Sono Sion, a name that among the cinemaphile goldsmiths sounds like evidence. Japanese filmmaker and poetic trublion affirmed, the director is a punk activist, who slices into the landscape of seventh Art. Profoundly claiming to be anti-patriarchal, Sion vomited about bourgeois representations and comfort, willingly preferring authors like the Count of Lautréamont to « Official art » that he abhors. Often ranked in the vein of artists like Pasolini, Bataille or even Sade, Sion is a revolt that makes films with imaginative overflowing and disturbing with, in mirror, the obsessions of Japanese society. Japan is a country where excesses rarely lead to social recognition. Like marginals like Takeshi Kitano in his early days, Sion is somehow stateless in his own country. These productions, which are not customary in theatres, sometimes fail on the physical market and are always the subject of all experiments. Prisoners of the Ghostland, presented in preview at the Strange Festival in Paris, is one of them: the promise to bring Nicolas Cage into the fantasy pantheon of the filmmaker!
« Where must we go, we who want to this summer, in search of our best selves? »
After piercing the screen with brilliance in the psychedelic Mandy and more generally in tortured rolesIn recent years, the actor has made an independent turn with more intimate projects. With his black leather suit, lined with detonators on his arms, neck – and even his testicles – this hallucinating role seemed literally cut for him! With such a synopsis, we understand better why the places were out of stock as soon as the ticket office of the halls forum opened! After the first scene of a robbery, which directly refers to our time and its modernity with a gleaming light and photography, the film takes us to a whole other world that is much less refined. Place at geishas houses and then desert expanses, where dumps of bric and broc worthy of fairgrounds act as dooasis to the local natives. Like films like Waterworld (1995), this universe is full of life and credit. The director probably prefers the artisanal side of costumes as sets, rather than the systematic use of SFX, which contributes to the authenticity of the work, despite some wandering here and there, which blooms the small budget.
Is it purgatory? Presented to a crowd with anachronistic hints, where geishas, samurai and cowboys mix together, Nicolas Cage is in short panties before being given this « combi-prison » who condemns him to explode if he does not find the governor's daughter, local tyrant, adulated and self-proclaimed of good in his integral white suit. Hero is paradoxically obsessed as admired by the crowd who seems to designate him as the Devil for his accomplished packages, but who strangely represents him as the Savior. It is Bil Moseley who here takes on the role of the governor with a perfectly calibrated performance to the demiurges of the character. Some sighers escaped, including the one who seems to be his favorite, his « little girl » As he calls it...
Watchmen, the guards of lost time
Prisoner Ghostland, Bernice (Sofia Boutella) is Hero's number one target if he wants to survive! At the slightest impulse of violence against her, the detonators will explode... This sadistic device is a prelude to Hero's adventures, which will wander among the fanatics of the Ghostland, this forgotten land where folk peoples seem obsessed with a gigantic clock. The latter is not without recalling the Doomsday Clock, created shortly after the beginning of the cold war and on which midnight represents Revelation. It should be noted that we are currently at the 100 seconds according to these apostles. The instrument is intended to measure the danger facing humanity from nuclear, environmental and technological threats. Holding his needle by a rope to stop the course of time, the populations of the Ghosltand maintain day and night pendulum immobilism. Time is suspended and anxiety constant. This new simili religion divides those who hope for a saving outcome or a prophetic sign that would come from the chosen, in this case Hero, wounded who bleeds and does not coagulate. The metaphor of Doomsday which is found in popular culture, including comics Watchmen This is a new iteration of the myth of the end of the world.
