Visions in Hyperreal Lens: The Cinema of Satoshi...

Visions in Hyperreal Lens: The Cinema of Satoshi Kon
Artwork by Rob Cham
Words by Don Jaucian

When Satoshi Kon (1963 - 2010) lost his battle to pancreatic cancer on August 24 (he was 46), he took with him what was left of the scarce cinematic brilliance in the filmmaking world. A big statement perhaps, but considering the quality of works churned out by directors today, there is nothing left of creativity and imagination, only a handful of brave souls who try to transcend the works that have put them in the radar. While visionaries like David Lynch, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and fellow Japanese Hayao Miyazaki consistently upend our worlds with their unrealities, Kon’s work broke barriers and eventually sifted to mainstream cinema via works of Darren Aronofsky (who bought the rights of Perfect Blue just to recreate the bath tub scene) and Christopher Nolan (whose Inception pales in comparison to Paprika).

Like most Japanese works, Kon’s films featured the destructive pervasiveness of technology (see also Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse and Hideo Nakata’s Ringu films). They follow a shifting stream of consciousness, never really ending here nor there. As Paprika (2006) and Perfect Blue (1998) explored pyschological minefields and dreams, there still prevailed the looming threat of technological innovations into psychological warfare. Kon totalled this effect particularly in Perfect Blue where the early boom years of the world wide web posed (and is still posing) dangers to our private lives.

He then paid homage to his motherland and its cinematic heroes Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa in Millennium Actress (2001), where he dug deep into the subconscious a la Mulholland Drive. In Tokyo Godfathers (2003), Kon led us into the war torn Japanese era and the unberbelly of the country.

Always gritty, compassionate, and daunting, Kon never let go of his fascination of the human spirit. In his last letter (loosely translated), he hoped to meet the people who had touched his life. “There were so many people that I wanted to see before I died, to say even one word of greeting to. Family and relatives, old friends and classmates from elementary and middle and high school, the mates I met in college, the people I met in the manga world, with whom I exchanged so much inspiration, the people in the animé world whose desks I sat next to, went drinking with, with whom I competed on on the same works, the mates with whom I shared good and bad times. The countless people I was able to know because of my position as a film director, the people who call themselves my fans not only in Japan but around the world, the friends I’d made via the web,” he wrote.

As the world says goodbye to the great Satoshi Kon, there is no doubt that his name will always be remembered as one of the mavericks of cinema. No matter how surreal and far-fetched his films are, there is always the lingering touch of humanity in each of them.