Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: [BC] Casshern

Perhaps the day's not far off when desperate studio executives snap up the
rights to classic kid's cartoon character Anpan Man, an anthropomorphic bean
jam roll, and some hot young aesthete with a point to prove reinterprets the
rosy-cheeked hero as a tragic Aristotelian avenger reborn from genetically
modified yeast. Resurrected at the behest of an omnipotent multinational
baked goods manufacturer by his creator Uncle Jam, Anpan Man will engage in
a one-bun battle against the megalomaniacal Bacteria Man only to discover
the batter-churning truth that he was in fact raised from the same dough as
his nemesis. The turgid epic eventually concludes in an apocalyptic showdown
that turns the world to croutons.
All flippancy aside, that's essentially what has happened with Casshern.
This exhausting superhero morality play is an almost unrecognizable update
of a minor animated series from Tatsunoko Pro made in the early 1970s. In a
fairly straightforward saga of good vs. evil, powerful androids being
developed by kindly scientist Azuma are brought to life by a freak bolt of
lightning and instantly get in touch with their hatred for the human race.
When they begin to terrorize mankind with an army of killer robots, Tetsuya,
Azuma's son, valiantly volunteers to be reborn as the bionic hero Casshern
in a desperate bid to save the world. He is joined by the cyborg dog
Friender, who also helps him cut down on travel expenses by conveniently
morphing into a spiffy jet from time to time.
Unfortunately for Friender, a victim of his own implausibility, his role has
been reduced to a brief cameo appearance in the live-action remake. But just
like the cast-iron pooch, only superficial traces of Casshern's original
form remain in the new version. What was once a simple tale of a selfless
hero taking on a clearly malevolent enemy has been transmogrified into a
grandiose and convoluted statement on the destructive nature of humanity,
embellished by a heavyweight cast of morally ambiguous characters and an
all-consuming visual aesthetic that permeates every frame.
Now Azuma (played by Akira Terao) is a troubled geneticist obsessed with
developing a cure for his angelic wife Midori (Kanako Higuchi)'s
debilitating illness, a by-product of the environmental devastation wrought
by fifty years of conflict between the Greater Eastern Federation and
Europa. Their headstrong son Tetsuya (Yusuke Iseya), who can no longer bear
to stand idly by while his friends go off to fight, enlists in the
Federation army to the disapproval of his family and his beatific fiancé
Luna (Kumiko Aso).
To alleviate the suffering of the ailing populace, Azuma has devoted himself
to the development of a restorative "neo-cell" technology. His work is
scorned by the Health Ministry, but secretly brought under the wing of the
military by duplicitous businessman Naito (Mitsuhiro Oikawa) on behalf of
the Federation's geriatric generalissimo Kamijo (Hideji Otaki), whose son
(Hidetoshi Nishijima) is scheming to usurp his authority. Just as Azuma's
grand experiment appears to be on the verge of producing results, a freak
incident at the research facility causes a huge vat of regenerating body
parts to reintegrate into humanoid form. The military reacts instinctively
by annihilating the abominations, but a meager band of survivors manage to
abscond to a deserted castle in the mountains with Midori as their hostage.
After uncovering a dormant robot arsenal, the mutants' wild-eyed leader Brai
(Toshiaki Karasawa) vows bloody revenge and unleashes an all-out war.
Elsewhere, during a traumatic tour of duty, Tetsuya is killed in combat. His
body is returned to the desperate Azuma, who revives him using the neo-cell
technology but the process renders his physiology highly unstable. Luna's
military scientist father (Fumiyo Kohinata) comes to Tetsuya's aid by
bestowing him with a prototype body armor, and with his newfound powers the
physically and emotionally scarred hero sets out to save his mother and put
an end to the carnage wrought by Brai and his minions. However, in the
tenebrous world of Casshern, innocence is a scarce commodity, and even the
righteous are not without sin...
It's almost as if first-time feature filmmaker Kazuaki Kiriya thought he was
only ever going to get one shot at making a movie, and then proceeded to
cram as many different ideas into it as he could. Hardly an industry
insider, the U.S.-based photographer and sometime music video director
jumped the queue to auteurdom apparently on the strength of his
comprehensive vision for the project, and his hands-on approach encompassed
editing, shooting and co-writing Casshern. Working with a reported budget of
only 600 million yen (less than six million US$), Kiriya and his
collaborators have transcended their financial limitations to produce a
visually sumptuous fantasy that more than holds its own against comparable
European and American productions.
The production managed to attract a stellar lineup of familiar veterans and
