That we only got four peeks inside the mind of this brilliant singular filmmaker seems like a fucking crime (five if you count his haunting strange television series Paranoia Agent. And you totally should).
The death of some filmmakers particularly those who die young often leave me feeling sad. This one leaves me feeling angry.
Kon pushed the medium of anime, and animation itself, forward in a way few bother to do anymore. He refused to be limited by the supposed strictures of the genre, or the rules of the medium. Instead he insisted on striving forward and gave something new with ever film he made. He swung for the fences. Every. Single. Time. His films are unique from each other as they are from the rest of the medium. A psychological thriller worthy of Hitchcock? Sure. A Biopic as phantasmagoria? Why not. A film that planted its flag in Inception’s territory four years early? Makes sense to me. A remake of a John Ford film with an HIV positive transvestite as John Wayne? Somehow he made it work.
I was looking forward to enjoying his work for decades to come. His death leaves a gaping hole.
A tweet someone relayed to me read:
It's not that anime will never be the same with Satoshi Kon gone. It's now much more likely that anime will always be the same.
Amen.
To glance over at my shelf and realize that his entire filmography makes up only a few inches upsets me.
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