Decided on a movie, Shinboru or Symbol, rather than attending the Yells at Eels/Tidbits show at the Kesseler.
I don't even know where to start in describing or explaining this movie, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this movie myself. Director Hitoshi Matsumoto has created a funny, thought provoking little gem with Symbol. How can you not like a film that combines odd scenes, fart jokes, luchadores, and religion with a quirky soundtrack. It has two stories intertwined with one another, seemingly having nothing to do with one another, but eventually working their way into each other. You start off by learning a little bit about the luchadore Escargot Man on a day where he is to have a big match with some younger fighters. The transition from this story to the story of a man trapped in a white room was seamless as a chicken feather from Mexico lands on the dirty soil then floats down to the floor of the white room where we meet our other subject. He eventually wakes up to survey his room only to find no way out and a rather phalic protrusion from the smooth white walls. I feel it necessary to mention at this point that when we learn what the small sculpture on the wall is two older moviegoers decided to get up and leave saying as they passed by, "If this is what the whole movie is going to be about then I don't want to waste my time.". What follows are odd and mostly futile attempts by this Japanese prisoner to get out of his situation, with every push on the small protrusions is followed by a seemingly useless item, like sushi without soy sauce.
I probably should've prepared myself for this by watching Hitoshi Matsumoto's first full length, "Big Man Japan", which received a lot of praise but as with a lot of movies it got lost in the vast expanse of my Netflix queue, but I will watch it today. I laughed so hard at "Symbol" I came home with a headache. I couldn't find a decent trailer for "Sumbol" but here is a trailer I found for "Big Man Japan":
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