In Prisoners of the Ghostland, we draw so much from Mad Max than in Western and samurai movies. If for us others Gaijins, this potpourri may seem saugrenuous, these two film genres are yet both sides of the same room. Remember that the film The Seven Samurai (1957) gave rise to the film The Seven Mercenaries (1960) and that The Corps Guard (1961) For a handful of dollars. (1964) by Sergio Leone, offering Clint Eastwood its first major role in cinema. Kurosawa himself was inspired by the work of John Ford, an avatar of the modern western. This is why cowboys and samurai are brothers of blood, whether it is their relationship to honor through duel practice, a singular form of asceticism or loyalty coupled with queen freedom, itself symbolized by the vast expanses of the American West or the roaming of the samurai. Their relationship to death, harakiri nippon to sacrifice through the manhood inherent in the duel also brings them closer. In this pure tradition, Sion offers scenes of fighting faithful to the genre, even if one of the flagship encounters between the American and Japanese was expected at the turn and would have gained in impact with a more muscular staging. The rare shootings lack credit with clumsy chorography compared to the sword.
« Hope is a missake, if you can't fix what's broken you go insane »
Nicolas Cage seems here caught up in his demons: all his victims left behind during his last robbery. Designed as a form of initiatory travel, Prisoners of the Ghostland is a frank visual success. The arrival in this country is memorable with a multitude of details in the middle of a perfectly heterogeneous crowd. There is so much to see at every second that we get carried away by the film during this inspired sequence plane. The passages at the governor play on contrasts and saturation of colors. We are here at the crossroads of the Arts, between theatre, poetry and sometimes dance. As Nicolas Cage finds Bernice, petrified and mute, covered with doll debris, he repeats ten times « Take it off! Take it off! ». This violent and contradictory injunction for the release of the Woman by man will not be without consequence for Hero. Similarly, Bernice and her sisters didn't need an umpteenth savior in the testicles in C4. Here we find Zion's will to destroy representations including that of the woman object, condemned to silence and satisfy man by being unable to generate his own destiny. The film is full of images that make all the strength of the film up to the governor's quest to kill, an explicit figure of patriarchy. The latter is not portrayed as the real evil by the guards of the Ghostland?
If from a narrative point of view the story would have gained to show more devolved, spent the fantastic arrival at the Ghostland, visually difficult not to be overwhelmed by Zion's daring. In 1990, with his collective « Tokyo Gagaga », He did not hesitate to shout poetry in the streets of the Japanese city. It is today through his new prophet, Hero, that poetry tries to die the screen. Prisoners of the Ghostland is also a metaphor for redemption. If a priori the film should not find an exit in the theater, the curious will be able to find their account in the market of physical supports by mid-November, with a forthcoming technical test on MaG, be sure. Often reduced to cinema by its critics, Sion's films have obvious defects but an unparalleled stamp for little that one is interested in symbols. To conclude this criticism, Sion himself probably offers the best reading of his artistic approach. In particular, he explained his relationship to the picture of the blood prism. An explanation for the extent of fever Prisoners of the Ghostland.
« The representation of blood is indeed a metaphor. Before starting a career as a director, I was a poet. Through my poetry, I used words to express how I felt. The same is true in my cinema, the blood you see is not a representation of real blood. For example, to express passional love, one can quite say in poetry I'm covered in blood. That's kind of what I do through my movies. »
[...] the noticed Mandy (2018), Prisoners of The Ghostland (2021) and Dream Scenario (2023), the black swan from Hollywood no longer spoils fans [...]
[...] Animated by a crazy creative impulse and blooming good love of the bis, this cocktail of art and explosive essay that coincides the encounter of two bursting spirits (the eccentric Sono Sion and the exalted Nicolas Cage), depopulates a rereading « absurd » and militant (patriarchy, communism, paternal figure and trumpism take for their rank) of the allegorical novel The Animal Farm where the genera (western spaghetti, samurai film and SF post-nuke) and cultures (eastern and western) intersect in a fantasy post-apo universe full of incongruous sequences. Generous but far from being accessible to all, this gonzo-punk trip « all leather clothed » is a singular radioactive work! And « choice cartridge » of the Strange Festival 2021 obliges, I can only encourage you to become acquainted with the criticism of KillerSeven. [...]