Junji Sakamoto is a director whose long career hasn't yet hit the heights in both critical acclaim and international exposure. “My Brother, the Android and Me” has a notable cast and certainly looks the part, but does this part sci-fi/part psychological thriller have all the necessary parts to make a satisfying whole?
“My Brother, the Android and Me” is screening at Nippon Connection
Kaoru (Etsushi Toyokawa) is a robotics engineer at a university, but is often preoccupied, neglecting both his teaching and the projects for which he is funded. Suffering from seizures in his legs, he instead spends his days trying to develop an android replica of himself in the family home.
But he hasn't just been neglecting his work, and his father's illness prompts his half-brother, Yamashita (Masanobu Ando), to contact him, demanding he sells the family home to pay for the medical fees. But Kaoru isn't going to let his pet project go without a fight.
To speak of plot, however, would be irrelevant to 75% of the film. The first hour or so is a suggestion at the various references influencing Sakamoto, namely Frankenstein's monster and a copy of Isaac Asimov's “I, Robot”, as well as various influences on the film's aesthetic. The family home, Kaoru's lair, has a steampunk feel, steeped in vivid colours, bringing to mind Mamoru Oshii's “Innocence” or Hayao Miyazaki's “Howl's Moving Castle”, to name but two. But this is a film that would slot into Kiyoshi Kurosawa's oeuvre with ease, in terms of atmosphere, at least.
And this is its strength. The soundtrack lingers in the mind as it hovers over the slow-paced images, looking more like a dream or fantasy world than reality. Toyokawa moves as if a ghost as Kaoru, with his darkened hood covering his rain-soaked frame. For most of the film, not much happens, as the overall approach is low on dialogue and action, but Sakamoto has at least made this world an absorbing enough one to initially get away with it.
But gradually you crave some action in this world of his creation, though when it comes, it leaves the film feeling horribly unbalanced. Ando isn't given much time to work with Yamashita's volatile nature, having to burst out a convoluted list of misdemeanours every time he is on screen with the chaos of a soap opera. What it has in mood and style, it lacks in plot and characterisation. This dream world has no one to live in it.
With all the action thrown into the last 15 minutes, the slow build throughout is destroyed with a hammer blow; any good work now undone. And this is the film's overall problem: like Kaoru's android, has its creator had the ability to bring the creation to life? This looks convincing, but lacks a human soul.
