Today marks the third
anniversary of the death of director Satoshi Kon on what would have
been his 50th year. In honour of this fact, this post will
briefly discuss the tragedy of his death, and the ways in which Kon
as a director explored the animated medium in both ingenious and
multifaceted ways.
Kon’s death was tragic
on many levels; dying at such a young age would be awful enough,
irrelevant of his artistic abilities, but the fact that he was never
able to reach his full potential as a filmmaker is perhaps more
tragic to the world at large. I fully believe that had he lived he
would have become one of the most significant figures in animation.
The word ‘genius’ tends to be excessively used these days, but I
honestly believe that, if Kon wasn’t a genius, then he
certainly would have developed into one. His films often explored the
conventions and philosophies of live-action film but did so through a
unique approach to animation. He made films that on first glance were
essentially ‘live-action films that were drawn’, replicating real
life filming techniques, treating characters as if they were solid
actors existing in a real pro-filmic space. Yet just below the
surface, it was apparent that Kon was really exploring the
possibilities of the animated image; replicating live-action only
helped to emphasise just how utterly different the animated film is
to the live-action one. But these films were not simply academic
exercises in the possibilities of animation to explore perception –
they remained engaging character-driven narratives, rarely slipping
into the realms of artistic self-indulgence. Both Tokyo
Godfathers and Millennium Actress are heartfelt
stories about characters dealing in different ways with their past
actions. The focus on both of these films is the emotional landscape
of the characters, their relationships and their memories. But this
exploration utilises the animated form completely, doubling and
fracturing the characters in order to explore their identities. Past,
present, dream, reality, individual personality and collective
unconscious all become undifferentiated in Kon’s stories, which are
always more complex than they appear on first viewing.
Another tragedy of Kon’s
death is that his final film, The Dreaming Machines,
will probably remain unfinished. Though animation studio Madhouse
announced their intentions to continue production after his death,
the film seems to have fallen by the wayside, a victim of financial
and creative issues. But most tragically of all, for me at least, is
the fact that Kon seems destined to be remembered for his two weakest
films. When news of his death first broke, the comments left up on
websites message boards over the internet reiterated more or less the
same general sentiment: ‘I wasn’t really fond of Perfect
Blue or Paprika but he clearly had the talent to grow
as an artist’. I don’t wish to paint either of these films as
‘weak’ in any objective sense, as I think that they’re both
very good in that they achieve by and large precisely what they set
out to achieve (indeed, each time I watch Perfect Blue I’m
struck by just how well directed it is – the film’s biggest flaw
is its ending… but that critique will have to wait for another
post). But neither one is as complex or rewarding as Tokyo
Godfathers, Millennium Actress or the best
episodes of the television series Paranoia Agent.
Although there is a tendency among the ‘experts’ to place more
emphasis on these less well-known films (several academic books and
journals have analysed Millennium Actress as Kon’s ‘magnum
opus’ because… well, it is), the general public will probably
always remember him for his two most obviously ‘genre’ films. If,
after his death, Hayao Miyazaki were to end up being remembered for
Kiki’s Delivery Service – perfectly good
film though it is – we would think that his memory was being
severely sold short. The same is the case with Kon.
But to demonstrate that I
do still think his brilliance is at work even in these two more
‘obvious’ films, I will now present a very brief analysis of the
complexities of image that are apparent in the opening credit
sequence of Paprika, his final finished film. Much like any
Kon film, on the surface the animation appears to be a
straightforward replication of live-action filmmaking aesthetics. The
opening five-minute sequence has two characters traverse through a
variety of overtly cinematic scenarios – homages to spy movies,
screwball comedies and Tarzan all bleed into one another – playing
like a love-letter to classic era Hollywood. But as the opening
credit sequence itself begins, we can see Kon’s more significant
concern – the possibilities of the animated image in comparison to
the live-action one – come to the fore. In a live-action film, we
see a real three-dimensional space that has been recorded and
projected on to a flat surface. But with the hand-drawn animated
film, we see a depiction of space – a flat surface that only
gives the impression of depth. This fundamental difference between
the two is Kon’s central conceit throughout the sequence.
To begin, there is an
immediately blurring between the diegetic space of the fictional
world and the extra-diegetic information of the credits. Placing the
credits within the story-world is an idea that Kon uses in Tokyo
Godfathers and each of the episodes of Paranoia Agent, and
here the names of the various people involved in the production of
the film are ‘projected’ into the world of that film. This gives
the impression that the surface of the image is actually a space
through which this light can traverse and contains solid objects that
this projected light can hit. As can be seen in the images above, the
words are themselves presented as if they are warped by uneven
surfaces, emphasising the impression of space and depth within the
surface of the image. This is of course an illusion, as the faces,
vehicles and buildings are all themselves flat depictions and the
projected words are equally flat. But the combination of the two
draws attention to this illusory nature of the animated image.
When Paprika, the titular
character riding the scooter, passes in front of a painted image on
the side of a truck, she suddenly becomes that image, which comes to
life and she blasts off of the surface into the space above the
cityscape. Again, what we have in reality is one single flat surface,
carefully crafted to create the impression of different layers of
spaces and surfaces. This in itself is common enough in animated
films. But it is Paprika’s own movement across these layers that
highlights their multifaceted nature. The image on the truck is not
simply a depiction on a flat surface, but a flat depiction of a
three-dimensional space containing a flat surface which depicts a
rocket which takes off into another flat surface depicting a
three-dimensional space.
