On Oshii, on Art, and on the Auteur

Mamoru Oshii is interesting.

I don't consider myself to be a Mamoru Oshii specialist in any capacity, but I find that he is this earnest man who imbues all of his work with this personal, powerful, emotional sentimentality. Those who look at Oshii can point to a lot of his works and say, "this is the guy who puts Bassett hounds in everything," and there's definitely been a joke or two levied at his expense.

But why the Bassett Hound? Why the Christian symbolism? Why the languid spaces, the dissonance, the melding of humanness and machinery? In this talk with Dr. Brian Ruh, I think a critical point on Oshii's work surfaces: his work is his life, his life is his work. The work of Jin-Roh, of Ghost in the Shell, of Patlabor, is of a protestor, a scholar of religion, a young boy who steals into the movies, who engendered the danger and thrill of Tarkovsky and Godard with his detective father.

This background is, to me, Oshii's 'style'. You can see it in his live action works as well. The Red Spectacles and Gosenzosama Babanzai share long, cold, dark deep spaces with lone figures. Garm Wars has these wide, sweeping landscape shots that allow for lingering just a slightly bit longer than we'd expect. We can see the rectangular establishing shot of the city in Patlabor 2 and Ghost in the Shell, they mirror each other like portraits. Serenity mixed with uneasiness.

I think that's Oshii in a nutshell. He's an auteur not of preferences, but experiences. When you watch the interviews with Oshii, he's this affable man. He jokes a lot about himself, about his co-workers, about his misfortunes. When asked about his thoughts on the success of Ghost in the Shell in the west, he stated that Ghost in the Shell didn't do well in Japan, and his life changed "only a little bit." Following that was the raucous laughter of a doting audience and the tired smile of an old, skilled professional. An old, stray dog.