“It’s time to review history so we can build a better future.” So proclaims the legendary Japanese filmmaker Nobuhiko Ôbayashi (House, Hanagatami) during the opening sequence of his final film, Labyrinth of Cinema. Completed while Ôbayashi was receiving treatment for the lung cancer that took his life in 2020 at the age of 82, the film is a perfect farewell message from one of the most inventive storytellers to ever work in the movies. Chock full of Ôbayashi’s trademark surrealistic imagery and eye-catching editing techniques, Labyrinth of Cinema tells an empathetic and energetic story about the power of cinema to change the world — one that we would all do well to take in.
Man With a Movie Camera
“Wars, genocide, and annihilation. That’s the history of mankind. Then a girl enters.” In the prologue of sorts to Labyrinth of Cinema, an eccentric older man (aboard a spaceship filled with flying koi, natch) waxes rhapsodic on how the history of the world — and all of its wars — has been filtered through the lenses of movie cameras. The film then transports us to an old movie theater in Ôbayashi’s seaside hometown of Onomichi, where he shot many of his previous films; the Setouchi Kinema is about to close, and its final night is being celebrated with a marathon of old war films.
In the theater audience are a movie buff named Mario (Takuro Atsuki), a notebook-armed intellectual named Hosuke (Takahito Hosoyamada), and a monk’s son-slash-wannabe yakuza named Shigeru (Yoshihiko Hosoda). When lightning strikes the packed theater, the three young men are transported into the movies playing on the screen. As they find themselves involuntarily shuffled from the silent era to early talkies to the height of the movie musical, they also glide through the history of Japan as told via its most violent conflicts, including the Boshin War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Battle of Okinawa. Along the way, they encounter and re-encounter a series of heroines whom they struggle to save from tragic fates, culminating in their arrival in Hiroshima on the eve of the atomic bombing.
The young men want to change history — they want to save a beloved theater troupe from its certain demise in the bombing of Hiroshima—but unfortunately, changing the past is not an option. Instead, as Labyrinth of Cinema shows us, they — and we — must focus on what we can do in the present to keep mankind from making the same horrible mistakes in the future. And one of the most impactful ways we can get such messages across to the masses is through the movies. Cinematic interpretations of history may not always be accurate, true, but as one of the film’s characters reminds us, there is truth at the heart of every lie.
War and Peace
With its passionate anti-war, pro-art themes, Labyrinth of Cinema is a fitting cap to Ôbayashi’s sixty-year filmmaking career, one full of “war-weary films” that grew out of what Ôbayashi referred to as his “naive militarized youth” during World War II. Indeed, Labyrinth of Cinema strives to show that the so-called heroic sacrifices soldiers and civilians have made for the sake of “the country” over the course of human history are often needless, and deserve to be mourned more than celebrated. Ôbayashi asks us to wonder what could have been instead: if the Sakura theater troupe hadn’t perished in the atomic bombing and its aftermath, what other great works could they have created? What could they and so many others have accomplished with their lives if they weren’t taken by war? A great deal more than they did with their deaths, that much is certain.
If you are familiar with Ôbayashi’s work — even just the cult-horror classic House, with its hysterical haunted house shenanigans and fluffy white cat of nightmares — the wild and crazy cinematic style of Labyrinth of Cinema will not surprise you. What may surprise you is how effective the film’s wholehearted embrace of cinematic artifice is at conveying authentic emotion.
Throughout the film, Ôbayashi utilizes almost cartoonishly fake backdrops and special effects; the trio of modern young men who have ventured back in time and cinema often look visually out of place from the historical backgrounds they are placed in, as though they’ve been roughly copied and pasted into worlds where they do not belong. Ôbayashi also uses colorful irises overlaid on various frames to direct the audience’s focus; cross-cutting between current, past and future events; and repetition of certain images until they comprise a haunting refrain — in particular, the fresh-faced young heroine Noriko (Rei Yoshida) being frozen doll-like on screen as she reaches out to the theater audience, only for the screen to burst into flames. (This image recurs throughout the film as the trio of would-be heroes fails to save Noriko in various guises from the horrors of war; each time, the flames split the screen and engulf her face again, and the past remains the past.)
Yet the intense visual splendor of Labyrinth of Cinema somehow manages to not distract from, but rather to enhance, Ôbayashi’s message. In showing us everything the art of moviemaking has to offer, he reminds us that it remains one of the most effective storytelling methods at one’s disposal; if one wants to reach a large audience and hold their attention, there’s no better way to do so then by offering them a visual and aural feast on a gigantic screen. The result is a stunning film that pays homage to nearly every era of cinema to precede it while creating an entirely new type of cinema itself.
Conclusion
Ôbayashi liberally sprinkles Labyrinth of Cinema with verses from the poetry of Chūya Nakahara, who died of tubercular meningitis in 1937 at the mere age of 30. One particular line of his repeats throughout the film: “They call it modernization — I call it barbarization.” There is no better way to summarize the evolution of war as depicted throughout Labyrinth of Cinema, culminating in the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Cinema shouldn’t glorify these horrors, but it can and should help us remember them.
What do you think? Are you familiar with the films of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Labyrinth of Cinema opens in New York on October 20, 2021 and in Los Angeles on October 29, 2021. You can find more release dates here.
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