New Religion

The first time I’d come across New Religion was when I interviewed Adam Torel and he mentioned it as being a forthcoming release. Many films came and went in the interim, including Third Window’s many excellent director’s company releases. Now, more than two years later I finally settled down to watch it.  

Haunted by the loss of her young daughter, Aoi (Hanna Nakamoto), Miyabi (Kaho Seto) finds herself divorced, working as a call girl and living with her boyfriend (Saionji Ryuseigun). Another callgirl, Akari goes on a killing spree, and Miyabi is asked to visit Akari’s client, Oka (Satoshi Oka), who wants nothing but to take photos of her.

New Religion is a film that exists to be experienced. People talk a lot about the impact of seeing films on the big screen and this is one where it is likely the case. At its best New Religion is an all-encompassing, throbbing (literally) sensory journey that demands a good screen and very good sound (it gave the old Tannoy floor-standers a good work out).  

As the film opens with its deep red and organic images and low rumbling sound, it’s a thrilling start, sucking you into the world of a film that is unafraid to leave you in the amniotic cinematic fluid it produces. These are moments where director Keishi Kondo excels, yet I was both delighted and frustrated by New Religion. Not that this is a bad or even average film, far from it, but it’s very much a film that relies frequently upon consistency of tone and the use of sometimes jarring, often gorgeous imagery; the precision of the use of sound throughout is expertly done but where it can falter is where it tries too hard at times to explain itself – so that it almost comes across as a convoluted metaphorical Invasion of the Body Snatchers (think the 1970's version, not the original) rather than fully giving over to and embracing the mysterious, ambiguous elements of the narrative. If there's an influence then the late, great David Lynch’s fingerprints are all over the film visually and tonally, but director Kondo lacks one key aspect Lynch mastered: to utterly baffle you while remaining utterly coherent. It’s the one thing that stops New Religion from being great – the frustrating thing perhaps is that to an extent Kondo almost has it nailed down, but sometimes slips a bit, trying to explain something that is best left to the fertility of our imaginations.  

Now let me pause, because I recognise something in myself here, often when I get into apparently downer moments on a film it is because there’s so much to celebrate and the closeness to really giving us something utterly unique and wonderful makes them stick in my brain like nails. If that sounds contradictory it’s not really, it’s more representative of there being much that is superb marred only by minor aspects that are slightly nascent and so offset what works most finely. That Kondo has made short films prior to this is perhaps key: style will get you far there, when jumping to features there’s something that needs adding, and here it is partially present but not quite.  

Visually is where the film absolutely flies. Much of New Religion is practically monochromatic with reds and blacks, yellows and blacks, blue and blacks; punctuated by occasional moments of naturalistic colour as we see Miyabi and her boyfriend go about their life; but most often the film takes on a colour and runs with it. The opening throws up memories of the trip through the monolith in 2001, with sound and image coming together to encase you in a womblike feeling. These moments, with rumbling low frequency as mentioned, really pull you in with a hypnotic power and there’s no denying how superb Kondo is with these aspects. The use of sound and imagery, exploding, adjusting kaleiodoscopic changes of visuals that blend seamlessly at length work beautifully. The moments when Oka is taking Polaroids of Miyabi with the odd angles and the red smothered lighting is cinematically delicious. Oka, too, with his electronic voice, that crackles throughout his darkened apartment, adds to the sense of unease that pervades much of the film.

Yet, the core is the emotional aspect: Miyabi and her daughter which speaks for itself. The loss of a daughter is trauma that I cannot imagine. The way in which she thinks of her daughter, is protective of what was hers, or that which was emotionally close to her is certainly understandable, yet Miyabi’s relationship with her boyfriend feels a bit flat; I felt there was very little to suggest any affection between the two except at the end where he tells her how he feels. But before this the film gives a sense of two people living together as strangers in the same apartment. Maybe this is the point, but if so it doesn’t quite make sense in the narrative. It’s very different to when Miyabi is sitting in the odd concrete basement waiting to be called for a client, where another call girl occasionally talks to her and there is a sense of connection, even in short scenes. Also the tone here seems consistent with those colour drenched moments with Ota, with a sense of disconnection to the real world.  

