Friday, March 25, 2011

Uzumaki makes me dizzy


Uzumaki is certainly a unique film—its combination of several genres and techniques along with the mish-mash of events proved to be pretty puzzling for me. At times, it felt serious; at others, it felt really cartoonish (even Anime-like acting). It used close-ups, weird still shots at the end, strange lighting, spiraling shots, and varying music choices. It was freaky, silly, impossible, dark, and dare I say…twisted?

I guess I struggled to find Uzumaki’s identity. It just seemed a little too all-over-the-place. Honestly, without having discussed it in class Thursday, I wouldn’t have any clue it was about obsession…or about anything at all, really. It was just too easy to get lost in all of the randomness. Like a couple of other people mentioned in their posts, I agree that Uzumaki was unbelievable with poor acting.  I suppose my point is this: Uzumaki’s less obvious meanings take a back seat to its overly-abundant themes and characteristics. Does Uzumaki try to include too many elements? Probably. Was it still entertaining at face-value? ....Admittedly, yes.

2 comments:

  1. You bring up a good point in your discussion about how the movie seemed to be all over the place. I wonder if maybe the directors chose to make the movie in this manner. The movie seemed to have an overwhelming number of unconnected fates to the various spiral obsession victims. It was difficult to understand what was connecting the attacks to each other. Despite all of the strange acting and weirder music, the film was definitely one of the more entertaining ones we have seen, although I still felt creeped out after watching it.

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  2. Higuchinsky’s film Uzumaki is definitely an eerie film that uses bewilderment to scare viewers. The fact that the screenplay as well as the production styles were confusing coupled with the strange use of spirals makes for a confusing adaptation of a horror film.

    I believe these elements have been used on purpose to make the film what it is. I agree that the randomness was often times too confusing. The most perplexing part of the entire film was that no one knows where the spiral comes from. I would’ve liked to have seen a source for the fear and obsession the spirals caused amongst the majority of the characters.

    When we talked about the spirals in class, I must say I buy into the fact that spirals are eerie and it would be fairly easy to become obsessed with them because they exist a lot in our everyday lives (i.e. nature), however, the disconcerting nature of the film overpowered the “creepiness”

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