Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #246: A Silent Voice (2016).

 

Shoko Nishimiya (Saori Hayami in the Japanese-language version; Lexi Cowdon doing the English dub) is a new student at her school. She's also deaf, and uses a notebook to communicate with her classmates because none of them know sign language. Among them is hot-headed Shoya Ishida (Miyu Irino and Mayu Matsuoko in the Japanese-language version; Robbie Damond dubbing him), a boy who bullies poor Shoko so relentlessly she again has to change schools. This deservedly makes Shoya himself an outcast at school. Then, several years later in high school, his behaviour towards Shoko torments him so much he plans to commit suicide, but not before trying to right that wrong. Shoya now tries to track Shoko down in order to reconcile with her before ending his life.

This anime adaptation of Yoshitoko Oima's manga is brilliant, but almost downbeat enough to make Grave of the Fireflies, a tragic war drama, resemble a slapstick comedy. Yet nonetheless, it's a very valuable and rewarding watch. Director Naoko Yamada and screenwriter Reiko Yoshida both wisely approach this awfully serious thematic territory with a very delicate, restrained touch (yet without sanitising anything), Yamada unites the visuals (realised with deliberately varying animation styles for the dream sequences and so on) with assurance and she paces it all appropriately. The English voice cast (I saw the dubbed version) all give authentic and mature turns (as I'm sure their Japanese counterparts do), and Kensuke Ushio provides a strong and most unusual score: it's very pounding, but only to fully reflect what's going through Shoya' troubled mind. It's arguably just slightly overlong at 130 minutes, but despite that, A Silent Voice is a very effective meditation on guilt, isolation, identity and redemption. 9/10.

On how I was body-shamed.

 Alright, buckle back up, because I need to get personal and emotional again. You've already read this entry's title so you know the subject, but let me elaborate on it nonetheless.

I was super-skinny as a child. I mean almost rail-thin. That was genetic; believe me, I've always had a big appetite, but an unusually fast metabolism, and nobody in my family has ever been overweight, to my knowledge. Almost every day in primary school I was called names like "Skinny legs," "Chicken legs" et cetera, I was frequently asked why I was so skinny or if I was anorexic or if I ate everything on my plate at dinner. (Let me also state here that in hindsight I wonder how so many of my classmates then knew what "anorexic" even meant.) Naturally, because of my build I was also usually among the very last to be chosen in PE class.

I've recently been re-watching Glee, and this scene from a season four episode resonated with me, even more than when I first saw it, to the point where it made me think back to those days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q_cNyMm9XE

Someone having weight issues, be it obesity as seen there or skinniness, should never make them a subject of mockery, and while body-shaming indeed says far more about the culprit than the target (and may I remind people here that both genders can fit in both of those categories), people who witness or hear it when it happens need to put their foot down and intervene. This reflective mood that scene put me in has also made me realise why, in 2017 on Facebook, I felt compelled to make a post defending a young woman who was deluged with abuse after being featured on the cover of Vogue UK as a plus-size model.

Everybody can help how their appearance evolves, with make-up and cosmetic surgery and whatnot. But nobody can help what physical genes they inherited, but everybody can help how they feel about others' physiques. Body-shaming stops with me, and hopefully with you, too.

On the debate of: "Asperger syndrome" or "Autistic spectrum disorder"?

 

This is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM for short. It's practically a bible in the psychiatry field. Now, I'm not criticising it in any way; I couldn't even if I wanted to, because I haven't read it. Anyhow, in 2013 for its fifth edition, Asperger syndrome (along with other pervasive developmental disorders) was re-categorised in it as simply "Autism spectrum disorder." This was done primarily, to my knowledge, because it had recently emerged that its namesake, the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, was involved in Nazi Germany's eugenics program which killed and injured countless disabled adults and children. (To put that into perspective, Asperger syndrome was given that name in 1994.)

Now, I have come to accept that fact about him, and I do not mean to trivialise it in any way. Nobody should. But he was by no means the only doctor (and I don't just mean the medical sort) who was, or is, guilty of evil or negative things. He certainly wasn't the only such one in Nazi Germany; many Nazi doctors were later involved in the creation of thalidomide, maybe the worst medical scandal of the 20th century. However, I digress. for all the damage he did elsewhere, Asperger still helped to pioneer autism research and in any case, somebody else named Asperger syndrome after him. And my key point with this post is this: AS may not exist as a diagnosis anymore, but it still does as a condition. It's simply listed under a different name. I can't help but liken it, in that sense, to manic depression. That still exists; it's just known as bipolar disorder today.

Nonetheless, for several reasons, I interchangeably say I'm autistic and that I have Asperger's, at specific times in conversation. I have no issue with either label. Regardless, I'm certain there are many Aspies out there, particularly ones older than me and who were diagnosed before me, for whom identifying as having Asperger's has become very much routine (and remember, routine is enormously important for most autistics), even if they know of Dr. Asperger's crimes. That's another reason why we should let people identify as whatever, and whoever, they want to. Anyway, the spectrum is long and vast, and everybody on it, whether high- or low-functioning, has something to bring to the world.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #245: Babyteeth (2019).

 

Teenage Milla (Eliza Scanlon) is battling a serious illness, but is neither happy nor sad exactly. She's going through the motions until she meets Moses (Toby Wallace), a struggling drug dealer, at a station after he almost walks in front the train before she stops him. After they then start talking, she quickly falls head over heels in love with him. This is her parents' (Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn) worst nightmare, with the sort of lifestyle Moses leads. But this first taste of romance puts a spring back in Milla's step, even while it spells danger for her domestic relationships, and she now begins to show everybody she encounters how, and why, to live passionately in the face of great adversity.

