‘Funky Forest’: the surreal Japanese comedy that shocked audiences
An unforeseen byproduct of some of the greatest psychedelic movies of all time is their ability to go viral many decades later, going from obscure arthouse origins to the news feeds of Facebook. From the stop-motion oddities of Czech animator Jan Švankmajer to the downright bizarre visions of the Japanese filmmaker Katsuhito Ishii, such clips are so befuddlingly curious that they enchant the masses like a well-choreographed advertisement.
Ishii himself, after getting a job at Tohokushinsha Film in the early 1990s, began creating advertisements in 1992, even gaining awards for his innovative work, a formative role that would undoubtedly inform his later films. His 2003 feature The Taste of Tea would provide an early space for experimentation, gaining critical acclaim for the heartfelt drama about a dysfunctional family that trickled over elements of surrealism.
Whilst The Taste of Tea might be more critically renowned, it is Funky Forest: The First Contact, released two years later, that would become his most notorious work.
Also co-directed by Hajime Ishimine and Shunichirô Miki, the curious film has been compared to Robert Altman’s Short Cuts in that, just like the 1993 movie, Funky Forest is an anthology flick that tells the story of Guitar brother and his peculiar family. The result is a piece of increasingly surreal cinema that heightens its creative bravery from one sketch to the next, using strange puppets and ingenious yet unsightly miniature figurines.
Make no mistake, however. This is no throwaway piece of laughable cinema; for all its lunacy, Funky Forest is a seriously well-made piece of film, with Ishii having previously worked on the anime sequence in Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 movie Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Just like his work on the modern action classic, Funky Forest flows with a genuine sense of cinematic rhythm, with each sketch showing off some genuine comedic ingenuity.
But, yes, it is also worth stating that such sketches are baffling, peculiar and a little incredulous.
Just take, for example, the ‘After School Club’ segment, which presents the story of a young girl and her coach playing a game called ‘Minami’. Very different from a traditional school sport, Minami involves the girl playing tennis with some sort of humanoid android whose large swelling testicles and long nipples allow him to shoot milk from his breast and toss ‘bloodsuckers’ from his pants.
When you lay it out word for word, it sounds quite simply nonsensical, and in many ways, it really is, with the scene itself the only thing that can do Funky Forest justice. These bloodsucking creatures are tossed at the girl who tries to hit them back with a badminton racket, only for one of them to latch onto her arm and birth a tiny human of its own. Indeed, these are the kind of bizarre visions that even your most surreal nightmares would turn away from.
Curiously bizarre it may be, there’s no denying that Funky Forest is an incredibly original piece of cinema and one certainly worth seeking out for lovers of psychedelic filmmaking.
