Customer Reviews

Zen Noir

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I saw the trailers for this movie last winter, and it looked hilarious, so when I finally had a chance to watch the film, I jumped at it. Zen humor is not something you see everyday, and this was obviously advertised as a comedy. I figured I'd have one more great review for the DailyBuddhism readers.

The movie is narrated in the first person by a 30's hard-boiled detective type, clearly a Mike Hammer parody, complete with tough-guy monologues and beard stubble. The action starts out with a chuckle, as an old Zen monk sits in a room with other monks meditating. He keels over and dies, but the others are so into their meditation they don't even notice. When the detective arrives and starts asking questions about the murder... Well, you know what kind of answers you get when you ask a question in Zen.

The first 25 minutes or so were rough. The back and forth rapid-fire questions and non-answers got old fast, and the overuse of Noir and Zen cliches got to the point of silliness, which was probably intentional, but still wasn't very funny. By around the 20-minute mark, I was ready to declare this the "stupidest movie ever." Then the silliness slowed down and the Zen took over.

There was still the occasional funny line, such as when the detective asks the Master,

"What happens when we... you know... die?"
"Don't know."
"Why not?"
"Not dead yet!" OK, so humor of that sort is in the delivery.

There are dozens of images of oranges and glimpses of oranges In different scenes and positions flashing onscreen throughout the drama. Once the meaning of the orange is explained, many things become clear, both in the movie and in real Zen itself. There really is a lot of Zen in the movie, and it was obviously very cleverly written.

Yet, I still have to ask myself, is it entertaining? The problem is that even after watching the movie, I cannot answer that one. This is definitely one of those love-it or hate-it movies, and I suspect most audiences are going to be split down the middle. If someone is fairly knowledgeable about basic Zen ideas, then there is a message in the ending; however, for the person who isn't very familiar with Zen ideas, this is going to be a seriously boring movie that makes no sense whatsoever.

I'm going to give this one a 3/5 since I really just don't know what to think... Or maybe I should give it a 5/5 for the same reason. Let's compromise and call it a 4.

Sigh. Zen makes me crazy sometimes.

I purchased this DVD based in part on the reviews here at amazon, which to date all give the film many stars and glowing descriptions. I beg to differ. Yes, there is a Zen element to the film, as well as a definite nod to the Noir genre. Of course, there as also acting, directing, and plot. All of these named elements of the film were shallow and amateurish in my humble opinion. And by the way, just because the lines are delivered excruciatingly slowly and there are long pauses between the lines does not make it more Zen. After viewing I looked at the awards and critical acclaim quotes on the cover of the DVD, as well as viewing again the glowing comments on amazon, and wonder if they all were made by friends and family members of the film's creators, a little too anxious to like this movie. I hesitate to negatively review things, but I wanted to throw a word of caution to others considering purchasing this movie. It may be worth seeing but not worth owning.

A good movie is like an onion with many layers of meaning, and this is a good movie. It requires paying attention. What I learned most from it is to acknowledge fears, sit with the feeling and then, and only then, can we move on. Death is a universal fear and avoiding acknowledging our fear is a universal way of dealing with it. Zen Noir is a powerful and healing meditation on death but it is also funny and a love story. It clearly deserved the many awards it won...and I'm going to watch it again and again.

Despite a few cliched moments, the film is smart and stylish, cagily self-conscious, appealing but not mesmerizing, beautiful, but fortunately not gorgeous. Its message is a meditation on the complexion of death as part of life, successfully generating the idea of death as life's beginning. The idea itself rebukes post-modern culture, and the film works hard to engage that. But a disappointing script, and editing which strives for supra noir effect, leaves the impression of a film without real justification except artfulness. Not a bad cause, but one to be considered before purchase. Still, a film 'about' Zen is bound to be captivating especially for Zennists, and perhaps western Buddhists in general. I enjoyed it, but have difficulty recommending it for most viewers even though most of us need the message desperately. The film is darkly hilarious, and yet shallow given the prospects raised by the title's idea. Rosenbush takes an intriguing run with it. How well he fares is a question up for grabs, decided by one's interest in things fanciful and yet strangely intimate. The film's artifice is its magic, and it's often winning, but never transforming. For what it's worth, I'm many years a Zen practitioner.

I've seen this film several times in class and have gotten a lot of student commentary on it. I show the film after reading Thich Nhat Hanh's "No Death, No Fear" which makes for a good preparation for the themes of this film. The vast majority of students enjoyed the movie but invariably a few don't care for it. I find the THE most important thing to keep in mind while watching this film is that it is entirely figurative. If you watch it as if it were a literal telling of a story, it will come off rather weak and cliche. But, if you look deeper, you will encounter the director's profound understanding of Zen. Sadly, I think that this figurative nature slips under the radar and may disappoint most viewers. I'll next list a few brief pros and cons and then address my understanding of the film's imagery in length, addressing the figurative themes of the film.