popular new faces, and even has the luxury of casting the likes of Mayu
Tsuruta (Owl's Castle) and the late Tatsuya Mihashi (Not Forgotten) in minor
roles. The tone of the acting varies from character to character: Iseya
smoulders with internal anguish, while Karasawa invests his overripe
villainous spiel with a Shakespearian weight. But even with such an
impressive array of reliable talent on board, discussion of the quality of
the performances is virtually moot. The real stars of the show are Kiriya,
production designer Yuji Hayashida, visual effects supervisors Toshiyuki
Kimura and Koji Nozaki, CG supervisor Haruhiko Shono, and the rest of the
team that has given Casshern its painstakingly detailed look. Every frame
has been so meticulously designed that the sheer volume of visual
information sometimes becomes a chore to process. Consequently, the density
of the film's imagery is both its greatest strength and its most
overwhelming flaw.
It's also yet another movie of late to adopt the retro sci-fi look,
including Innocence, Steam Boy, and the forthcoming American film Sky
Captain and the World of Tomorrow. As with the latter movie, most scenes
have been digitally manipulated either partially or in their entirety, which
has a powerful initial impact that gradually distances the viewer from the
human element of the story as it wears off. Nevertheless, Casshern
represents a massive technical achievement, one even more remarkable when
you consider that the gargantuan workload was largely done by a sweatshop of
young CG artists, who toiled almost around the clock on PCs assembled from
spare parts procured from electronics mecca Akihabara.
It's not a totally binary affair though; there's even room for a bit of cute
stop motion animation and home video-style footage. Although it may appear
out of step with the overall look of the film, this isn't a total departure
from its intermittently sentimental tone. Where it really lays it on too
thick is a montage sequence that includes actual war footage, a great deal
of it instantly recognizable to anyone who's watched television news in the
last fifty years. Probably the most blatant artistic conceit in the whole
film, it achieves the opposite of its intended effect by emphasizing its
shallowness; a symptom of trying to be too showy when a more subtle approach
would have paid greater dividends. This is especially true in some of the
action sequences, where choppy editing and optical overload sometimes
detracts from their fluidity.
Kiriya's music industry connections, including million-selling pop singer
and spouse Hikaru Utada, were possibly another factor in getting the film
off the ground. This would be confirmed somewhat by the soundtrack CD, which
features a separate disc of songs "inspired" by the film, many from
high-profile musicians that have worked with Kiriya in the past. The score,
while not inherently unpleasant, runs incessantly at a low level throughout
Casshern's entire duration like designer elevator music. This becomes
particularly grating during scenes when a little silence would have gone a
long way, and its constant presence coupled with the lush art direction
occasionally makes you feel as if you're watching an anthology of Kiriya's
music videos.
Depicting a totalitarian industrialist future which is strikingly evocative
of what may have happened if the Axis powers had won World War II and Japan
had accomplished its Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, Casshern
attempts to pack a whole shopping list of earnest issues including
pollution, scientific ethics, ethnic genocide and war crime into what is
ostensibly a special effects-driven event flick. As a result, the story
offers a great deal more to chew on than that of your average CG spectacular
in the rare moments when the visual onslaught lets up a little, but the
convoluted strands of plot entangled around its unsophisticated anti-war
message make for sometimes unnecessarily confusing viewing. The characters
are painted in shades of grey so thin that almost everyone is guilty of some
crime, and not even the innocent escape punishment, which gives Casshern the
dubious distinction of being perhaps the most unrelentingly austere and
humorless superhero film of all time.
Considering the recent success of similarly pessimistic glimpses of the
future such as Battle Royale and Dragonhead, perhaps we are witnessing the
birth of a new, uniquely Japanese mutation: the unapologetically nihilistic
commercial blockbuster.
http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/casshern.shtml
Ciao
--
UFV: La Donna Sfregiata/La Scala a Chiocciola/Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (3°
episodio)/Dick Tracy-Il Ponte del Terrore/Mamma ti Ricordo/lo Sceicco
Bianco/Viaggio Per la Libertà/Il Lago in Pericolo

 been reduced to a brief cameo appearance in the live-action remake.
Uffa.
-- 
www.project-ring.com

 ha scritto nel messaggio
[CUT]
Scusa ma...che schifo di recensione...
Poi questa "of a minor animated series from Tatsunoko "
Minor??