Tokyo! (2008)

Directed by: Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Joon-ho Bong | 107 minutes | comedy, drama, fantasy | Actors: Ayako Fujitani, Ryo Kase, Denis Lavant, Jean-Francois Balmer, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yu Adi

What do you get when you commission three completely different filmmakers to make a film that has to take place in the middle of the daily hectic and anonymity of the big city? That is the purpose of the original ‘Tokyo!’ project, in which the directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Joon-ho Bong all work in their own way with the Japanese capital as the theme for their film. The results range from successful micro-portraits of the inhabitants to elusive abstraction.

In Michel Gondry’s ‘Interior Design’ we see Tokyo again as a busy metropolis, where people live at different times and have to survive amid the dynamics and many rules and procedures of the big city. Gondry mainly emphasizes the anonymity of a city like Tokyo. The young couple who star in his story must find their way in a world in which they seem powerless. Everything they need to survive (home, job, food) seems to be arranged by anonymous forces. All they can do is let themselves be carried away. This is especially hard on Hiroko. She has to live in the shadow of her boyfriend, who aspires to a career as a filmmaker. She herself prefers to spend her time cutting out nice pictures from magazines, but there seems to be no room for such an ambitious attitude in the big city. You are a cog in the bigger picture whether you like it or not. In the midst of this anonymity, however, Gondry manages to create a beautiful portrait of two people in the prime of their lives, who are still very much getting to know themselves. That’s what keeps his story optimistic. Even in the midst of the mechanics and superficiality of the city, people cannot avoid encountering themselves and confronting them. In a very bizarre way, by the way, but that’s something you have to see for yourself…

‘Merde’ by Leos Carax is of a completely different make. It is the strange story about a man who one day climbs out of the sewer, terrifies the inhabitants of Tokyo by eating their flowers and cash, among other things, and then disappears again. Only to resurface one day, but this time armed with some hand grenades. The international media is diving into the story, but no one seems to have the answer as to who this strange figure is. Carax tells his story in a completely inimitable way. The result is a film that is elusive. Is the sewer monster a metaphor for the west? Is it an enlargement of all the confused types one encounters in the city? Does he want to say something about the role of a city in identity formation? Or is it just a weird movie and shouldn’t we be looking too much into it? The director offers no solution. Carax does succeed in portraying his fantasies very nicely, with occasional special finds in camera work, editing and story structure. Whether that is enough for 45 minutes to enjoy a story that at most says something about the degree of alienation in a city, but otherwise remains a mystery, will depend heavily on the viewer.

Joon-ho Bong returns to the style used by Gondry with the closing piece ‘Shaking Tokyo’ and concludes with a portrait of a ‘hikikomori’, a modern hermit who lives in the middle of the city. His film therefore has slightly more social significance than Gondry’s, because he examines a phenomenon that actually exists in Japan. Young men and women who choose not to be part of society and withdraw into total isolation. In fact, the main character in Bong’s film hasn’t made eye contact with the delivery guys who bring him his daily necessities for over ten years. Until a sudden earthquake causes the attractive girl who delivers his pizza to pass out in his apartment. Now he has to make human contact. The rest of the film describes the man’s (we’ll never know his name) search for the girl, for which he will really have to leave his apartment. Bong portrays this in great detail and makes very good the nervousness that accompanies the hermit’s existence and its sudden disruption palpable. Small, everyday events, which most people would not even notice, suddenly have a major impact. A ray of sunlight, the touch of a fellow human being, going out into the street. All things that most of us don’t even think about, but which get a great charge in ‘Shaking Tokyo’.

‘Tokyo!’ is a film that is mainly characterized by its originality and will be appreciated by viewers who want to see something different from the standard image of Godzilla and Yakuza when it comes to this sweltering metropolis. Not all films are equally good and nowhere is there really any groundbreaking work, but the high degree of innovation among the directors ensures that this is more than compensated. With its emphasis on anonymity, alienation and isolation, perhaps not the most uplifting picture of a large city, but certainly a picture to think about.