Ecstasy of the Angels

Having greatly enjoyed Wakamatsu's earlier film Go, Go Second Time Virgin, I was very excited to come across this one. The excitement was however short lived. Or should I say endless because that is about how long this movie seems. Rarely have I looked at the counter on my VCR more often to see how much more I would have to endure.

It was much the same feeling as when after seeing Godard's wonderfully early new wave movies, I was subjected to La Chinoise or Pierrot Le Fou. Actually Ecstacy of the Angels seem very much inspired by this more avant-garde side of Godard's film-making. But without the originality.

There is plenty of sex and violence here, and layers and layers of what is most likely satire on political idealism and the media's exploitation of sex and violence. And possibly even sex and violence in cinema itself. A film mocking film maybe. There is that term yet again: Sex and violence. Usually a safe recipe for good entertainment, be it in celluloid or newsprint form. But the problem here is that the message is lost in all the boring scenes and purposely stiff dialog. You will quickly lose track of who belongs to which revolutionary faction. You are probably supposed to. Is the movie supposed to show us how predictable and repetitious our lust for sex and violence is? Because it's all the same here. Every scene is just more of the same. Tedious repetition. Maybe that is the message. Is that why all the characters are named after seasons and weekdays? Possibly.

Whatever it is, it all seems rather outdated and unoriginal now. It's just plain boring. Maybe it wasn't in Japan in 1972.

You do sort of get a picture of the screenplay being written on a roll of toilet paper by a couple of drunk pretentious intellectuals looking for an excuse to get some young actresses to take their clothes off. Which would in that case be the one side of this movie that would seem perfectly reasonable to me. I'm sure there is an intellectual masterpiece in there somewhere. A deeper meaning. But life is just to short to look for it. I simply cannot bear to watch this one again.

This is an excellent film, flawed in the sense that certain aspects of the fictional revolutionary group appear quite caricatured at times but viewed in relation with director Koji Wakamatsu's newest film "United Red Army" it can be seen to draw a surprisingly accurate picture of the revolutionary nihilism of the Japanese student activists of the time. Other reviewers have compared the film to Godard's early work such as La Chinoise and admittedly the artistic style is quite similar though less refined, and far from being less politically aware than Godard, Wakamatsu was actually much more realistically cynical in his portrait of armed student activist cells whereas Godard's revolutionary themed films displayed a certain hopeful naiveté in the potential of a largely dogmatic and authoritarian movement which was strongly criticized by his contemporaries in the Situationist International. The writer of this film Masao Adachi was certainly not a pretentious intellectual out to exploit sex and revolutionary pop aesthetic as some critics have inferred here; a closer look at his personal history shows that shortly after writing the screenplay he actually moved to Lebanon to join the real life armed revolutionary group the Japanese Red Army where he remained a committed activist for 28 years up until his arrest in the year 2000. As such the film can be a unique and telling account of his own mentality and the personal motivations which led to joining the JRA, as well as his prior knowledge of the less-than-ideal dynamics of the lifestyle he would be choosing. One must keep in mind that at the time Wakamatsu was expected by producers to be making films in the 'pink' genre which would explain the gratuitous sex scenes that could be seen as offensive or pointless to some but the unique beauty of the film far outweigh it's occasional rough edges. Highly recommended, though not for casual viewers of film "for entertainment's sake" alone.

Koji Wakamatsu's "Ecstacy Of The Angels" runs for a mere eighty-nine minutes. After it ended it felt more like eight nine hours. Wakamatsu, known as the "Pink Godfather" (no, don't ask me why), was a pioneer of the pinku eiga genre. I had never heard the name Wakamatsu before. According to the blurb in the festival guide, "Ecstacy of The Angels" is a parable about a revolutionary organization torn apart by betrayal, its members descending into paranoia, sadism and sexual decadence. It sounded like a plot from an early Godard film, only from a Japanese perspective. This sounded interesting, I thought. It was about as interesting as having a tooth extracted. The opening sequence, in black and white, is set in a nightclub. A female singer screeches absurd lyrics, while at a nearby table three men and a woman sit in silence. Pretty soon though, I couldn't figure out which revolutionary faction was which, and by that time I was beyond caring. The actors don't just speak their lines, the bellow them at each other, as if they were all auditory challenged. In the frequent sex scenes (which are about as erotic as two storefront mannequins coupling), they go through the motions of sexual congress while mouthing absurd platitudes about fighting for the revolutionary cause. Frankly, Wakamatsu is definitely no match for Godard. Which reminds me, I need to visit my dentist for a check up. It'll be less painful all round.

Do you like hot chicks? Do you like it when they take their clothes off? Do you like it when they speak a language you don't understand? I DO! This is my new favorite movie. It also has a PLOT. I give it a 4 out of 10!

As I write, no one on IMDb has provided a synopsis for Ecstasy of the Angels, and the few reviews here are rather bereft of plot details; could that be because no-one who has watched it has got a clue what was going on thanks to the stupefyingly dull direction, the coma-inducing performances, and the fact that it is virtually impossible to tell one character from another? I reckon so.

Before I gave up trying to follow the story and began praying for the film to just finish and thereby end my misery (I'm obsessive about watching a film in its entirety, no matter how bad), here's what I garnered about the plot: The Four Seasons revolutionary group is split into factions that go by the names of— surprise surprise—the Four Seasons. Fall organises a raid on a US army base and makes off with some high explosives (stored in what looks like Bilbo Baggins' hobbit hole), but with members of her team killed and injured during the job, the way is left wide open for the other factions to help themselves to the spoils of her venture. Cue much arguing amongst angry freedom fighter types, and lots of strangely unemotional sex scenes between the uniformly hot female members of the group and the seemingly unappreciative blokes.

If I had known what I was in for, I would have passed on this film, but for some reason I had got it into my mind that this was a sleazy Cat III effort from Hong Kong; not only did I get the country of origin wrong—this is a Japanese flick—but I also was also severely misguided when it came to the kind of film this was. Rather than a trashy piece of Asian filth, Ecstasy of the Angels is a pompous, pretentious, and extremely dull avant-garde art-house film that could only possibly appeal to the bearded chin-stroker contingent; whilst they might enjoy waxing lyrical about the intent of the piece, the film's political message or the pointless techniques employed by the director (B&W to colour to B&W to colour, ad nauseum), anyone else will simply be bored rigid. Hell, I was practically catatonic by the end of the film's opening scene in which several of the characters sit around a table in a night-club while a singer drones on endlessly in the background.