J-Movie: Shinboru (Symbol)
Ah, when i first heard of this movie i was so excited. Why you ask? Because Matsumoto Hitoshi of the very influential comedy duo Downtown was not only the director but the main actor (as he was in Dai Nipponjin aka. Big Man Japan)!
Everything about the movie “Symbol” was talked about so vaguely: the teasers, the trailers and even the press conference interview with Matsumoto himself. It was like he didn’t want to give anything away to anybody and hence it had built up a lot of hype at the time, even here over seas for us Gaki no Tsukai fans. ^-^
But now, on to the actual movie! The movie “Symbol” follows two main story lines that couldn’t be any more different. The first one to start is about a family in Mexico, consisting of a cursing nun sister, a gentle grandfather, and a young boy who looks up to his mediocre wrestling father named Escargot Man. The other story line starts off with Matsumoto lying on the ground of a blank, tall, pure white room sleeping in bright pajamas and sporting a long bowl haircut. Hundreds of white cherubs morph threw the wall and then back into the wall leaving only their nether region parts to be seen on the wall. Eventually Matsumoto’s character figures out that every cherub penis on the walls acts like a buttom, and if he pushes one something random will show up or happen. Through pushing those buttons he finds a door and works towards getting through it to finally escape the strange room, but of course he encounters many difficulties.
I want to go through another part of the movie, but i don’t really want to give too much a way so sorry. “Symbol” is a pretty slow movie and you’re left confused through most of the movie until close to the end where you are dumped with all kinds of symbolism, connections and deeper meaning, but then you’re still scratching your head trying figure and sort threw those thoughts. Ultimately you’re left hanging for what happens next. But on the bright side, all in all i did enjoy the movie. It had several humorous moments, most of them were in the white room with Matsumoto. I also thought the combination of the two stories lines and how they relate were pretty original. The creativity of the rooms and how they differed was very interesting and memorable.
I would suggest this movie yes, but it is fairly slow and boring most of the time so you could also use the time to do homework, stitch, play solitaire, etc while you have it on.
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for a little more information: IMDb Shinboru
youtube video trailer:
