How it is possible for a huge celebrity - which hugely popular comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto most certainly is - in a celebrity obsessed culture - a fixation which Matsumoto's native Japan certainly embraces - to make a film entirely under the radar is beyond me. And Matsumoto has done exactly that with his sophomore effort, Symbol. Yes, people have known it was in the works for a little while but even that much news didn't leak out until the film was deep into post production with the only substantive talk circulating revolving around how the film's producers had considered Symbol a lock for Cannes and were both shocked and very displeased when that proved not to be the case.
Matsumoto is arguably Japan's most popular comedian, with a huge and hugely loyal television following, a man who made his first foray into the international market a couple years back with the much loved - and very strange - Dai Nipponjin, released on these shores as Big Man Japan. There has been a website for Matsumoto's Symbol - a film that reunites the creative team from Dai Nipponjin - for some time now and I've been checking it two or three times a week just waiting for something that would let me know a little more as far as what this thing is actually about. Something like a trailer, for instance. Well, the first teaser has indeed arrived but instead of clarifying things now I'm even more perplexed.
I see only two ways of reading this trailer. Either Matsumoto has cooked up yet another slice of unorthodox genius or he has completely lost his grip and made something totally abstract and self indulgent. I really don't see a lot of other ways that this could go. Check out the teaser below the break and weigh in with your opinion.
Yes, with such a tease, one would either expect slice of genius or self indulgent abstraction... Hopefully though he doesn't pull a "post Dolls Kitano" on us so soon.
Whatever the final film turns out to be, the Cupid-esque statues coming out of the wall was quite neato.
The Kitano thing is exactly my fear. Dai Nipponjin was brilliant but already so abstract that it's not hard to see things going badly wrong if he tries to push a little farther and misjudges even slightly.
"post Zatoichi Kitano”
Fixed.
Todd, I think you've said everything that can be said on this. I have no response.
sitenoise, I think you’ve said everything that can be said on this. I have no response.
strangely, it could also be a quirky commercial. yep smelling cannes.
Very hallucinatory!!!
Completely terrifying.
I thought it was cheesy and not really cool.
I'm in - those pyjamas are awesome.
Re: "post Zatoichi Kitano" - personally I found Achilles and the Tortoise was a real return to form, poking fun whole-heartedly at how pretentious he had become.
If anything, Dolls is one of Kitano's most self-indulgently unwatchable films.