An animator long showered with awards and critical praise, beginning with his 2004 full-length directorial debut “Mind Game,” Yuasa Masaaki is no stranger to the festival circuit. But Venice, where…
An animator long showered with awards and critical praise, beginning with his 2004 full-length directorial debut “Mind Game,”is no stranger to the festival circuit. But Venice, where his new animated feature “Inu-Oh” is screening in the Horizons section, is his first Big Three festival. And his film is the only one from Japan in the lineup.
The Japanese media has reported that “Inu-Oh,” an animation about how a blind player of the biwa and a Noh dancer with a differently formed body created a musical explosion in 14th century Kyoto – will be the 56-year-old Yuasa’s last as a director, but he denies that he is quitting animation permanently. “I’m not retiring, but I am taking a break to study,” he says. “I’ve been working too hard lately, so I couldn’t prepare for my next step. I’m taking time off to do that.
Not in the novel, however, are the film’s musical scenes, scored by Otomo Yoshihide, that feature long-haired players shredding biwas, accompanied by a light show straight from a 21st century stadium concert. “I wanted to create the feeling of how new their music must have been for that era,” Yuasa says. “But explaining its newness by contrasting it to what was ordinary then would have taken too much time.
He is also not concerned that foreign audiences might find the film’s historical references hard to parse. “I only started to understand that era for the first time after I had read and researched a number of books,” he says. “Probably even Japanese would find some of the contents strange and really hard to understand. But I just want audiences to feel something for these two young guys who overcome their disabilities, to know that they existed.
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