By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 29, 2008)
One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.
-Jean Luc Goddard
A mixed-up mix
Mix up your journey to the next journey
Mixers rock
-DJ Takefumi, from the film Funky Forest: The First Contact
So, do you think you’ve seen it all? I would venture to say that you haven’t- until you’ve sat through a screening of Funky Forest: The First Contact, originally released in 2005 as Naisu no mori in Japan but now available for the first time on Region 1 DVD.
The film is a collaborative effort by three Japanese directors, most notably Katsuhito Ishii (The Taste of Tea). Ishii, along with Hajime Ishimine and Shunichiro Miki, has concocted a heady “mixed-up-mix”, indeed. There is really no logical way to describe this blend of dancing, slapstick, surrealism, sci-fi, animation, absurdist humor, and experimental film making, married to a hip soundtrack of jazz, dub and house music without sounding like I’m high (perhaps I already sound that way in a lot of my posts…nest ce pas?), but I will do my best.
There is no real central “story” in the traditional sense; the film is more or less a network narrative, featuring recurring characters a la late night TV sketch comedy. Some of these disparate stories and characters do eventually intersect (although in somewhat obtuse fashion). The film is a throwback in some ways to comedy anthologies from the 70s like The Groove Tube, Tunnel Vision and The Kentucky Fried Movie; although be forewarned that the referential comic sensibilities are very Japanese. If a Western replica of this project were produced, it would require collaboration between Jim Jarmusch, Terry Gilliam and David Cronenberg (and a script from Charlie Kaufman).
Although there are no “stars” of the film, there are quite a few memorable vignettes featuring three oddball siblings, introduced as “The Unpopular With Women Brothers”. The barbed yet affectionate bickering between the hopelessly geeky Katsuichi, the tone-deaf, guitar strumming Masuru (aka “Guitar Brother”) and the pre-pubescent Masao, as they struggle with dissecting the mystery of how to get “chicks” to dig them is reminiscent of the dynamic between the uncle and the two brothers in Napoleon Dynamite and often quite funny. It is never explained why the obese, Snickers-addicted Masao happens to be a Caucasian; but then, the whole concept wouldn’t be so absurdly funny, would it?
The vignettes centering on the relationship between Notti and Takefumi, a platonic couple, come closest to conventional narrative structure. Then there are the 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights-influenced trio of giggly “Babbling Hot Springs Vixens”, who tell each other tall stories in three segments entitled “Alien Piko Rico”, “The Big Ginko Tree” and my personal favorite, “Buck Naked and the Panda”.
You will need to clear some time-Funky Forest runs 2½ hours long, in all its challenging, non-linear glory. So is it worth your time? Well, it probably depends on your answer to this age-old question: Does a movie necessarily have to be “about” something to be enjoyable? At one point in the film, Takefumi goes into a soliloquy:
The turntable is the cosmos
A universe in each album
A journey, an adventure
A journey, a true adventure
Journey, adventure
Journey
Needles rock. Needles rock.
Music mixer and the mix
There is another clue on the film’s intermission card, which reads: “End of Side A”. This may be the key to unlocking the “meaning” of this film, which is, there is no meaning. Perhaps life, like the the movie, is best represented by a series of random needle drops. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey (OK, now I think I am stoned.) With a spirit of winking goofiness running throughout all of this weirdness, perhaps the filmmakers are paraphrasing something Mork from Ork once offered about retaining “a bit of mondo bozo”. God knows, it’s helped me get through 52 years on this silly planet.