Another hotel. But with Captain Banan. As soon as I started watching, I immediately remembered The Mysterious Train, and no wonder: Masatoshi Nagase was transferred from there almost in the same style outfit. Well, the rest of the paraphernalia: a strange hotel, strange porters, a combination of independent but overlapping storylines, however, these elements are probably repeated by different directors for a long time, but Masatoshi Nagase “under Elvis” is a clear quote, “with an academic reference.” Of course, one can recall the Four Rooms, in general, the Tarantinian influence, but I did not find a specifically Tarantinian atmosphere here, namely, an atmosphere of frostbite enclosed in honed aesthetic forms. Tarantino is famous not so much for postmodern cinematic directing as for aesthetic aggression and sophisticated art of cruelty, which was close to Asian action and noir as a genre. Later, when a whole wave of tarantinoids went, for some reason not aesthetic frostbite, but black humor embroidered on the criminal plot became a unifying sign, and any fun with comic bandits is already declared the last Tarantino. But the fact is that any film that is devoid of a genuine, I would say, immanent director of aggression and cruelty as the background of the whole film or the aesthetic framing of these components falls out of the Tarantino orbit, or rather, from the orbit of the “new bloody wave of the 90s”, to which Tarantino belongs. Out of this orbit falls "Mysterious train", filmed also earlier - because it does not have frostbite and immanent aggression, although full of aesthetics, fall out Coens - frostbite cruelty they have enough, but aesthetics is almost no, despite the filigree of the direction. And in the orbit of Tarantino and the “waves” are largely, for example, the films of Sabu, even with their social pathos, and – in part – the fresh, clearly epigonymsky Motel.
Jarmushev’s atmosphere of artistic bohemian and underground, marginality, also seasoned with black humor and brutality, but rather vague-dreamy than sharp-honed, rather complacent than aggressive, is easily guessed in this fun and kind film. The 90s gave rise – all within the framework of postmodernism – not only Tarantin’s “blood wave”, but also another powerful and iconic for a whole generation – “infantile loser”: peaceful films about marginals and losers, floating with the flow, aestheticizing and philosophizing, like previous generations of beatniks and hippies, but all this in some completely teenage forms, with a serious look – about big Macs and comics. And if early Jarmusch belonged to the “adult”, mature and young underground, whose music was jazz and blues, and philosophy was existentialism, then Jarmusch “Psa-Samuraya” entered the new, postmodern world of applicative images and applicative philosophy, militant infantilism and superficiality. The Cohens with the Big Lebovsky were also noted in this wave, but Kevin Smith became her film singer in the States. In fact, Tarantino himself belongs to one of his sides of the same wave - certainly he himself is his biography and a significant part of the world he created on the screen, homely but greasy jokers. It is clear that these waves often merge within the plots, however, they are too different in general, like predators and herbivores.
Accordingly, Japanese cinema and this “infantile-loser wave” fit perfectly with a number of author directors, one of whom, already a later generation, Katsuhito Ishii. And if in his first film, he still, like many, confuses the “waves”: the goat assiduously imitates the wolf, then in “Party for Seven” he rolls back to something adjacent to these two waves, preceding both – Jarmusch of the middle period, departing from the pure jazz-blues dreamy bohemia, “vacation without end”, friendly with the Coens, but deep into their territory not creeping, and with the Japanese, carefully trying to taste their aesthetics. The “average” Jarmusch has enough criminal inclusions and black humor noir to parallel it with Tarantino, but at the same time Jarmusch is originally, with “Stranger than in Paradise” a real volition, to which Katsuhito Ishii gravitates, the quiet freedom of peaceful whims and whims, and it is in “Party for the Seven” Isiya deftly jumps from Tarantino rails to the rails of Jarmusch, on which he is already quickly rushing to his native “infantile losers”, becoming in a row with the late Jarmusch, early Kevin Smith, Wes Anderson, partly Judd Apatou, from the Japanese, of course, Miki Satoshi, Kudo Kankuro and Hitoshi Matsumoto; again, to some extent, Saba, who persistently works according to the bloody patterns, but at the center of the narrative, often puts a quino and is not so disturbed by the sea, that he is not necessarily divided in the “inty” by the “atrics of the same time by the “atrics” and “a” by the “Arutttante of Kaluzhnaya” and “a” in the “a” in fact, which heaviness of the “a” in fact, in the “into” in the “into-s” in the same way, in the same way of the same way, in the “a” in the “a” This is all comedy with a blackish and strange humor, sometimes a criminal background and not very annoying aesthetics, and Kitano himself in this hypostasis usually becomes more simple kuroles, rapidly approaching his television element stand-up and miniatures - and this is also familiar to Katsuhito Ishii, and Kevin Smith, and Miki Satoshi. Because the infantile loser is inherently an obolus, hanging around and chatting endlessly; unlike the businesslike, albeit talkative, “bloody-wave” heroes, the “infantile loser” heroes are fully realized in endless pseudo-intellectual chatter, and their unsophisticated actions are more often, as they should, losers: ridiculous, careless, strange, in general – the antipode of action, activity. But we must take into account, of course, the intrinsic value of this aimlessness, these complicated conversations about trifles - the characters love their loserism, no matter how they complain about it, and enjoy their pastime in interesting little things.
And if Shingo Sonoda in the “Party for the Seven” is still a pseudo-Tarantin hero, and Shunichiro Miki is pseudo-Tarantin-Jarmushevsky and both of them, frankly, are pale, and next to their anime analogues from the screensaver so simply dissolve, then Todohei Todohira, Okita Soji and especially Captain Banana are already completely Issievsky heroes, and these are losers, infantils and obolus, and characteristically specific, this is a hint of future “funtile tea”. They are still at the edge of this pseudo-Tarantino-Jarmushevsky universe, observers and third-plan participants, but in the next film they will come to the fore, and from Tarantino and Jarmusch will remain only a slight farewell echo.