Review for 'Synesthesia' (aka 'Gimmy Heaven') by Toru Matsuura (2005).

One concept I had always struggled with all my life was compromise. It always seemed a case of "You should compromise, and do things my way" (as the joke goes) - a way of getting your own way rather than keeping everyone happy and, more importantly, multiplying your power over a situation - but I have almost completely changed my mind about it. The reason is simple enough, the regularity with which I watch Japanese movies now in comparison to material from any other country.

Great slabs of justifiable, substantial and powerful compromise. Stunning stuff a lot of the time, very impressive way to get artistic ideas into commercial movies and vice-versa.

The most important aspect besides this one, which make Japanese Cinema so powerful to my eyes and mind, is the day-to-day way in which artistic ideas are integrated into life itself : and it flows both ways. Some key exponents of such films are obvious, others not so, but one which immediately comes to mind when watching 'Synesthesia' is Kiyoshi Kurosawa. There, in a typical 'Cure'-onwards Kurosawa film, is probably the best example of a director going deep into territory that could so easily be seen as pretentious - it's often not quite explainable, but clearly works (more often than not) and remains solid if you have the honesty to admit the difficulties in the plots - with his esoteric, oddly social dramas that contain equal measures of both the artistic and commercial blended deftly into an eternally-fascinating whole.

Why do I mention Kurosawa then, as a key comparison to this particular film? Well, what 'Synesthesia' seems to be attempting is a very similar approach. It fails though - miserably. Far too keen on trying to find a certain kind of approach that would be deemed worthy, adult, substantial and creative, rather than naturally having something of worth to discuss and the ability to discuss it. Or the skill to say it well. Or the characters to say it with.

Instead, there's a plot that's paper-thin, full of gaping wholes, pedestrian at best, slapped over with what could be described as the illogical (or rather difficult to pin-down) aspects of a Kurosawa movie in order to appear deep. It doesn't really have that depth, fails at the first hurdle by using the concept of synesthesia (a crossing of the wires within a persons' senses to create unusual ways of seeing and experiencing the world) which in itself, by its very nature, is different from person to person, to try and present both the key element which can't be explained in its entirety but is also the basis for the solution and conclusion to the story itself.

So, a fundamental problem with the story, it seems - the killer and the hunter both seem to suffer the same condition and one should be able to find the other and yet they're as different as any other two individuals. By the time the story concludes, the confusion, the mixed-messages, the dancing around the plot and the reliance on a concept which isn't concrete by its very nature, all make the film difficult to explain for all the wrong reasons - it's a mixed bag of failings, jumbled to make a failed film, confusing yet clearly not working, and it's clear to my instincts more than any other part of me.

The plot itself, involving two young(ish) guys creating and managing a series of cameras placed in locations (both public and private) for subscribers to pay to access via the internet, both for their (and the Yakuzas) financial gain, is a promising premise. Almost the same kind of commercial and dark mix as you would find in 'Suicide Circle' ('Suicide Club'), and at first I was thinking how unusual it was to see sex and death so clearly upfront in a very commerical teen movie, then it quickly becomes something else that attempts to be devisive rather than coming from a justifiable point of view. Characters never get engaging though, and the story immediately starts to flit around, dancing around the basic idea of a serial killer that may be controlling others in order to do its deeds, and it quickly becomes distant, disinteresting and annoyingly avoids the main aims for the large majority of the time.

That's also another Kurosawa-like concept in the film, the boundaries of personality, social interaction, influence, control and so on, and we see it attempted here in a fuzzy insubstantial and naive fashion, which makes the a good way of explaining what this film attempts to do.

We have a connection with the use of technology, the personal-versus-impersonal world of the clash between social interaction and the need to use machines in order to get to the levels aimed at, but here it remains almost an old-fashioned misunderstanding of the internet as evil rather than the inhabitants of the internet making already-odd behaviour all the more obvious than it once was. There's the misconceived or manipulative incorrect portrayal of tools as having power over its user, rather than them being something to be mastered, something being utilised. It's all a little upside-down and inside-out to ring true, though I can imaging it would have fooled many a decade or so ago.

On the resolution of this overly-long drifting narrative, the conclusion is so painfully drawn-out and so blatantly obvious that the flaws become all the more apparent, so much more clearly a series of red herrings and smoke-and-mirrors tricks that any chance of it being seen as a great example of compromise versus artistic aim, that it simply slumbers to an end and feels thoroughly failed.

Shame, looked so promising.