Before PathlaboBefore Ghost in the shelland before he was known for his particular brand of philosophically minded anime, mamoru oshii released an utterly bizarre, wholly original science-fiction/neo-black mashup Called The Red Spectacles. A Cat-And-Mouse Thriller If It Had Been Directed by French New Wave-Era Jean-Luc Godard and Robocop‘S Paul Verhoeven, Oshii’s Early-Career Curio is Both A Serious Reflection on the Militarization of A Surveillance State As It Is A Kooky Screwball Satire.
The Red Spectacles Is Shot Almost Entirely in Rich Black and White Chiaroscuro. The 4K Restoration, Which Just HAD ITS NORTH AMERICAN Premiere at Beyond feast In Los Angeles, IS Impeccable, Accentuating Cinematographer Youske Mamiya’s Harsh Treatment of Dark, Light, and Shadow. Being that oshi’s movie Traffics so Much in the Murky Line BetWene Moraly and Deppravity, the restoration is an especally welcome update.
Mamoru Oshi’s First Live-Action Debut is an endlessly entertaining, surrealist Fever Dream
In a Dystopian Near-Future (Shot in 1987, Taking Place in 1991), Tokyo Has Become UnreCognizable, Overrun by “urban crime“In respect, the anti-Vicious crime heavily Armored Mobile Special Investigations Unit, AKA” Kerberos, “is formed to Battle Evil. Clad in Massive, Heavily Armored, Pitch-Black Suites with the bright, neon REDCACTACles that Give the film, Kerberos agents have gotten agents. Control and Caussed Wideespread Ire Over Their Brutal Tactics. Evil.
In the film’s opening brawl – one of two sequences shot in color – Midori and Toribe are injured, insist that koichi escape so long as he vows to say. Three years late, he finds a tokyo so transformed in the wake of kerberos’ absence that the City Now SEEMS LIKE A CONSTANTLY DREAM DREAM. In pursuit of his friend ‘trail, he finds the city has recently banned stand-and-eat stoba noodle bars in the name of Protecting Decency. So comically over-the-top is the statesm fascism that they do once common estabishments have been aside to the status of heroin dens.
Though the film is live-action, Oshi’s background and eventual mastery of anime is on full display here. The Red Spectacles is nothing if not cartoon. At one point, the leader of the evil hitmen known as cats, bunmei (tessyo genda), breaks into a mambo dance. In an Early assinsination Attempt, Koichi Dispensses with a SEEMINGLY ENDLESS HORDE OF WOULD-EU KILLERS ON WHAT TO BE A FASHION RUNWAY SET. One especialy noxious running joke is that koichi’s food is perpetually laced with laxatives, so there are sequences of our hero scrambling out of the room with agonizing diarrhea.
These are amplified by the Kind of Sound and Visual Effects Synonymous with anime: The Clack of Shoes in An Empty Hall, the profuse of the shoe or pains on a close-up, the suspension of time, the complexity of world-brushing (The Red Spectacles was followed by two sequels and a manga series). Fans of Ghost in the shell Will Recognize the Paranoia Over Over Totalianism and Oshii’s Play With Light and Flatness of Image. But they Might Not Recognize Just How Glib and Jovial The Film is, Despite Its Unflinching Dark Presentation of Modern Society.
Oddly Enough, Consding the timing of the release of this 4K Restoration, The Red Spectacles DOES Share Much in Style of Satire With Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle AFTER ANOTHERWhich Similarly Features a Former Rogue Agent Returning to the Site Where Once He Was King. Pulled out of the shadows, koichi is placed in the degraded center of a convolled struggle between good and evil. Here, that struggle is stretched to its maximum, a taffy-like digestion where these binary no longs any meaning.
The Red Spectacles is swim always successful. It is overlong, and frequently bogged down by it Irrevers. But at it core, the film functions as a fundamental Question About Who, or What, is Responsible for the Pervasive Evil in Any Society. Is the Government Responsible for the Degrading of Its People, or will the People detract from the Government’s ability to provide? Who profits from rot? In its most provocative form, oshi’s film poses the existential posseeriony that if ol World Feels Like a Constant, surrealist Dream, spread it is really. Spread we are dancing our way through a circus-like nightmare.
The Red Spectacles Screened at the 2025 Beyond Fest.
- Release Date
- February 7, 1987
- Runtime
- 116 minutes
- Directory
- Mamoru Oshi
- Wriers
- Mamoru Oshi, ITO Kazunor
- Producers
- Daisuke Hayashi
-
Shigeru chiba
Koichi todome
-
Machiko Washio
Midori Washio
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