

[Matt]

Funny you mention Red Eyes (I think that's the "official" translation), as it's the first film I thought of after seeing Tachiguishi Retsuden. Both were very talky, deliberately paced, etc., etc. Even with a translation, I think the majority of the references are going to sail over most Americans' heads. They sure did over mine.

[Ginrai]

I was going off the name written on the DVD box I have. :) I'm certain a lot of Red Eyes or whatever you want to call it went right over my head, but I have spent so much time studying German Expressionist film and film noir that I certainly got a lot of -that- stuff anyway.

Does Tachiguishi Retsuden have the same dramatic and abrupt tonal shifts? I mean, with Red Spectacles/Eyes, one minute it's a serious film noir, the next it's a goofy metatextual comedy, then a moment later it has drifted into a David Lynch/Waking Life sort of dream logic, and then it's an action movie, then it's guys standing around quoting at each other (rather like Innocence).

Basically every Oshii movie I've seen has been, as you say, talky and deliberately paced (even Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor 2 are like that), but I haven't seen any others that jerk around like that, even if they're all full of quotation. I like that he builds kind of a textual texture (if you'll forgive the pun) into his films by stuffing it full of other people's words. It's almost like collage or other forms of postmodern art, retasking something that already exists.

Maybe instead of found sound it's more like found philosophy?

I'd love to see this movie, but I seriously doubt any American company would commit to such a project, but maybe some really enterprising/masochistic fan group will try their hands at it.

Probably no point in braving it straight Japanese.

[Matt]

Oshii's such a huge name now, I can't imagine someone not picking up the rights to it, but whoever translates it is really going to have their work cut out for them. You'd probably need three or more lines of subtitle text to convey certain dense scenes. I suspect it might actually work better dubbed.

Anyway. Being a dark comedy -- perhaps satire would be a better term -- it's filled with abrupt shifts in tone. A good example of the "humor" in it is the scene introducing "Crying" Mitsuhisa. It goes into a five minute segue, filled with graphs and charts, to compare his treatment by society to the Tokyo government's campaign to rid the city of stray dogs in the '50s and '60s using poison. Not exactly ha-ha funny. The humor in the film is in its ability to maintain an unrelentingly straight face through it all.

[Ginrai]

That sounds very much in keeping with Red. Interesting. Well, now I really want to see it. I hope you're right that Oshii's uh, brand power, if you will, is enough to get some a strange, avant garde Japanese movie released here.

I know Oshii has spoken about Godard influencing him (of course, I find Oshii's works interesting and off beat, if slow, while I find Godard's just slow and pretentious). It's cool to me that this kind of thing is getting a wider audience due to Oshii's association with anime (Ghost more than anything, I'd say). Can you imagine a film like this ever coming to US shores without someone like Oshii's name selling it? I can't.

I thought the torture scene in Red was hilarious, for what it's worth.

[Ginrai]

Hey, news on this movie. Apparently it's showing in Venice: http://www.animeondvd.com/news/pr.php?pr_view=747

Now it just has to come here!