I often think about if there are movies that encapsulate a music genre. Like plenty of movies might feature yacht rock in the soundtrack, but is there a movie that is the equivalent of a yacht rock song? Synthwave feels encapsulated by neo-noir throwbacks, metal by fantasy and horror. When it comes to ambient music, what are the ambient movies? August In The Water (1995), directed by Gakuryū Ishii, was intriguingly compared to vaporwave by recent reviewers, and it would definitely classify as an ambient music movie. Izumi Hazuki (Rena Komine) is a teenage athlete, training for high dive competitions. In a new high school in Fukoka, Izumi meets two boys at her new school who become infatuated with her, Mao (Shinsuke Aoki) and Ukiya (Masaaki Takarai). In the town, there are signs of ecological disaster; a drought has made water scarce and people are dying from a strange “stone disease”where their internal organs harden and they eventually die. In the opening sequence, we are told of two meteorites that were found in the mountains, and when Izumi suffers an accident during one of her diving competitions, she awakens from a coma and is more connected to the world, from every cell in nature to mysterious signals from elsewhere. With the serene ambient score by Hiroyuki Onogawa and montages of pool diving to close-ups of the surrounding environment, there is an aesthetic of new age spirituality here. The symbolic dimensions of water and earth are contrasted with sequences of gauzy city heat and people collapsing on the sidewalks. Even though there is a sense of apocalyptic unease, the movie takes its time following Mao observing Izumi’s strange journey – is her hypnotised state part of the world ending or is she the Earth’s possible salvation? It’s a strange, dreamy, slow movie – not quite meditative slow cinema and not quite sci-fi fantasy; somewhere between Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Cocoon and Donnie Darko, as some vague coordinates. The progression of the movie might test patience, for those hoping for some kind of psychic struggle, whereas it is more content to observe, well, the way of water. A copy is available to stream on YouTube, but deserving of a restoration, remastered Blu-ray release. Keen to see more Ishii, formerly known as Sogo Ishii, the maker of cyperpunk flicks like Crazy Thunder Road and Burst City; here, alongside the uneasy urban thriller, Angel Dust, there is something more contemplative and meditative in his approach to genre. Recommended.
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