A Film Canon

Despite satirising Japan's transition from monopoly to collective capitalism, this extraordinary film  feels like a prophecy of late capitalism, elaborating a media ecology in which everyday life is on the verge of being systematically and mercilessly commodified, 'stars' are being replaced by 'spectacles' (since "fans look at the star, not at the goods they promote"), and advertising, marketing and 'spin' are becoming refined enough to thrive on catastrophe, subsuming it into the 'buzz' that pervades Masumura's hyperbolic, hyperactive mise-en-scenes. These all glitter with a Technicolor palette extrapolated from the competing graphs of the three caramel companies around which the narrative hangs, are so cluttered with capital that advertisements and commodities are frequently all that deepen the distinction between foreground and background, and, above all, are haunted by visual, verbal and atmospheric Americanisms that relegate any more traditional ethos of business to the remoteness of a bushido code: "You're out of date. Japan is America." The result is a pervasive substitute for - or, perhaps, more unnervingly, an instance of - capitalism's false carnivalesque, culminating with the final showdown in a kamikaze fairground. Similarly, Masumura provides a foundational deflection of the inscrutability and intangibility of the market into science fiction - or, more accurately, the language of science fiction, as the dominant caramel company realises an astronomy expo is the most effective way to engage with consumers; a purely simulcral, spectral contribution to the space-race.