Movies You Ought To See: Space Travelers

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23:50 GMT on 12 March 2003

The relationship of art to real life fascinates me. Ayn Rand called art fuel for the spirit. There are semi-regular campaigns against this or that children's entertainment (yes, I am using "entertainment" as a noun; sue me) for poisoning children's minds (Power Rangers, TeleTubbies).

Life obviously inspires art. Less obviously, to some anyhow, art inspires life, both for good and ill. And art inspires art.

The recent Japanese film Space Travelers both explores and exemplifies all of this.

With a film called Space Travelers, you walk into the film expecting certain things to transpire. You do not expect the film to open with three post-teenaged losers sitting in a car, reading comics, shooting the breeze, waiting to rob a bank. You further do not expect the film to be a hostage drama almost completely contained within that bank.

The title actually is the title of a fictional* anime TV series which the three bank robbers are fans of. And the effect that this has on the story is intriguing.

The theme is that art can inspire, but one must take that inspiration and do something with it. Everyone in the bank, hostages and robbers alike, has had their dreams frustrated, their aspirations thwarted. What is key is that they have all permitted this to control the rest of their lives. They let happenstance guide their lives.

The robbers are ronin, students who have failed (repeatedly) to get accepted into University. A bank teller, Midori (played by Eri Fukatsu), who wanted a different career stays in the bank because it is safe, and remains with her cheating boyfriend for much the same reason.

When the bank is first surrounded by police, the three robbers want negotiating power, and they try to enlist some of the hostages to join them. After a few false starts, Midori's friend Fujimoto (played by the adorable Masanobu Ando from Adrenaline Drive) agrees to help them, and they assign her a name from the anime series — "Black Cat, who is as deadly as she is beautiful!" The robbers and some hostages assume the other roles from the series (Hayabusa-Jetter, Crusher, and Carl Hendrix, amongst others; Midori becomes "Irene").

Naturally this all becomes a media event to the outside world, with the creator of the series telling the TV news his quasi-pretentious reasons for creating the show.

But the core drama occurs within the bank, as the various characters wrestle with an apathy that can no longer hold within the crucible of the situation, coming to realize that they can control their own destinies if they choose to. By assuming the courage and confidence of fictional, idealized characters, they gain control of themselves:

I've ... always had a big inferiority complex. My teachers, they all gave me negative scores for social activities. I never even managed to date a girl. At yesterday's lonely hearts dinner, I was too shy to do anything. But... I think ... now I think I can do it. I think I've changed. So let me go and get the pizza. Besides, I'm not Shimizu any more. I'm ... BIG BAD CARL HENDRIX!

For a period, the police come to represent Authority, and through playing their roles, the Space Travelers flout Authority and begin to exercise their independence in true adolescent fashion, and then they are forced to grow up very quickly as reality invades the fantasy.

There seems to be only one way the situation can end, and the film plays into that expectation. With an homage to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the robbers take responsibility for their actions, and the movie appears to end. At this point, I felt cheated, thinking that the filmmakers had gotten lazy with the ending.

There is, however, a final scene that fades in slowly. If you don't want to know, skip past the next break.

Midori, the girl who had been so withdrawn at the beginning, seems lost in a sea of humanity at a mall. A voice comes over the loudspeaker system, announcing the arrival of each of the Space Travelers by name (it's a commercial), and she stops, an island of stillness in the middle of that sea.

Her head droops, her hands cover her face.

She looks up, tears streaming, and cries out triumphantly: "Space Travelers!"

Strange looks from the passers-by, but she pays them no mind. The final lines of the movie are hers, over the image of her standing apart from that crowd:

It was all just like a dream. Was it a good dream, or a nightmare? I'm not sure if this is the right way to remember it, but while I was in the dream, playing Irene, I felt more alive than ever before. And I don't think I'm the only one. I still haven't found what it is that I should do. I'm searching for a paradise that's waiting for me. And what about you? You — what are you doing now?

The film is wildly uneven in tone, sometimes to great effect, sometimes disastrously. Mixing comic farce, soap operatic elements, self-conscious cliches and tragedy is daring, but it doesn't always work here. I wasn't sure I liked this film until the final scene. Once it ended, I was in tears.

I recommend seeing this movie, if you ever have the chance, for the brilliance with which it illustrates the power art, even "simple" adventure fiction, can have over people's lives.

* — The anime in question isn't actually fictional. A movie called Space Travelers was created, for the express purpose of providing background to this live-action movie. Strangely, only the anime is available here, and it is apparently substandard.

Let me make clear, I am recommending the live action film. I've never seen the anime.

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