Harmony:
Written by Koji Yamamoto, directed by Takashi Nakamura and Michael Arias. Starring:
Miyuki Sawashiro, Reina Ueda, Aya Suzaki, Yoshiko Sakakibara. Running
Time: 120 minutes. Based on the
novel by Project Itoh.
Rating:
2/4
**a minor spoiler warning, since I need
to discuss at least one of the plot twists in detail to offer any depth here**
Harmony is the sort of big-concept,
animated sci-fi story that I usually love.
Plus, the fact that it’s an original concept in an era of increasingly slavish
devotion to endlessly rehashing old brands in the name of financial security
makes films like this even more crucial to the artistic health of the world of
cinema. And yet, while there is a lot in
the designs and visual style of the film to praise, it sadly falls just a bit
too short of doing justice to its lofty concept.
Our
setting is a world where super-advanced medical technology has created a
particularly extreme 99%-vs.-1% divide- those who can afford it live in bizarrely
over-designed super-cities (Tokyo is now sickeningly pink), where the spread of
a philosophy called Lifeism has led to a society where you actually have no
choice but to be physically healthy.
Special contact lenses apparently connected to the internet flash
automatic warnings and recommendations on how to avoid potentially-harmful
dangers, or even if the food you are about to eat is a bit too fatty (the
lenses lend themselves to a particularly dark- but effective- piece of black
humor later on).
Toan
grew up in this world, but as a child she was taken under the wing of a young
girl named Miache, who instinctively realized how stifling Lifeism could
get. She, Toan, and a third girl in
their group hatched a plan to shock the system by committing suicide together,
but the third lost her nerves and told her parents, which lead to Toan being
rescued at the last minute. Miache, it
seems, was reached too late, and so she was apparently the only one to
die.
Since
then, Toan has risen to join the ranks of the Helix Inspectors, a seemingly
independent, quasi-military group allied with the WHO to enforce trade treaties
regarding medical equipmen,t and to also work to spread Lifeism
philosophy. She’s developed a bit of a
rogue streak, trading her own med supplies for alcohol and other delights, and
as a result gets called back to Tokyo for a chewing out when, seemingly by
coincidence, global tragedy begins; thousands of people in the sanctum-esque
inner cities, many of them using the latest in medical technology (including
those contact lenses), commit mass-suicide in a myriad of brutal ways. It’s soon announced that this was an attack
perpetrated by a fringe group that had developed a “code” (don’t ask how it’s
supposed to work) that can take over people’s minds, seeking to overturn the
staid order imposed by Lifeists and return people to a more instinctive, “natural”
state.
This
is where the first twist comes in, and this is the one I need to spoil to
explain why I knocked this movie in its rating as much as I did, so final
warning. Okay? Okay.
Turns
out Miache isn’t dead; after she tried killing herself, she was whisked away to
far-off Baghdad for experimentation, where she came into contact with the
fringe group developing the aforementioned code, and has since apparently taken
over the group and is driving the spate of terror attack/suicides. Toan discovers this shortly after she’s
reinstated to help investigate the incidents, which immediately lends a more
tragic and personal edge to her search.
It’s
in this second half that the movie starts to trip over itself, after a pretty
solid first half, but the twist of Miache being alive isn’t the reason. The real reason is that she just isn’t a very
interesting character once we start to get to know her. She only speaks in grand philosophical
preacher terms about what human life should really be like, and how Lifeist
society “kills with kindness.” She also
gets a pointedly tragic backstory later on that is entirely unnecessary, and
actually weakens any residual interest I had in her as a person.
To
be fair though, Miache isn’t the only character suffering from Exposition Fairy
bites. A lot of the broader messages and
social commentaries that the film tries to engage in are hammered in way too
bluntly; nearly all the dialogue consists of explanatory speeches. It’s a shame, because there are some great
questions put forth in the movie that would otherwise make it a great think
piece, if only it could get out of its own way.
Toan
does at least get some good pathos for her character; there’s something
refreshing in how openly she admits that she doesn’t really care at all about saving
the world or about any one philosophy over the other- she just wants personal
answers about what happened to her friend, nothing more. The scene where she admits this ended up
being way more intriguing for me than any of the other, admittedly flashy,
shots showing off the impressive designs of the world. If we’d had a few more moments like that,
this could have become a cult classic. As
it is, it’s an intriguing and well-animated action piece, but ultimately one
that doesn’t push the boundaries of thought as much as it wished it did.
-Noah Franc
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