R.I.P.

I did say something like that, although the ratio was probably more like 1/100. The other day, I went back and looked at Japanese box office figures for 2006, and it seems Paprika never made the weekly top 10, even in its opening week. In March I was in Japan, talking with some people in the industry, and they certainly had the impression Kon's films didn't make back their money at the box office.

It's not about trying to knock Miyazaki off a pedestal--never mind anime or Japan, he is one of the great filmmakers of the world, and deserves and has earned his status as a top box-office draw. It's more frustration and regret that Japan doesn't seem to appreciate its other talented anime directors enough. Of course, I expect a broadly accessible, family-friendly Miyazaki film to be more successful than the experimental and adult works of a Kon or an Oshii. It is just that the ratio between what a Ghibli film earns and what they earn is so extreme--so wildly disproportionate--that it calls into question just how much Japan really accepts anime as a film medium for adults. Accepts it where it counts for the industry--at the box office.

A Ghibli film can gross US$200 million in Japan. If we were to imagine a hypothetical, lower box-office tier for adult-oriented anime films at what seems a very modest ratio--say, that on average they'll have only 1/20th the box-office appeal of a Ghibli film--US$10 million--you would see more films being made with the ambition of Kon's Paprika or Oshii's The Sky Crawlers, or Okiura's Jin-Roh. But in his own country, Kon couldn't count on one-twentieth the audience a Ghibli film could; not one-fiftieth, not even one-hundredth. From the perspective of a foreign critic, Kon was so neglected by Japanese audiences he hardly registered with them at all. As we've come to know from his extraordinary final letter, Satoshi Kon was a man of grace as well as genius, and of the money his films made, he graciously said that they got what they deserved. But I don't have Kon-sensei's grace, and in sadness and anger I say, no, they did not get nearly what they deserved.

AVC: It seems odd that you programmed the anime Summer Wars for The Watching Hour, which doesn’t seem to fit in with the aesthetic.

KG: When I was starting to program the festival, Satoshi Kon just died, and that really pissed me off. I love his stuff, and I enjoy anime, but it sort of exploded into a world I’m not really happy with. I dismiss a lot of it, and I don’t get a lot of it. And what I like about Kon is he made anime that make you think, “Why is this animated? ’Cause this totally could have been a live action film.” With Kon, what he did was animate everything, and it made it far more interesting, even though he could have done it live action. Miyazaki is great, but he’s his own world, and now he’s been sort of Disneyfied a bit. Even though he’s special, it’s still not the illustrated reality that I really like to see.

And so Summer Wars came along and, even though it has a really fantastical other world in the film, the whole social network that exists is actually like a real thing. It’s deeply rooted in the reality that exists, and using the same ideas of these two different worlds...you just have to think about one extra thing. For example, what if Facebook existed as this weird organic entity? That’s just the one place you have to go, and it opens up your imagination to a whole other thing. I’m actually happy Summer Wars is accessible to everybody of all ages. You won’t be bored if you’re older, and your mind will be blown if you’re younger.

Il est de ces films dont on ne comprend décidément pas la confidentialité. Enfin plutôt si: on sait combien un distributeur peut, faute de moyen ou de talent, saboter la carrière d'une oeuvre et, à l'inverse, comment une maison fièrement assise sur ses dollars peut nous vendre à peu près tout et n'importe quoi (il suffit de comparer les box offices du Paprika de Satoshi Kon et de l'Inception de Christopher Nolan pour s'en convaincre encore récemment - le populaire second n'étant guère plus inventif, à bien y regarder et sur un sujet fort proche, que le fabuleux premier !). La bonne nouvelle, d'égoïste spectateur, de ces scandaleuses situations est bien sûr qu'il nous reste donc, tandis qu'on clame partout le cinéma rédhibitoirement calanché, d'inouïes pépites à découvrir. Ainsi de Messiah of Evil. Signé par un couple de scénaristes, Willard Huyck et Gloria Katz, à velléités d'objectifs, ce premier coup d'essai s'inscrit bien sur dans la grande tradition des premiers films contr...