Those guys out in the far East eh? They’re way ahead over there,
what with their cars, their computers, their cigarette-per-person ratio,
and most definitely, their films. While Western cinema has been shrugging
its creative shoulders and piling-out re-make after re-make, big-budget
epic war yarn after big-budget epic war yarn, Asian cinema have been
making some of the most exciting, extreme, bizarre and compelling films
in the world.
The success of the East-Asian horror, i.e.; Ring, Dark
Water, The Eye, The Grudge - a breed of psychologically unnerving dramas
apposed to Hollywood’s tired self-referencing drivel - has lead,
predictably, to Hollywood simply buying the rights and creating their
own versions. Asian cinema, simply, does everything better; reinventing
the martial arts epic with Zhang Yimou’s visually unsurpassable
Hero and House of Flying Daggers, redefining the gangster genre, with
Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy, and now reclaiming the high-concept Sci-Fi
crown from the Wachowski brothers with Casshern.
As not to blight the Casshern premise too much, it’s perhaps easier to talk of the film rather than attempt to explain it, consequently Casshern, like many Asian films, is far too original and diverse to be lethargically pigeonholed. The film’s narrative, perhaps struggling with the wealth of information in the original series, falls all over the place and never fully reveals itself, this discombobulation - intentionally or not - is one of Casshern’s strongest points, and treats the audience to some of the most lavish – albeit CGI lavish – sequences ever created on film. It plays almost as a Sci-Fi opera, at times baffling, but consistently dazzling; it transcends the stereotypes that Western cinema is too frightened to dispel, and reaches a higher plateau of filmmaking.
Former music-video director and first-time feature film writer / director Kazuaki Kiriya manages to use his green-screen to quite astounding effect without being buried underneath the mammoth story-scape the film travels through its 142 minutes. True enough, there are moments in the film that don’t quite work in any logical way – where did Burai (Toshiaki Karasawa) pull that robot army from? – but any equivocates of authenticity are quickly silenced by the visual fireworks and the incredible soundtrack. Casshern, then, inhabits that place in the mind with half-remembered dreams and surrealisms.
Casshern is a film that will either be overlooked for its inability to be easily defined, or celebrated, as it should be, for being a truly awe-inspiring piece of cinema, both visually and artistically. A film that dares to push into new territory and to disregard the commercial restraints. A film that has more heart and ambition than anything offered in a long time. And who would have thought, Paul Ross was right.