Zokki — Zokki (Blu Ray)

Zokki is based on Hiroyuki Ohashi’s manga of the same name, but that’s all I can tell you; it’s an odd little film, about two hours in length, presented here on blu ray with a couple of extras. There’s no simple plot or story to quickly lay out, instead the film is a series of smaller stories woven and crisscrossed together. These include: a man ‘traveling aimlessly’ on a bicycle, two loner schoolboys bonding over one’s love for the other’s imaginary older sister - for me the most effective strand of the film - and a father and son encountering a ghostly mannequin figure; each vignette has a different tone or atmosphere, and indeed the film has three directors each taking control of different sections.

 Zokki is often a very slow film, and quiet too, both in terms of sound and in terms of onscreen events; in broad terms the film is rather gentle, with a few moments of genuine dread and one of jolting violence, which does shock due to the puncturing of the ‘quiet’ atmosphere. The stories are perhaps founded around the foibles and follies of human relationships and interactions, and these sometimes give them a feeling akin to folk or ‘moral’ tales. This slight otherworldliness makes for a reasonable comparison with Ghost World: Zokki is a film about a quirky town full of quirky characters. So it has a definite charm, even a sweetness at points. There is a clear sense of comic absurdity which flits between lightness and a heavier, even tragic, tone, with recurring discussion of the cycle of desire and joy, with the latter satisfying the former only briefly, and thus the two spin faster and faster until they become the same state, negating each other. These fundamental existential questions float around in the film and create an odd tension because, rather than creating a cerebral arthouse tone, Zokki is more quirky, often aiming at comedy and at moments even becoming ‘kooky’ and somehow reminiscent of 90s mainstream appropriations of Generation X culture. Thus there are a couple of passages where it’s genuinely unclear whether the events onscreen are meant to be funny or bleakly hellish, and whilst on reflection this tension is quite nice, during the actual viewing of the film it was sometimes just confusing.

So Zokki is indeed an odd little film, but one with charm and intrigue - there are several elements which are never fully explained and the film has no resolution as such. Some of the acting is a little ‘theatrical’ but I’m presuming this is in part reflecting the manga origins of the storylines; visually the film is perhaps nothing too special, but there are a few beautifully framed shots and sequences.

The extras are some behind-the-scenes‘ making of’ footage, which is just that, and an insightful interview with the three directors which really does open the film out - also making me interested in the Zokki manga. Those who are interested in a different spin on quirky indie comedies, or who wish to see disparate stories so seamlessly interwoven into a really complex body of work, will find Zokki an engaging, and fun, film.