The real-world moments never quite have the same power as the rest of the film. I’d rather the boyfriend was absent, as that relationship never seemed to add depth, if anything its ordinariness seemed at odds with the rest of what we see. Again, I suspect this is deliberate, with Miyabi unable to be with him fully (if at all), but it pulled me out of the tone of the film, as does some of Ota’s excessive explanation of what is happening towards the end. Here I felt that Lynchian ability to refuse to explain would have served Kondo much better, allowing each viewer's fertile imagination to construct their own rationale and create their own distinct feelings for the film and its characters.  

Returning to where New Religion excels and excites most, it’s worth re-reiterating that this really is a gorgeously shot and constructed film, with the kind of attention to sound every film should emulate, a tool to further draw the viewer in that more directors need to pay attention to. The precision and quality of this cannot be overstated, but Kondo just needs to keep the rest simple – I suspect this is a problem of jumping from short to features films. That said I think most people will love the film and not be as picky as I am.  When the film’s narrative is at its peak it has the ability to shift, make segues between images that are not obviously meaningful but imbues them with meaning through their mystery.  

I think we'll truly see great things from Kondo in the future, assuming he channels that inner Lynch and trusts more to the audience.  

Now let’s move onto the short follow-up Kondo crowd-funded feature (which explains the extensive list of associate producers).

Neu Mirrors

Miaybi’s old minder, Aizawa (Daiki Nunami) wakes up to hear Ota’s electronic voice in his ear. The world shifts and Mizuki (Saori) is there with her boss instead, but the world keeps changing, morphing... and the book that keeps reappearing, the book of photographs, the images keep disappearing...

Though described as a way to try and tie up some loose ends, if anything Neu Mirrors mainly epitomises the absolute best of New Religion throughout its short 30-minutes (and the last four or so are credits). The visual stylings remain from New Religion and the opening with images of inverted buildings are gorgeously framed, recognisable but disorientating for their oddness; the sound, the static, the low frequency hums that entrance you as the viewers, all of these powerful aspects come into play once more and are wonderfully controlled. The reference to the ultimate trip sequence in 2001 feels even more relevant to Neu Mirrors with its shifting realities, where little is explained but contextually understandable, has that same blunt segue obscurity to it, which allows the viewer to build their own understanding and reality.  

Yet there is a narrative here, even if fragmented, disparate and ambiguous, it is where the power of Neu Mirrors resides. Yet it has, if only in passing, the same weakness as New Religion, the need to explain what should be left to the imagination. Ota has a small coda, an explanation that once made diminishes the vision of what we’ve seen. Again, Neu Mirrors does not need someone to explain a thing; the way in which the film’s visuals flows and the nuances of the performances, including Saori as  Mizuki just needs no explication: it all stands on its own and its mystery, as with its images, hold its power. Again, thinking back to Lynch, he trusted his audience to understand and be both bewildered and delighted in piecing together fragments of a mystery that is always just tantalizingly out of reach. The moment we think we’ve grasped the story’s mystery is the moment we realise we haven’t and reconstruct again.  

Here, as the film is shorter, tauter, it matters less, but it feels to me that Kondo again just needs to trust his audience more, trust like Lynch does, that we do not need answers. If anything we need mystery and dammit Kondo is definitely capable of doing that while wrapping up his enigmas in sound and visuals that suck you into their orbit. So just step back, trust yourself, trust us, the rest will take care of itself. Because the rest of New Mirrors is superb; those shifting mysterious segues of person and situation are directed with such a deft touch that they make the need for dialogue unnecessary; they flow together to construct their own ambiguous narrative and herein lies so much pleasure for the viewer.

I think I’ve pretty much said everything I can and should about both New Religion and Neu Mirrors. As a cinematic experience these are two films which have a masterly use of sound and image, with the ambiguity of the narrative showcasing the films at their most powerful. Just trust your audience and explain less.