Babyteeth won 8 AACTA Awards last year including Best Film but frankly, I have no clue how. Director Shannon Murphy applies numerous arthouse visual touches which couldn't hide what I felt to be a very cliched and tame coming-of-age narrative, and it's about 20 minutes overlong because of two superfluous subplots in Rita Kalnejais' screenplay. There are decent performances from Scanlon, Wallace and Davis, but their work isn't strong enough to compensate for the storytelling failings and Amanda Brown's score borders on overkill. For me, these Babyteeth didn't bite. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #244: Long Way North (2015).

 

It's 19th-century Russia. Young Sasha (Christa Theret in the French version; Chloe Dunn in the English dub) watches her cherished grandfather leave for a voyage to the North Pole on a doomed ship. Years later, Sasha is now 15 and about to have her debutante ball when her family are blamed for a political scandal, and her father now blames her for their fall from grace. So, hurt and ashamed, she does the only thing she can think of doing: she runs away from home, heading to the same place where her grandfather apparently met his demise, to uncover the truth about him and their family.

This 2015 Belgian-French animated effort is absolutely strikingly visualised; the animation style is refreshingly more like that of a comic book than of American or Japanese animation. Therefore, it's a joy to look at. However, the narrative is, as you may have suspected, very derivative. Even worse, though, is how that narrative is told. Director Remi Chaye, working from a screenplay by Claire Paoletti, Patricia Valeix and Fabrice de Costeil, seemed to think his pacing of and emotional approach to it needed to be, respectively, glacial and cold because of its Arctic setting. I disagree; I think it could've been considerably more upbeat and hasty (not to mention humourous, but that was on the screenwriters) without compromising any thematic effect. Instead, I found the approach he took here to be increasingly dull and glassy.

To exacerbate matters, Jonathan Morali's score is generic and heavy-handed and some of the dialogue is very clunky. Overall, despite the beautiful animation, I'm afraid Long Way North was, for me, a long way from enjoyable. 5/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #243: Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999).

 

It's 1995, and the fictional town of Mount Rose, Minnesota is gearing up for its sole claim to fame: the annual Sarah Rose Cosmetics Mount Rose American Teen Princess Pageant. Kirsten Dunst is optimistic teenager Amber Atkins, who's entering the pageant to follow in the footsteps of her idol, Diane Sawyer, and her mother Annette (Ellen Barkin), a former winner who's now an alcoholic, chain-smoking trailer park resident whose neighbour is Loretta (Allison Janney). Meanwhile, Amber's main rival in the pageant is Denise Richards as Rebecca Leeman, whose mother Gladys (Kirstie Alley) is another former winner but one now running the pageant and married to the richest man in town. The girls' battle to be crowned the winner, and their town's efforts to pull the pageant off again (albeit exclusively for its own interests) now unfolds in a viciously funny satirical, mockumentary format.

Drop Dead Gorgeous flopped when first released in 1999, only just recouping its $10 million budget in the US, but slowly yet steadily it attracted fans online until those fans became a cult following; thankfully it's now available to stream online. Writer Lona Williams, who came from a beauty pageant background, and director Michael Patrick Jann apparently had quite a few disagreements during production but they clearly shared a desire to satirise the pageant industry with all its pitfalls as well as small-town American parochialism and xenophobia. The result had me truly in stitches throughout. It's definitely too dark a comedy for all tastes, but that's just the brand of humour that tickles my fancy most. Beyond that, Williams' plotting is consistently logical and Jann's direction never lets the pace wane; I think they brought the best out of each other, despite everything.

Keep your eyes peeled for Brittany Murphy (RIP) and, in her film debut, Amy Adams, as two other pageant contestants, Mindy Sterling (aka Frau Farbissina from the Austin Powers trilogy) as Gladys' committed right-hand woman, Matt Malloy and Mike McShane as judges John Dough and Harold Vilmes, Will Sasso as Harold's mentally handicapped brother Hank, and Adam West as himself hosting the pageant. Drop Dead Gorgeous is, to me, drop dead hilarious.

The verdict out of Minnesota.

Derek Chauvin's going to prison! It's official! 

A significant miscarriage of justice has been avoided, and a notable step in eradicating racial injustice in the US has been taken this week. That calls for celebrations, despite how much more needs to be done. As you know, Chauvin's treatment of African-American man George Floyd last year culminated in Floyd's death at Chauvin's hands, and this sparked protests and demonstrations worldwide; one of which I'm proud to say I attended here in Australia.

An all-white jury found him guilty, which shows how the culture has changed since an all-white jury acquitted the police who beat Rodney King in 1992, and another positive is that therefore a repeat of the Los Angeles riots that followed that acquittal didn't happen. Whether these jurors wanted justice and equality truly to be served or simply for no retribution to happen, we'll never know, and I don't think it matter matter. What does matter, are Black lives, and that this trial resulted in a guilty conviction. And hopefully one of those will soon also come to the other police who witnessed Chauvin's crime and stood idly by.

Now, I am well aware all police offers are as human as everybody else; I mean, how can't they be? But that is no excuse for any misconduct they display, especially if they know it's wrong, and just because they enforce the law in no way puts them above it. Certainly not to the point where they can act as judge, jury or executioner. George Floyd infamously said "I can't breathe" as Floyd fatally suffocated him. I hope very soon, Chauvin enters the prison shower and meets a Black man who knows what he did, rapes him for it and then says "That's for George, you racist piece of shit."