Avatar in 4D

You know, I hate to keep harping on about Avatar, but it seems you just can’t get away from the film at the moment. I managed to catch some of this year’s Academy Awards ceremony on the morning of Monday 8th while I was still in Tokyo, and was somewhat relieved that it didn’t pick up as many plaudits as first anticipated. The Hurt Locker, after all, was in most respects a far superior work, even if it didn’t make as much money.

Still, though I guess I’ve made my feelings pretty clear about the film itself by now, there’s other interesting aspects to the Avatar phenomenon. While in Yubari, I heard from some of the Korean guests that Cameron’s film had just been released in Seoul in 4D (more here). What, another dimension, I hear you ask? But which one? Have they perhaps added ‘time’ to the equation, so that the 162 minutes doesn’t seem to stretch for an eternity? Or maybe some actual depth has been added to the characterisation? No, actually these special screenings at selected venues have instead opted for juddering moving seats, wind and water effects and synthetic smells. This is all very interesting, this attempt to draw viewers into cinemas for the type of all-round sensory experience that you could never hope for at home, although personally I have my doubts as to whether Pandora and its population of noble savages could ever smell quite as good as they look.

I’m not sure if the moving seats will ever be more than a novelty either. I remember a couple of years back at Puchon Festival there was a guy attempting to corral all the foreign journalists into having a go on a prototype of this new gimmick. I was subjected to about five minutes of being vibrated along to some suitably brash Hollywood action movie – I’m not sure if it was Con Air or Black Hawk Down, but it was something of this ilk- and the impression I was left with was that unless the film was specifically made with such technology in mind, it didn’t really add much to the viewing experience, and was actually more of a distraction. I felt a little queasy afterwards.

Putting the cynical old curmudgeon in me aside for one moment, I should say that if this kind of cinema floats your boat, Avatar seems tailor-made for such auxiliaries in that it is ultimately about creating an all-immersive viewing experience. As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, it trades in what we might call cinematism rather than realism. The viewer is pitched headlong through Cameron’s world at a dizzying velocity to create an exaggerated hyper-reality of the type that we could never experience in real life, with an emphasis on dynamic movement throughout all three dimensions.

Another Avatar pic

I’ve always preferred my viewing experiences to be of a more contemplative nature myself, but still, different horses for different courses; one can’t deny that Avatar is lighting up the exhibition sector in a way that hasn’t happened for quite some time. If only because of this, it is of great historical significance. In any measure, it’s pretty clear that the 3D boom isn’t going to go away anytime soon, so I was intrigued to hear of a recent Japanese film that attempts to get in on the act, the second release I’ve heard of from the country after Takashi Shimizu’s Shock Labyrinth 3D (Senritsu meikyû 3D), soon to be unveiled in the UK.

J-horror in 3d: Takashi Shimizu's Shock Labyrinth

I’m actually pretty bloody amazed no one else has been talking about it either, as it seems pretty much tailor-made for the overseas midnight movie circuit. The film in question is the latest instalment in the Perfect Education (Kanzen naru shiiku) series that began some ten years or so back (I reviewed the first entry for Midnight Eye back in the early days), although which largely seems to have slipped beneath the radar of most foreign observers, for perhaps fairly obvious reasons. Despite the first being scripted by living legend Kaneto Shindo, the Perfect Education films are to the world of Japanese softcore what Friday 13^th is to the horror genre. Still, their largely formulaic narratives revolving around solitary men capturing comely young beauties and ‘grooming’ them until they fall in love with them seems to have attracted some interesting directors in the past, including Bashing helmer Masahiro Kobayashi (Perfect Education 5: Amazing Story), and Koji Wakamatsu (Perfect Education 6 : Red Murder). Neither of these filmmakers are strangers to the world of erotic cinema – you’ll find plenty of references to them in my Behind the Pink Curtain. The latest offering, however, is the work of Kenta Fukasaku, best known as the son of Kinji, who took over the reins of his father when the latter died during the early stages of shooting Battle Royale II.

Kenta Fukasaku's Perfect Education: Maid For You

Perfect Education: Maid For You already has a pretty irresistible hook in that its victim is a worker in an Akihabara maid cafe. Not content with this, the producers have gone that one step further by utilising 3D in a similar manner to how pink films from the 1960s livened up their saucier sequences by bursting into colour. Unlike Avatar, Maid For You’s application of the third dimension clearly prioritises volume and form over movement, and it’s somewhat comical to picture the viewers donning their polarised specs and extending their hands while grope towards the shapely torso of the main actress and Gravure model Ayano every time she disrobes.

Maid For You

I should add that I’ve not seen the film as yet. It ended its brief single-theatre run only a month before I got to Tokyo, so I can’t really vouch for how the 3D scenes worked out, but my curiosity has been piqued. What is interesting is why a title like this, part of a series that is ultimately targeted at the home-viewing market, should adopt such a cinema-specific approach. How many times will it ever be seen in this way? Although, of course, 3D HDTV’s are already there on the market, so perhaps its films such as these that are going to provide one of the impetuses for upgrading to the new equipment.

Britain's first 3d feature, Pete Walker's Four Dimensions of Greta (1972)

Maid For You is certainly not the first sex film to make use of 3D. I recently heard something about a pink film released by Shintoho in the 1980s (ok, so I missed this one in the book!), although I’m not sure what its title was. In America, Al Silliman Jr. gave us the Stereovision spectacles of The Stewardesses as early as 1969, touted as one of the most profitable releases of all time (you can see the trailer on youtube, flat version only I’m afraid), while Britain’s first ever 3D feature came in 1972 in the form of Pete Walker’s Four Dimensions of Greta (also known as Three Dimensions of Greta – not sure where the other dimension came from). And before I sign off, here’s a link to a piece about Tinto Brass’ plans to remake Caligula (1979) with the new 3D technology – without the smells, wind, water and juddering chairs, one assumes…

Links to the rest of these articles:

Cinematism, Realism, and Spectacle part 1: Avatar

Cinematism, Realism, and Spectacle part 2: Paradoxes of Visual Knowledge

Cinematism, Realism, and Spectacle part 4: 3D or not 3D?

Cinematism, Realism, and Spectacle part 5: A Joyride to Nowhere?

Cinematism, Realism, and Spectacle part 6: Changing our Focus – StreetDance 3D