The avant-garde Tokyo-ites featured in the documentary, We Don't Care About Music Anyway - shown this past weekend by OFFScreen, a contracted independent organization which screens independent and foreign films - stay true to the title, at least in terms of the conventional music one might have on an iTunes playlist. The documentary follows eight Japanese artists as they work to define and explore the definitions and limitations of music in Tokyo's underground music scene. And the sounds they create are reminiscent of the aural equivalent of an electrical shock: scraping metal, chainsaws playing over cello strings, synthesizers amplifying the thunder of advancing bullet trains to a shrill crescendo of electrocuted banshees.
At the documentary's outset, the music performed on-screen just seems like senseless, ear-splitting noise instead of music. Yet when I forced myself to listen, I found that a slow rhythm emerged, throbbing like an ominous heart. Suddenly, what seemed like meaningless dissonance begins to have a life of its own, with a steady pulse and an undeniable sense of purpose.
Purposeful is exactly what these artists are. They strive to find, or create, an alternative to bland, cookie-cutter elements of culture. The documentary's directors, Cedric Dupire and Gaspard Kuentz, convey the artists' singularity among the millions of uniformed salary men and schoolgirls. They juxtapose the musicians with images of an industrial, almost post-apocalyptic wasteland - a brilliant aesthetic move that speaks volumes about the isolation experienced by those fighting this lonely crusade. Also, it transforms Tokyo into a startlingly bleak dystopian metropolis, a picture-perfect representation of its machine-like suppression of any spark of individuality. All this is expressed through sight and sound, with a total lack of a narrative voice to guide the audience's perception. During one stunning scene, a performer wearing a silver bodysuit rocks out with a guitar amid a moonscape of garbage-strewn beach, framed by spiky electrical wires and a cloudless grey sky. Thus, the film makes use of the vast urban space of Tokyo, transforming its mundane drone into something alien and electric.
Although I appreciated the film's lack of narrative voice and cinematographic experimentation, the absence of a conventional documentary framework causes it to come off as inaccessible to the uninitiated. At times, the whole movie seems to reflect its inspiration almost too literally; as with the music, I struggled to find a coherent message. It was difficult to follow the story after the first few beautifully stark scenes of the musicians gave way to long, drawn-out sequences of a man repeatedly hitting his head with his hand while gnashing his teeth into a microphone. Such scenes were explained much later, but it was done through snippets of conversation instead of an overall narrative commentary. The soundtrack didn't help, even adding to the confusion at times. I was glad to experience the vision and creativity of these musicians, but there is definitely such a thing as overexposure to piercing metallic dissonance.
I did appreciate the artistry and daring that went into creating the documentary. Without a narrative voice, the film seemed less like an educational video, as documentaries usually are, and more like an experience witnessed firsthand. This project reflects the fearless originality of these fringe musicians in a neurotically conformist society and at times makes good use of sublime imagery and a healthy dose of sound samples. Nevertheless, it suffers from sensory overload. There are a good number of sights and sounds to process and little by way of explanation. The informative dialogue comes much later and at a point where I was almost too overwhelmed to care. Had the directors balanced their brilliant use of imagery with narrative commentary - and some reprieve from the sonic chaos - I would have better enjoyed their depiction of an alternative to humdrum reality.
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