NYFF: Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Before We Vanish"
Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 11:00PM by Jason Adams
I want you to close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes, and picture Love. Not Valentine's Day Heart Cards or little sugary candies that say Eat Me, and not the faces of the people you've held hands with on cold afternoon walks, although the latter will probably help you on your way of getting there. I want you to picture the entire concept of Love. The warmth and the palpable agony of it - the electricity of fingertips and further parts intertwining and entangling, and the aftershock of separation - the whole dang lot.
Now I want you to imagine the violence of all of that being torn out of your body...
It's appropriate that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's emotional alien invasion movie Before We Vanish begins with great violence, a bloodied room full of bodies and a multi-car pile-up, because it wants nothing less in the end than to rend our souls - it just takes a circuitous route to get there, like aliens swerving through outer space, cartoonishly banging and bouncing off of the stars.
To be sure it's a sneak attack. For most of its run-time the movie feels more like an art-house friendly Earth Girls Are Easy than it ever does the latest Invasion of the Body Snatchers I had planned seeing. We're immediately plunked down in a Japanese city with a trio of aliens who need to first figure out our culture before they can take over our world - they do this by cutting through the chit-chat and swiping right (these are definitely 21st century aliens) across people's brains, robbing them of complex thoughts like Family, or Self, or yes eventually Love.
Kurosawa is assiduously pondering What Makes Us Human via Fantastic genre tropes, with big brawling slapstick fights and slow-motion drone wars somewhat awkwardly mimicking human emotions - it's kind of like we're in the hands of somebody who's creating in real-time alongside these confused (yet most certainly malevolent) creatures. There's a disconnect at times (okay, a lot of times) but it kinda (mostly) feels purposeful - This Is What Stories Are Like, says The Spaceman. Now give them to me, give them to me, give them to me now. It creeps up on ya, blows away the smoke and cinder, and stings.
Grade: B-
Before We Vanish is screening at the New York Film Festival on September 30th and October 1st.
Reader Comments (3)
I am mixed on K.Kurosawa. He has made one undeniable masterpiece, Tokyo Sonata, and some intriguing movies like Cure and Pulse, but most of the time I don't connect with his movies AT ALL.
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