A friend from college and a beloved source of recommendations who I haven’t talked to in a while alerted me to The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, a film directed by Masaaki Yuasa. Years ago, I had watched Yuasa’s Tatami Galaxy series under the compulsion of an art friend. In an effort to fit in with my expectations of their refined artistic palette, I came to describe Tatami Galaxy as an art student’s senior thesis. I hoped that description would do the anime justice - capturing the wild, frenetic, nauseating experience of watching it as an uncouth viewer while leaving room for the meaningful interpretations and analyses by more sophisticated critics. I would not say that I enjoyed watching Tatami Galaxy, at least not in the same way that I would say I enjoyed watching a standard film like Crazy Rich Asians, but I definitely liked it though I could not say precisely why. So early Saturday afternoon, despite the cold and sore throat I had contracted the previous night, I took the Caltrain up into San Francisco to watch Walk on Girl at the Roxie, the only theater in the greater area showing it.
In the first seconds of the movie, I was grateful to have seen Tatami Galaxy. I knew better than to resist the chaos and simply enjoyed the experience washing over me. When the movie ended, the people sitting behind me remarked that the movie felt like a “fever dream”. Many of the reviews I’ve since read online tend to use that description. It is an apt one. Not only is The Night is Short intense and confusing but the movie itself features fever as one of its many plot points. Broadly, the night in The Night is Short moves from drinking to a used book sale to a fever epidemic all the while interleaving discussions about sophism, time, connectivity, love, and adventure throughout. Reflecting on the movie, I seized on the most obvious theme, the maleable experience of time.
At many points in the movie, many of the characters describe experiencing the night feeling like years. The pacing of the movie and animation contributes to a similar experience. Subplot after subplot edge towards a feeling of resolution but the night barrels onward and the action picks up in another thread. The sheer number of plot and location changes that occurred was tough enough to follow but Yuasa’s fondness of rapid dialogue made the movie feel like a race against one’s spiraling psychosis. Combined with the many depictions of clocks and watches racing along at various speeds and it is clear that time distortion is a central point of commentary of the movie. After all, the three major sections of the movie, drinking, reading, and illness are all associated with symptoms of time dilation. All of these elements, the subject matter, the visual depictions, the explicit dialogue, and the animation style contribute towards some understanding of time and its experience. But identifying this theme, or any of the other themes, is simply the first step in trying to make meaning out of a rich dream and I am not sure what I should take away from it all.
In my freshman year animation class, we were asked to draw an animation on fear, something that we were afraid of. I tried to draw my anxiety. Time has always felt to me like a race I was losing despite being told that I could win. As one psychiatrist and I discussed, at times this feeling has been helpful. It’s good to feel that mornings spent endlessly scrolling through Reddit could be better spent so long as it actually motivates change and not self belittlement. Unfortunately, for me it is usually inevitably the latter. Even as I am sick right now, I am fretting the lose of time that I could have spent writing, reading, or more likely, wishing I wasn’t playing more video games. I have never considered that time could feel so long while being thrilled. I do wish that I could be more like the girl in The Night is Short, despite not being sure of what exact qualities and mindset make her so admirable. But she makes me believe that time can be an element that works differently in my life.
I wrote that I did not enjoy watching Tatami Galaxy. I think that is because one typically doesn’t describe themselves as having enjoyed a fever dream. But words are slippery and it is easy to get lost in sophistic debates about words. I would say that I enjoyed The Night is Short and Tatami Galaxy the way one enjoys getting lost in a good book. I comprehended both as much as one comprehends a night out of heavy drinking. I experienced both as a one experiences a fever dream. But perhaps the true gift of the movie is not in my personal experience with it but a shared experience of it. I cannot wait to ask my friend about what meaning they found in it. I want to know what they think about the intended message behind the movie’s themes of time and love and sex are. I want to celebrate the art style and pacing together.
My friend asked me whether I prefer new experiences or rote routine. To which I unequivocally answered I that greatly preferred routine. But if I could look back on new experiences through the same sort of lens that Yuasa uses in The Night is Short, I might be able to put down my anxieties for one night and just ride the train.