Mind Escape -- The Importance of Films - with a Ghost in the Shell remix

Mind Escape – The Importance of Films
Histories, Novels, Essays

by Jacob Malewitz

In his classic “Oldboy,” Chan-wook Park creates revenge, with a dash of madness; pain and sex, with a dash of incest; violence and noir, with some sprinklings of John Woo films. I have this bitter fascination with Asian films, the kinds of Akira Kurosawa, or the anime movement (hell yeah “Ghost In the Shell”), or the “Hard Boiled” and “The Killer” modes created by a madman of action by the name of Woo. There is, in these films, a dark escape. The characters are on the run, dark things are happening, and we can smell the gunsmoke, smell the blood. It allows an escape.

“Oldboy” was one of my first blu-ray buys, and it was worth it, even being available on the escapist-who-never-sleeps site of Netflix, where literally hundreds of classics, like Oldboy, can be found. The narration seems to be so odd. A man dies and is reborn, in a sense. He falls in love. He kills. He never stops, always in the perpetual motion of noir mixed with blacks, greys, even some whites. This is a painting you get jealous of, and this is a painting you want to copy.

In my own art, I have often thought back to films. How can I distill this? I know, bad: you don't learn fiction storytelling from films, though there can be some argument there. I thought of Oldboy, when I saw the cover, as a “The Killer,” but it's more of a literary piece. It flows with action. The characters have motivations. The bad guys are bad, as bad as some of the dubbing involved in the films (which just adds to it).

I used to think and write on “Donnie Darko” in my journals. I would write and write about this oddly magical film, a kind of pseudo science fiction, and you might even compare it with Southland Tales, one odd with magic, the other odd with many bad points and music video like storytelling.

These journals would question what happened in the story. I was trying to get a bead on what made them work. So I wrote (for Donnie Darko), “who the hell is the rabbit.” More recently, I watched “Oldboy”, and its odd storytelling, its successful storytelling, was like a bridge. You may get this conception of the Hong Kong and Japan and else types of stories, but it's purely unique, better than most Tarantino stuff, and it's Korean, and boy did this director get that on the page.

I escaped into these dark film rides. I got away from my stories. I avoided my art. I wanted to see other art, something they created, but outside of my own thought. I mean by this: I had to get away. I had to explore something new. You can sit down with your notebook in front of the TV and write notes, then go to your laptop and write, but when are you not writing or studying? Escaping – that is what you want. It lets you look at colors differently, at blog posts differently, at your stories with fresh eyes, and then you can avoid the block and the doubts. You escaped into something else. Your novel career or freelance blogging career or painting career is in the other room. Sit down, watch something. Escape to a film. Run outside. Then, hours later, sit. Write.

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novelists or career ghost in the shell fans

yoko onno

ghost in the shell

stand alone episode