Japanese Reviews Reviews

Film Review: Dozens of Norths (2021) by Koji Yamamura

Courtesy of PÖFF
"A journey to find the lost phrase"

has created a nightmarish, cubersome abstract hand-drawn world of “norths” populated by “people he met there” in his so far longest animation which premiered in the First Feature competition of PÖFF back in November. It is strange to be calling a film by Yamamura, a long-standing arthouse animation artist who was nominated for the Academy Award in 2003 for his short “Mount Head”, and who has amassed a number of important awards in his fruitfull career, a ‘debut', and yet that's what “” is called due to its ‘adult size' 64 minutes of runtime.

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Yamamura crafted a film based on his own illustrations and texts published in the monthly literary magazine “Bungaku-Kai” between 2012-2014. He had built the narrative around the 32 issues of the magazine, writing stories around the individual illustrations to puzzle them together in a script that deals with the search for the meaning of life, people's suffering and fears, their ambitions and connection to spirituality or the lack of it.

After presenting a number of world maps that show the vast area around the North Pole, the Japanese animator warns us about his memories being fragmented and senseless, mixed and impossible to distinguish between. This is an honest introduction to his outwardly venture into the domain of the subconscious, accompanied by the eerie sound of Willem Breuker's selected compositions from “Drums in The Night/ The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” which feel like being exclusively composed for the film. This is of course not the case, since Breuker died in 2010 and the record is out in the world since 1983, but the incredible harmony between the animation and the music will make it impossible to imagine any other symbiosis. “Dozens of Norths” is done in the spirit of silent movies, and when Breukner's tunes are gone, it's the impeccable sound design by Koji Kasamatsu that takes over with the sound of chilly winds, rusty machines and breaking waves adding to the feeling of deep void and solitude.

The chronicler of “Dozens of Norths” is probably Yamamura himself, an overworked writer whose quill gets hijacked by two miniature characters who use it as some kind of relic on their expedition to dozens of norths. They resist the hard weather conditions and on one occasion, they tell their (written) tale in the bottom of a full glass, wiith legs dangling over the edge of it. It is, we are told in one of the many title cards, “a journey to find the lost phrase”, which could be one of the clearest indications that the movie is actually about a writer's creative block. “Are both past and future inexorable?”, we read in another part of the film, and those words sound like the torturing thoughts an average human being faces in moments of self-doubting.

“Here” and “there” are connected by the force of imagination, in dark and unsettling images, often repetitive. Some ‘people' bare no resemblance to humans, and yet they get immersed in the same type of activities as humans do – contributing to their societies with seemingly senseless work that follows a kind of logic that stays mysterious for the rest of the imaginary globe.

There is an unnamed virus as well in the story, but this is thankfully not a hint at Covid-19. It's basically “someone's bullshit that desires to afflict the people” and the symbolics of it, formulated in seemingly simple words, is pregnant with meaning. People actually do die of bullshit in “Dozens of Norths”, and before they do, they get “illuminated” by the bug.

The film doesn't have a clear plot, just like a dream. What it does have is a magical atmosphere, with every detail executed by Yamamura's skillful hand. It's a gem that won't click with everyone because it requires passion for arthouse animation and concentration.

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