Review of Mind Game (2004) by Richard T — 18 Mar 2009

What a film. This movie tackles so many ideas, wrestles with them, presents them, and does it all at an incredibly well paced speed and with such beauty and mastery that I am unable to see how anyone is able to be unimpressed.

Religion, mortality, romance, and the human condition in general are all given attention and handled with the most precise care. The film is, to use a generic image (and one evoked during the run time), a roller coaster ride that never slows down.

The anticipation felt upon the initial climb is wonderful, the film quickly shows just enough for the viewer to anticipate the ride that is to come without taking too long to get things moving. The plot is great and the voice work is top notch, everything engaging and exciting, though never willing to sacrifice emotion.

In fact, the film really invites it and even in the first few minutes the film effectively packs a ton of emotion into a few short sequences. Music is used incredibly well in the film too, making sure to never get in the way or what is going on but to always enhance the situations, both through score and soundtrack, so that earns a few bonus points as well.

Though I suppose the real star here is the animation, a style that is truly unidentifiable because it changes on a dime, constantly throughout the film. We get real faces plastered over cartoons, exaggerated cartoons in a less detailed backdrop, carefully animated environments and characters, some pseudo-CGI stuff (I think), and one stunning scene that seems water colored or something and recalls the "Starry Night" portrait while offering motion and color that rival just about anything else I have ever seen in Eastern and Western animation.

Just as a showcase of the animation styles the film would be a success, but when each change works to enhance the story and the world the film becomes that much better. This film may be the best example of how to effectively tell a story with this type of animation that I have ever watched.

The ending is phenomenal too, stylistically beautiful and thematically excellent, plus that final screen and the words that appear hit home wonderfully, opening things up for even more interpretation and fully drawing attention to the depth that other minor instances in the film had already touched on earlier, it is very similar to Sabina's speech at the end of "The Skin of Our Teeth," but I think it works even better here.

This film rivals some of Kon's greats and easily surpasses any of the Miyazaki I have watched, it's truly a triumph. 4.898123443284367055.