Azami, a young woman, is shown to be an avid fan of Murayama’s paintings, and soon after meets a young man named Saku who appears to be a medium more close to Murayama and to whom her obsession can be transferred. Along with a group of four young performers, which are acquaintances of Azami, the two of them set out on a journey which takes them to an offbeat location and a secluded cave which acts as a screening room for Saku. Mixture of events and Moslem concepts of Agartha work in interdependently, as the artists make attempts to recreate work of Murayama through performative dances and also Azami, who tries to learn about Saku and through a series of events gets closer to him.
Hisayasu Sato’s film blends genres, aesthetics, and directly approaches the subject perpendicularly, while constantly oozing with mystery, perversion, and mysticism. Kinds of games start the movie: slow-looking voyeurism over urban people, then follow them up with human cyberpunk style experiments and a focus on urination. After that, as the narrative is shifted to the surroundings of a cave, a more bucolic environment, the postmodern aspects are layered over by a more artistic aspect with the performance part of the movie.
The portrayal of sex scenes in this film is quite unique. There is an overwhelming use of microphones which gives an auditory focus to the character’s mouths, and even the ‘mouth’ as if the ‘devil tongues’ were to be included. This enhances the perverse nature of the film, while also exploiting the character. At the same time there is weak attempt to elude life and art with respect to to the artist which was claimed to depart from the spirit of Murayama. Overall, this combination seems to be abstract.
The visual effects makeup in this film is quite impressive but I have to mention some parts were a little unpolished. I think Miki Shigenori did a fantastic job with the camera work as the variety of places and scenes captivated me, such as the opening scenes, the beach, cave, the assassination forest, and even the erotic ones. There were a lot of red flashy coloring present which enhances the scene coupled with the masks designed adds to the overall effects. The film doesn’t move quite fast and that’s purely due to Kunihiko Ukai’s editing and cutting. This however does give the film a more disoriented feeling which plays a pivotal point in the overall narrative structure.
Riho Sato who plays Azami gave off a very theatrical performance while Yuya Shintaro played the opposite role in the movie as Saku which I think worked well.
Hisayasu Sato’s “Dear Kaita Ablaze” brings back an almost entirely forgotten artist in Kaita Murayama and in doing so fuses genres and aesthetics onto a surreal and abnormal excursion of sorts that spans across mystery, perversion and mysticism while remaining tremendously visually appealing through and through.
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