Interstella by Startlight

Ms. Spenser found Interstella 5555 (2003), I don’t know how. It is a feature length (barely) animation by Matsumoto Reiji (Leiji?) with a score by Daft Punk. Now, I don’t know much about the two dome heads, and what I do know I’m kind of neutral on. But Matsumoto-san is pretty much our favorite animator/manga artist. We saw his space-pirate movie My Youth in Arcadia the first week of our visit to Japan and loved him ever since.

This movie also takes place in space, with a nameless, blue skinned alien band rocking it up on an alien planet. I didn’t recognize the tune (“One More Time”) but Ms. Spenser had heard it innumerable times in gyms and workout classes. It was not one of her favorites. Then a spaceship attacks the planet and kidnaps the band.

The band are taken to Earth, where they are stripped of their memories and have their skin de-blued. They are packaged as a human band and kept docile by mind control sunglasses and the pleasures of the flesh. In space, a friend senses their plight and comes to their rescue, but is killed in the process.

And their you have the usual Matsumoto plot - characters lose their memories and wills, and someone is killed and mourned. This is a Gnostic story: Sophia (knowledge) falls to Earth, loses memory of her godly origin, until awakened (anamnesis) by a hero who must fall to death.

On the other hand, it’s kind of funny that the robotic, soulless music they make while under mind control is pretty much just Daft Punk as usual. I was surprised by how much rock guitar sound they used, but they definitely go in for repetitive loops (“One More Time”!). Like the minimalists say, if repeating something 8 times is boring, try 16. If 16 times is boring, repeat it 64 times.

In conclusion, this is an hour and five minutes. So if you don’t like it, it isn’t much of a waste of time.