Revolution+1
At a glance...
- Directed by Masao Adachi
- Released in 2022
- Runtime 75 minutes
- Watched at The Beacon Cinema
- Final feelings: it didn't have to be a movie, but now it is one.
It's very rough and, at times, hard to watch. Like, I think I am capable of lowering my expectations for a quick, low-budget film, but even still the rain-overlay in post on top of footage of obviously-recently-showered young man sitting on his bed got pretty repetitive. Worse was the soundtrack which had moments where very high-frequency tones would play and it just drove me a little crazy. Even those moments I kinda get, we're watching this guy hurry up and wait to shoot the former prime minister so of course the music should be annoying. But overall, the movie is not really good enough to feel like it deserves that kind of discomfort from me.
What is cool, or at least neat, about this movie is that it has small moments where characters speak candidly about their motivations and their political beliefs. And that's ultimately why I'm at a movie named "Revolution+1", I want to hear a motive for the guy who did this thing. I want to know what the people around him thought of him before and after he assassinated someone. I wanted to hear what the filmmaker thought of these things, which would be a product of all these other characters' statements in the film itself. In its 75 minute runtime, which feels agonizingly long, there is a solid 20 minutes of stuff that is what I actually wanted. Most of this film is relatively tiresome character voice over, but my favorite example of this was the sister's narration after Abe gets shot. She asks, "what's next for me?" which seems like a natural question that comes from all lone-wolf assassinations. She asks what sort of strategy she should have to continue on with his struggle, and even states that, "if the Unification Church were to be destroyed, we'd have to get rid of all of the politicians". In my head I was like, yeah girl suit up, it's a long fight ahead! It's just a concise statement from the character that puts her in relationship with her brother and it's instantly relatable and relevant to the audience. I genuinely thought the movie would end at this part, with this long shot held on the sister bicycling up a hill to seemingly reach out to her imprisoned brother. I was wrong about that, unfortunately.
Ultimately, I get why this is a movie and why Masao Adachi felt compelled to complete this as soon as possible. Movies are not like video essays, because they have characters that can embody the stuff that would otherwise simply be exposition. Our perspective when interacting with a movie, even a bad one, is not the same as when we put a video essay or podcast on in the background while we do the dishes. So, I don't hate that this movie exists the way I hate most bad movies that I end up watching. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is revolutionary, because revolution as a concept implies a mass collective of resistance. Maybe it's trying to show how one urchin of society was able to gain consciousness on his own to be the "plus one" to the collective urge towards revolution, but it's not coherent enough at expressing the motivations of these characters without just telling them to you straight-up to be a good example of that.
On the other hand, how many times have I felt the urge to create something, only to fizzle out once the enthusiasm yields to the unbearable wall that is actually taking that first step? Maybe it's better to make something in 8 days (the soundtrack that annoyed me so much took 2 hours to make! I don't know what that means but it definitely means something) and just get the expression out of the body and into the work, than to agonize over the details. If making a movie means shooting a ton of footage in poorly lit bedrooms and apartments and then recording V/O for the whole script, it's still a fucking movie.