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| Japanese poster |
Everyone knows that for every 4-star stamp on a DVD cover there are at least 5 negative ones if you look up the film online. After seeing the movie I thought I couldn't be wrong this time either but I was. There is a wealth of praise going on for this film even online.
Fish Story spans about half a century, from the 60's all the way up to predicted end of the world in 2012. Vignettes in the film center on a song by the unsuccessful Japanese pre-cursors to punk Gekirin: a song called "Fish Story". As the film unfolds, we learn how these short pieces will eventually come together to explain how this song will save the world from the apocalypse: from the recording of the song in the 60s, strange rumors about the controversial record in the 80s, a cult predicting the end in the late 00s, and finally, a couple of folks in a record shop watching the comet dropping to earth in 2012.
This all sounded great to me as I read the description: in fact, even now the basis of the film still sounds like a very well thought out, entertaining plot. It'd be nice to read the novel this film is adapted from someday. But Fish story just gets everything else wrong.
Firstly, the acting was very lukewarm. Half the time it just wasn't very good, the rest was acceptable. None of the characters could be taken seriously with the cheesy acting and at the peaks of emotional tension the story fell flat. If the film was supposed to be a comedy I barely got any laughs out of it and if it was supposed to be serious I really couldn't feel moved by the characters like a good film does. There were moments where each short story started to grow on me: even with the stale acting I could understand the pains of the band as they were duped out of a record that was ahead of their time and the character in the beginning of the film who is pushed around by his friends is easy to relate to, but perhaps the pieces of the film ended way too prematurely for the characters to become developed and for the audience to feel any kind of emotional attachment to them.
Ok, so I might be a music snob but it was utterly disappointing to see Gekirin in action. Their performance was solid but the actors just could not come off as convincing punk rockers. They looked like jokes that were trying way too hard to fit the part. What was more disappointing was that in the Special Features, the actors came back together to play the song some time after the release and even then they looked more like a band than when they were in the film.
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| Yup, that definitely looks like the epitome of punk. |
My last hope in the film was the ending. Maybe, just maybe, the director would tie it all together in a coherent way that would leave me to put the pieces together and eventually say to myself "oh! I get it" and walk away feeling that even if the film was mediocre, at least he did a great ending.
But after the world is saved you sit there feeling more confused, for a few seconds you try to reason with yourself and remember how everything is supposed to come together...and a segment comes up for just a few minutes that recaps all the events that we are supposed to know, fills in a few missing pieces and clearly illustrates how the film worked step by step.
I felt completely offended that the director thought it would be a good idea to serve us the ending on a silver platter with an instruction manual as if to say "I'm too lazy to write an ending you can piece together yourself AND you are probably not going to get anyways, so let me map it out for you..."
All I could think was that a good director would absolutely not have needed those extra five minutes to explain his film. If it was great, it would have explained itself fine in the ending.
★★☆☆☆
~hideki~
