🎬 #150 Isolation In The City.

I’ve never read any manga before but I started reading ‘Blame!’ recently. It’s a pretty wild read, minimalist storytelling - stunning architectural design that is almost nightmarish in scale. And that’s the whole concept behind it - this megastructure that humans find themselves in is so large they can’t fathom its scale. And because populations are so sparsely spread out across it, it makes the environment more alienating. Nothing is human scale but feels more like god scale. An oppressive, gigantic force that the protagonist is wandering about on his mission. It got me thinking about films that deal with similar themes - an environment that isn’t build to serve the best sides of humanity but is designed to functionally cope with pure scale, pure numbers. Often at the demise of the soft-tissued organisms that call it home.

Happy choosing, happy viewing

Bry

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FILM ONE: AIR DOLL

2009 Dir Hirokazu Koreeda
2 hrs 5 mins

Think of Air Doll as a dark but beautiful, Tokyo set version of Pinocchio. An inflatable sex doll comes to life, gets a soul and learns about life through a variety of characters she encounters in the neighbourhood where her ‘owner’ lives. Her innocent curiosity leads her to encounter a video store where she falls in love with one of the guys who works there. Soon she has her own job and their love deepens even if he seems coldly detached from her.

It’s this persistent sense of isolation that pervades the film and influences all the character’s lives. Even when she describes that she has ‘nothing inside’ to a human man next to her on a bench, he says the same and that most people in a city like this feel the same way. It’s in this moment ironically that she feels less alone by being part of a mass emptiness, a collective ennui. A place obsessed with disposable-ness, rubbish collection, and placing humanity in boxes to live in - we’re constantly reminded of the city and its impact on its inhabitants - it feels we’re all just part of some system that we can’t grasp. But even in that system there is a lot of beauty to be found.

TL;DR: Koreeda’s fantasy drama is beautifully tragic and a potent reminder of how we all need real connection.

*Available for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and the UK.

Fact: The lead character’s [the air doll] name Nozomi means ‘hope’ in Japanese - it’s also the name of the newest Shinkansen in Japan.

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FILM TWO: BLADE RUNNER

1982 Dir Ridley Scott
1 hr 57 mins

Many people’s favourite film and the scene pictured above is potentially my favourite in any film - it’s iconic for a reason. The soul of this film and what makes it special is that it’s the replicants - the non-humans who really understand what it means to be alive. They understand the preciousness of life, hence why they want more of it, having been engineered with a short life span as a safety measure.

They’re disposable to the society that engineered them and yet Batty [pictured above] is capable of love, capable of great violence, capable of facing death when it comes with honour - reciting one of the most poignant monologues in film history in the process. Encapsulating the experiences of a short life and the transience that makes living special in just 42 words.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Enjoy the scene, as great as the words are, alone, they don’t do it justice.

It’s moving because this replicant - a non-human, understands how we all feel. No matter how ‘large’ our lives are, no matter what we’ve experienced, time is fleeting and we can do nothing to stop it - both the painful and beautiful part of being alive. Batty remains statue-like, just another structure amongst the monolithic cityscape, a life lost in an ever-expanding ocean of architecture.

TL;DR: Blade Runner gets to the heart of what being human is, through the eyes of someone ‘born’ without a soul.

*Available to rent on Microsoft in the US and on Amazon and Netflix in the UK.

Fact: The ‘shining eyes’ effect was achieved through a process invented by Fritz Lang and his cinematographer.