This is really bold, and maybe even a folly. Thirty-eight minutes, and of what? I suspect that this thin story is actually something of a self-challenge, and not just a thin story. Very well met, too. The long middle section with all of those vividly designed posters assuming life—though not necessarily any movement—is a triumph. Here the initial Japanese softness gives place to a very sharp, very Western set of commercial design conventions. It plays well dramatically, but it’s graphically even better. The music for this section appears to be Tati-derived.
What do we make of these intimations of military force, of the gradual advent of the fascists? Heartfelt and historical, and forceful too. Further than that, there’s some able merely impressionism, and some of what registers as merely noodling. Not fully coherent, perhaps, but very impressive in various of its parts.