Eureka

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Specifically Aoyami's four hour epic film released this year, Eureka. Shot in an immaculate sepia and black print, weaving in and out of black and white (eventually emerging in a new dawn of colour) this film plays out very little on a very large scale. A bus driver and two adolescents are embroiled in a bus-jacking which results in the death of all the other passengers. The bus driver resigns himself to death, falling to his knees offering himself up. He eventually retreats into a wilderness only to emerge two years later/ A lot of the scenes consist in very little dialogue (two of the main characters are 'mute') with the effect that it feels like the film is occuring in real time (where it not for the sun going up and down). The beauty of the film's slow poetry is easily understood but the motivations of the characters less so.

Why are the two main characters mute? They don't speak any words before the incident therefore we are unsure as to whether they are rendered mute or mute from birth. Why does the brother start murdering young gilrs after the bus-jacking? Why does the bus driver punch the adolescents' cousin when he suggests the young boy is in the best place when he is sent to prison?

Can anyone explain this to me? The film comes across as a small, hermetically sealed miracle but I can't decode some of the action.

Why, oh why? Any other comments etc.

― David, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

you mean this thread isn't about naked greek guys running down the stereet...damn

― goeff, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

According to the publicity postcard I picked up when I went to see 'Eureka' - "Shinji Aoyama was inspired to make his film while reflecting on the shock and trauma suffered in his homeland in the aftermath of calamities such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway and the rash of violent, senseless crimes presently on the rise in Japan."

You might also want to ponder the use of 'Ghosts' by Albert Ayler on the S/T.

― Andrew L, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Hey, you should warn people about those spoilers! Anyway --

One of the greatest things I've seen in the past four years, actually: I was well beyond floored by this film. I took -- and I thought this was fairly explicit -- the brother's murders as an operation of violence spawning violence, essentially, or at least a sense of trauma as contagious, a sense that people who are damaged will damage in turn. The parallel struggle here came in the form of the detective's having precisely this expectation about the bus driver, which was a neat narrative trick: the audience fervently hopes this isn't true of the driver, and is both (vindicated)/(given hope) and (disappointed)/(given fear) by the discovery that it's the child. It's nothing if not a story about those two possibilities, and how they can be navigated.

― Nitsuh, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Yeh, I'm just thick.

― David, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

eleven months pass...

"A tidal wave is coming; soon we will all be swept away."

― Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 13 January 2003 21:58 (twenty-one years ago) link

hello, hello, can you hear me?
is the sky clear and sunny down there?
even in this rain a breath of it reaches me here...

[ps: i always heard it as "even in the rainbow's breadth"... how twee of me]

― gygax!, Monday, 13 January 2003 22:04 (twenty-one years ago) link

I was impressed with this film while at the same time disliking it very much. I was lucky to have seen it all, I suppose, since the Shooting Gallery closed down recently. There are some interesting experiments in depth staging here, and the photography is lovely, but the story was entirely unconvincing. It felt like a hipster's fantasy of what these people might be like--the bus driver, the children. I think the film was helpful in that it revealed to me the bankrupcy of some contemporary "art film" tropes.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 13 January 2003 22:15 (twenty-one years ago) link

Incidentally this film is out on DVD in the UK, and also in Japan in a beautiful edition if you can spare the change.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 13 January 2003 22:16 (twenty-one years ago) link

That is the best film/music synthesis ever, when that track drifts in.

The DVD I got has a huge black border for housing the subtitles.

― Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 13 January 2003 22:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

That is the best film/music synthesis ever

Do you mean the Albert Ayler or the Jim O'Rourke music (the movie is named after O'Rourke's album)?

The best film/music synthesis I know is Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, which I just rewatched last night.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 13 January 2003 22:22 (twenty-one years ago) link

Sorry, yeah, the way Jim O'Rourke's music just sails in seamless quietl into the fray; I always thought that song sounded like the theme to a Japanese ghost ship anyway.

― Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 13 January 2003 22:25 (twenty-one years ago) link

My gut instinct was to say "unconvincing? No way" but then I realized me being convinced = it played out like a Murakami book, which was fine enough for me.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 13 January 2003 22:49 (twenty-one years ago) link

If you liked Eureka an even (much) better film with something of a similar style is Carlos Reygadas's Japón. If it ever finds a distributor, see it!

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 13 January 2003 22:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

Can I get that (Japon) on DVD in the UK?

― Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 13 January 2003 23:05 (twenty-one years ago) link

No, it's been playing festivals for about a year but per the IMDB (if it is to be trusted) will open in the UK this February:

Netherlands 27 January 2002 (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
France 17 May 2002 (Cannes Film Festival)
Russia 26 June 2002 (Moscow Film Festival)
Belgium 4 July 2002 (Cinedecouvertes Age D'or Film Festival Brussels)
Czech Republic 8 July 2002 (Karlovy Vary Film Festival)
Canada 6 September 2002 (Toronto Film Festival)
Belgium 2 October 2002
Ireland 12 October 2002 (Cork International Film Festival)
Poland 10 January 2003
France 15 January 2003
UK 21 February 2003

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 13 January 2003 23:13 (twenty-one years ago) link

two months pass...

Run, do not walk, run and see Japon.

― Cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 20:10 (twenty-one years ago) link

three months pass...

Or rather, don't.

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 12:18 (twenty years ago) link

You didn't like?

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 14:11 (twenty years ago) link

Oh no, it was OK. The story was slow and pointless, acting and camera work were beyond shittyness most of the time, but the film had its moments. All I'm saying is that I would have liked it more if I hadn't run to the cinema.

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 17:48 (twenty years ago) link

I thought the camerawork was often quite amazing. The Solaris-inspired sequence with the Arvo Part and the dying horse etc. was a bit much.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 17:56 (twenty years ago) link

six years pass...

I am searching to source some incredible 2nd line footage featuring the Eureka Brass Band. None of the major libraries seem to recognize it...so I'm throwing it out to fans to help with the hunt...

― klthorson, Thursday, 28 January 2010 20:39 (fourteen years ago) link

didn't understand a gd minute of this. theresa russell was p hot tho

― free the charmless but occasionally brilliant Dom Passantino (history mayne), Friday, 29 January 2010 00:46 (fourteen years ago) link

me neither but still, it's a fun ride.

― jed_, Friday, 29 January 2010 00:59 (fourteen years ago) link

three months pass...

you can look around kyushu on streetview. i wanted to go there after seeing this anyhow.

has anyone seen anything else of aoyama's?

― Earning your Masters in Library and Information Science is beautiful (schlump), Monday, 24 May 2010 11:51 (thirteen years ago) link

two years pass...

some weeks i can't get this film out of my head. even its potential corniness/melodrama is transformed into something else. it speaks to me, maaaan.

― Sarushima baby jive (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 14:51 (eleven years ago) link

yeah i was thinking about it the other day, it's a beautiful film

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 16 April 2013 14:53 (eleven years ago) link

i've seen Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? (2005) his film about some apocalyptically inclined noise dudes which i don't remember well but it was rather good without approaching eureka

the rest of his recent work seems quite mainstream going by the synopses, i am mindful of watching some of them eventually but i retain the hope he returns to the long take 4 hour sepiatone elegies

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 16 April 2013 14:59 (eleven years ago) link

yeah i don't know why i haven't tracked down anything else he's done. i guess Eureka feels like a spectacular one-off in many ways, and as i say you can easily imagine it slipping into excess if it wasn't for the fantastic pacing and the spooked-out tone

― Sarushima baby jive (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 15:06 (eleven years ago) link

my favourite film of the 2000s probably

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 16 April 2013 15:08 (eleven years ago) link

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