The Red Spectacles (1987)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

I learned about the existence of this movie after watching Ghost In The Shell. Being a fan of the franchise, I thought other work from Mamoru Oshii would be at least as good. So, I stumbled upon Red Spectacles. Inspired by "1984" it said, so my interest was picking up. And then I watched it and was left disappointed, to say the least.I'm not going to say why I like Ghost.. because this review will turn into review of the anime. Japanese anime and movies have tendencies to confuse the one watching more often than not, and while this is not always a good thing, there is always something that grips you to try to understand it. This movie is just confusing, and there never is a sign that something is going to happen that will explain things. It's just more confusing junk piling over at every corner, intertwined by pretentious quoting of Shakespeare and toilet humor.Yes, toilet humor. There are scenes actually when the protagonist is struck by diarrhea. While the first time this happens it is amusing and you can attribute it to the quirkiness of Japanese culture, but by the third time you come to question the the director's fascination with it.Second thing i don't get is why is considered dystopian, Orwellian, and other words connected with that meaning. At the beginning, it really sets the story in that direction. But by the end, (here come spoilers), you realize it may all be happening in the protagonists head. So why exactly am i watching this? It reminds me of another also pretentious western movie with Tim Robbins now that i think about it...The only thing that made me give this movie 4/10 is the visual style, witch were this a different movie with actual plot would be great, and the score by Kenji Kawai. Besides that, nothing makes this movie worth your time.

This is, for lack of a better term, an art film. This should be said from the start, because while many of Oshii's anime films are of a philosophical bent, they hew closely enough to convention to appeal to mainstream movie fans. This film probably does not.Judging the film as a whole, it makes some interesting philosophical points and pays off at the end. The question is whether this payoff is enough to justify what went before. I am not sure about this.Normally one assesses a confusing film that can only be fully grasped at the end by looking at that film's secondary characteristics.Judged as an art film, the movie's technique is expert, but it is not so innovative or visually compelling so as to justify the film by itself. There is nothing wrong with the acting in this movie, but it is not so compelling that it shifts one's focus from the film as a whole.Judged as a more commercial or mainstream film, this movie is distinctive for its emphasis on humor. That humor is an old-fashioned form of slapstick however, and while this will make the film for some people, if you do not especially like this form of humor, then the fact that it is placed in a confusing and rather dark movie will prevent the individual bits of humor from coalescing into a funny unity greater than the sum of the parts.The one thing that cannot be denied or dismissed, is that this film is an original one, and is philosophical without being preachy. If this is enough, then you are certain to be satisfied.

I watched the trilogy by Mamoru Oshii. The words surreal, Orwellian and Kafkaesque come to mind. However, despite all their bizarre aspects I believe they are essentially jokes. The darkness was there as a chiaroscuro backdrop to highlight the humor. The first, Red Spectacles, is about a man who can not let go of his past not matter how painful and dangerous it was because he never felt more alive that when he was facing death. The second, Stray Dog, shows that man during an interim period when he seems to be almost at peace, being brought back to that death-seeking modus operandi which precipitates the events of the first film. The third film, Talking Head, while not directly related to the events of the first two, does refer back to them as a man attempts to create truth out of illusion. The idea is that film, as an art form, is essentially an exercise in madness and that illusion is finally a higher truth, an idea that was touched on in the first film. But it is the humor that is Oshii's ultimate goal. He doesn't want to make highly significant pronouncements on the nature of humanity and reality. He just wants to tell a story, and if the story is funny, all the better. I suppose that many parallels could be drawn between Oshii's work and that of Philip K. Dick.

RED SPECTACLES starts typically enough for an Oshii film. First of all it is based on the same manga that much later inspired JIN-ROH so the power suits seen right at the beginning of SPECTACLES will look very familiar to those who've seen that later film. It is also shot in a very desaturated way, kind of similar to AVALON in how it is almost monochromatic. In a series of texts on screen we are introduced to a future world where an elite police force has just been disbanded and forced to disarm. Three officers refused to give up their weapons and it's their fate that this film will mostly be about. They hole up in a dilapidated building and are soon attacked by dozens of civilians who are out to collect the bounty that has been put on their heads. However, with their superior guns they mow them down like so much corn at the time of reaping. But still, only one of them can continue his escape as the other two (a man and a woman) are badly wounded. They make him promise that he'll eventually return and he's off.The rest of the film is about his return and his adventures in a very changed city. But I was in for a big surprise! If I thought this would be a typically gloomy and melancholic Oshii film at the beginning I soon realized with utter amazement that this is one hell of a weird hybrid of a film. Yes, there are a lot of typical Oshii-esquire moments of philosophizing and melancholy but for every such scene you get one in which the hero suffers from diarrhea and runs around making silly faces while looking for a toilet. There are a total of 3 (!!!) scenes of that in the film and they are acted, filmed and scored (by the once again brilliant Kenji Kawai) like a post-modern Japanese take on LAUREL & HARDY. And to make things even stranger there are also entire scenes set on a theatrical stage! Oshii resorts to simply filming the actors acting like they were in a play, sometimes even resorting to pantomime! Awesome, just awesome! Then, towards the end of the film it takes a turn for the surreal that I won't spoil but it involves a girl who may or may not represent fate, BLADE RUNNER skylines and the mysterious contents of a suitcase.Well, what can I say? When I popped in this DVD I expected Oshii's patented brand of beautiful and cultivated tedium but instead I got what could possibly be described as a bizarre hybrid of URUSEI YATSURA and GHOST IN THE SHELL with elements of the films of David Lynch thrown in for good measure. I found the film to be extremely ahead of the time it was made in. Even after 15 years RED SPECTACLES still feels fresh and intriguing and thoroughly modern. Which is only further testament to the genius of Mamoru Oshii, who is simply one of the most exciting filmmakers to emerge out of Asia in the last 2 decades.