Immediately following
this we are presented another movement that creates complex
relationships between depicted surfaces and spaces. Paprika appears
as a character on a billboard on top of a skyscraper. She is depicted
standing behind a man but then decides to get up and move in to the
adjoining billboard advertising beer on a beach. She moves into the
new space, turns, reaches and picks up the glass and moves off out of
sight. The fact that the shot is composed in the way that it is,
looking down from a high angle, and the fact that the two buildings
are not aligned emphasises the games of spatial perception that Kon
is playing. We have a flat surface depicting a space containing two
buildings, the angle of which creates an even greater sense of depth.
But on top of each building are flat surfaces which depict two other
spaces. By moving across, Paprika unites the two disparate flat
depictions into a new continuous three-dimensional space. The
billboards become windows through which we can look into this
illusory-space-within-illusory-space (mirroring the way in which the
cinema screen appears to be a window into a fully-realised diegetic
world).
In the next sequence,
Paprika moves from the surface of a computer screen in to the room
containing the computer. The movement is on one level a simple shift
from flat surface to three-dimensional space, but it also, like the
billboards, creates a new space out of a surface. She is behind the
screen, but at the same time she is in front of the information being
displayed on the screen, creating a gulf between the two layers
wherein she can exist. More importantly, because of the smooth
continuity of her movement, the office space behind the partition
from which she emerges becomes collapsed into this virtual space.
Initially we have a single surface depicting an office space, within
which there are other flat surfaces, the partition and in front of
that the computer screen. But Paprika’s brief movement transforms
the image into a depiction of a virtual space containing a virtual
layer. The flat surfaces of the computer screen and partition become
a single layer in front of Paprika, while the visual information on
the computer and the office become an expansive space behind her. In
live-action, where the space would be real and not depicted and a
surface could not be a space simultaneously, such visual complexity
would be difficult, if not impossible, to pull off.
Next, Paprika emphasises
the three-dimensional space by de-emphasising herself as a flat
surface. Like the film’s credits, she is projected into the world
from somewhere else. As she skips down the hallway, unseen by the
security guard walking in the opposite direction, we can see that she
is not a solid object within that depicted space, but rather a flat
projection that warps as it moves along the different surfaces of the
hallway. She is not a flat image moving across a surface (as she is
on the side of the truck), or a solid figure moving through a surface
depiction as if it were space (as she does on the
billboards), she is a flat image moving through a three-dimensional
space. Or, at least, she is if we view the hallway as a space rather
than a surface depiction of space. Paprika’s own flatness and the
fact that she seems to move through the hallway-as-a-space
rather than over the hallway-as-a-depiction emphasises
multitude of possible ways of reading the animated image. At the very
end of the shot, she is momentarily projected over the guard, at once
emphasising his solidity and existence within a space but also
reminding us of the flatness of the surface image.
Toward the end of the
credits sequence, Paprika escapes from the unwanted amorous attention
of a couple of young men by jumping behind another man on
rollerskates. The man skates towards the camera and we see Paprika is
now an image on his shirt. As he rides into the camera, the depicted
space on his shirt becomes a three-dimensional space for Paprika. Or,
more accurately, the surface that depicts the space of the street
contains within it the depicted surface of the shirt image which then
becomes a surface depicting a new space(!). Like the computer screen
in the office earlier, the space surrounding the surface of
the shirt and the space depicted on the surface of the shirt
become collapsed into a single continuous space for Paprika. But
while in the office sequence the computer screen could almost be seen
as a window allowing us to see through the partition into the space
behind, here the notion of ‘in front’ and ‘behind’ are
rendered void. If we view the surface of the shirt as a window
through which we can see the space beyond, this means that the space
Paprika is in is behind the space of the street. The image on
the shirt therefore would be not only a window through the surface of
the shirt but also through the space of the street. So, if she starts
out in the space of the street and jumps behind the
man, how could Paprika end up behind the street? We are, of course,
not meant to think these sorts of questions of spatial continuity as
we watch – but I would like to think that this interrogation of the
animated image, as a depiction of space rather than as actual space,
is more than simply over-thinking on my part. These kinds of visual
games are at play in numerous animated films. Just think of Wile E.
Coyote painting a tunnel on to a brick wall, only for the Roadrunner
to run into the depicted tunnel, transforming the surface into
a space.
At the very last moment
before the man on skates runs into the screen, Paprika jumps to get
from one image (on the shirt) to the next (in the street). Her arms
extend beyond the frame of the shirt’s image, making it look as if
she has jumped out of the shirt. In fact, she has jumped from
the depicted street on the surface of the shirt into the space of the
street depicted on the surface image of the film. For Paprika as a
character, much like the Roadrunner, the distinction between surface
depiction and depicted space becomes redundant. She behaves as if she
knows that space is just a flat depiction on a surface and therefore
all surfaces within that depiction are fair game to treat as space.
What I have analysed here constitutes a brief three-minute opening
sequence that plays with the differences between the depiction (the
surface image) and the fiction that it depicts (the space of the
story world). These complexities exist almost entirely on the level
of image here. The rest of the film – not to mention Kon’s other
works in general – plays with this interplay in even more
complicated ways, where characterisation and narrative events are
intertwined with this manipulation of image layers, where real and
unreal, dream and memory, depiction and fiction become inexorably
bound up within the same concept.
And that is one of
the reasons why Satoshi Kon will be sorely missed.
- P. S.
