films, page 27 of 31

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005) is a film at the artier end of the spectrum. The filmmakers, the Brothers Quay, have done stop-motion puppet animated films and ballet before, and this, their second feature-length film has a definite theatrical feel (in the obvious artificiality of the sets, for instance), and incorporates some stop-motion animation.

The film has a dark, fairy-tale feel. Most of the action takes place on the estate of Dr Droz, where he is supposedly rehabilitating patients with psychiatric problems, but his main focus seems to be building a series of automata that play out little musical scenes. Droz calls on the services of a super-sensitive piano tuner to prepare these automata for a grand performance, and the tuner becomes fascinated with a voice he hears singing in the night, as well as a deeply withdrawn female “patient” of the doctor’s that, from the film’s prologue, we know is a famous opera singer who died (or was killed by Dr Droz) on the night before her wedding, and who Droz has re-animated so as to use her voice in one of his automata.

Plenty strange, and all the better for it. But ultimately the film disappoints in that it doesn’t resolve as a story. On a lengthy interview-extra on the DVD, the Quay twins lament the fact that their film has come under criticism for this reason, and ask why people can’t just accept its non-traditional story structure. But I think the reason people (certainly I) expected more of a story-like ending is that it has such a story-like beginning (the prologue, where we see the death of the opera singer), and such a fairy-tale air that we feel we’re being promised a traditional resolution, even if a dark one.

Tony Takitani is a shortish (1 hour 16 minutes) adaptation of a story by one of my favourite writers, Haruki Murakami. It’s not one of his best or most characteristic stories, nor is it particularly cinematic. It is, though, less explicitly weird than most of his stuff, so perhaps that’s why it has been chosen to be filmed (or that’s why it has been successful, anyway, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival).

It’s basically a story about loneliness. (Spoilers ahead.) Because of his western-sounding name, Tony Takitani gets used to receiving odd looks from people as a kid, and so stays away from them. But he doesn’t mind the solitude till he grows up and suddenly falls in love with a woman who is perfect for him in every way except for her uncontrollable obsession with buying clothes. Their married life is blissful till Tony suggests she might try to not buy so many. Tragedy ensues, and Tony is left alone once more. There is then a very Murakami-esque “transaction” in which a woman comes along and, left alone in the large wardrobe room with all of Tony’s dead wife’s clothes, she becomes a sort of conduit for the sadness of the whole situation and cries for no real reason she can understand.

The tone of the film is a lot more bleak than the written story, perhaps because it doesn’t have Murakami’s easy-going, lightly humorous prose to buoy it up, but other than that the adaptation is very faithful — perhaps too much so, as most of the film is carried along by an overdubbed narration. There’s only one really cinematic moment where the film does something the story can’t, and that’s where a scene of Tony lying on the floor of the now-empty wardrobe room cuts to the image of his father lying in an identical position in a prison cell where he was held in China, making you see the parallels between the father’s and son’s lives, and also pointing out how Tony’s loneliness is a prison as limiting as the physical cell in which his father was held.

Would I recommend it? Well, I went into the plot of the film pretty thoroughly because I doubt anyone who isn’t into Murakami will really want to see the film, and anyone who is into Murakami will probably have read the story (it’s in his latest collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman) so there’ll be no surprises anyway. Basically, not bad, quite moody if you’re up for a quiet, sad film, but otherwise, for Murakami completists only.

Zathura is, essentially, a space version of Jumanji. Both films are about a magical game whose every turn throws its players into a series of fantastical events or challenges based around a certain theme. (With Jumanji it was jungles. Both films are adaptations of books by US childrens’ author Chris Van Allsburg.) In Zathura, once young Danny has wound up the clockwork game and pressed the battered “GO” button, their father’s house is transported into space and subjected to, amongst other things, a robot rampage, attack by Zorgons, and a visit from a passing astronaut.

It’s plenty of fun. I liked the banter between bickering brothers Danny and Walter (“That’s your robot?” “At least I’ve got a robot”), and the whole thing came close to conjuring that special excitement you feel at a certain age when you see films and totally get lost in some zany little world of pure adventure. (Which happened for me with The Goonies in 1985.)

But it doesn’t really have much substance. Once the game gets going, for a while it just feels like a bunch of disconnected episodes. It only starts to develop a more emotionally meaningful strand with the appearance of the astronaut, whose identity eventually provides a somewhat mind-boggling twist. Also, despite being set in space, the film has a more closed-in feel than Jumanji, because although you get the occasional awe-inspiring shot of an enormous planet or sun, the action is basically limited to the house. There’s quite a funny suspense moment when the older brother, Walter, gets a wish, just after arguing with his brother for the n-th time, but aside from that, once its hour and a half is over — and unless you’re a kid — Zathura doesn’t really linger, aside from a distinct feeling of having just had some fun.