Pros:

-First an foremost, the symbolic representation of the western, logic-oriented mind is brilliant. The scene in which the detective is jotting down his notes on a cork board and running pieces of string between crucial points (in fast motion to chaotic music) is just perfect. This may be the most valuable lesson to take from this film. Also the detective's thought process as revealed through dialog wonderfully depicts how the rational processes should not dominate the mind at all times. There's a time and a place for such analysis, but as the film suggests, there are times when it needs to be set aside.

-The humor is also quite good. It's subtle and also topical which does a lot to keep the audience involved and attentive.

-The film is ultimately about accepting one's mortality and this film delivers, following Buddhist doctrine quite well... to a point.

The film is quite beautiful at times. The budget is clearly minimal, but camera work and use of lighting is exceptionally well done. Some have concerns with the down time and lack of dialog, but I find that it adds a dramatic depth which amplifies the themes of self-discovery and contemplation. These artistic digressions also allow for brief journeys into traditional Zen imagery.


Cons:

-The metaphors of the film often get jumbled up. What is "real" in the film? Any of it? Some of it? Are some scenes both figurative and literal? The message is still clear, but the delivery tends to become convoluted when analyzed. Is Jane real or is she some sort of archetype for women in general? It took me several viewings to piece it together. Maybe it took others less time.

-On the surface, Zen dialogue becomes little more than western cliches of avoidance and answering questions with questions. I do not believe that the further propagation of "oriental" stereotypes does much for Zen at all. Unless one is aware of the deeper metaphorical currents, this comes across as a bit cliche.

-The mixing of the sound is off, causing some music to become startlingly loud.

-My greatest concern is that the film does not end where Zen cultivation professes to end. The Great Death is never mentioned or even suggested. As mentioned below, this may have been a better decision for more of the movie-going attitude, but the bottom line is that the ending is not Zen-ish in the least bit.


SPOILER ALERT!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!!


I've discovered that the secret to understanding this film is found by keeping the following points in mind; 1.) Everything is figurative, nothing is literal and 2.) Pay attention to notable twists in the plot and note what changes.

Keeping in mind that all is figurative, I'll break down the movie's characters, keeping in mind that they are all representations of the lead character's psyche. I will then breakdown the imagery of the plot line.

Detective: The detective, when the movie begins, is characterized by sadness, loneliness and isolation (duhkha or suffering), literally sitting alone in his apartment drinking. Appropriate for his profession, he is characterized by a "who dunnit?" sort of attitude, not dissimilar to the methods used in western science. This discursive method is based staunchly upon either-or logic, or dualism in general (also notably upon cause and effect). He notes this when he shows up to solve the murder that there is always a victim and always a perpetrator (subject/object and cause/effect). The progression of the movie then details how he slowly sets aside this mode of thinking.

Wife: The wife symbolizes heartache and loss and may very well represent an actual experience from the detective's life. What is notable about her character is that she is never "real" and always a memory or his imagination. She is also clearly a representation of the detective's inability to emotionally engage anything that is impermanent. I contend that the majority of her character represents this inability to emotionally engage the world, rather than a specific moment from his past. This theme is made all the more obvious by the wife's grimly painted face and the Japanese character "shi," or "death" on her forehead.

First Murder Victim / Dead Monk: This first monk symbolizes death itself and in context to the frazzled detective, it is coupled with feelings of dread. The detective's entry into the monastery for self-exploration seems coupled with a willingness to confront this topic (or figuratively, solve this problem). I believe the imagery here is that the detective's psyche was resistant to confronting the truth about death, thus he sat in his room, isolated in denial, drinking himself into oblivion. I do not think it to be a coincidence that after the detective faces death/ looks into this murder mystery, he doesn't have another drink.

Articulate Lotus Flowing from the Source / Ed: Ed, to me, represents the mechanical adherence to monastic life; the lip service method of cultivation. His is annoying, illusive and distracts the detective with circular conversation. I find that Ed really has no idea as to what he's doing at the monastery, but he knows for sure that he should not be caught up in the material world (like the detective), so he is only slightly "better" off. I find it evident that Ed symbolizes confusion, yet also the stubborn routine adherence to Zen protocol. His death then symbolizes the detective's overcoming of this stage where he begins to take the idea of practice seriously.

Jane: Jane is a little bit tough for me as I find her character distracts from the message of Zen a bit, as I will explain later. She also seems to play two roles; one of the object of the detective's desire to re-attach to the fleeting world, but also in the role of Jung's anima. She clearly plays an external role, counter to the roll of the deceased wife of the detective, but also perhaps the role of the detective's own mortality and sensitivity. I believe that the latter may be my own reading into the film, as mentioned later.

Master: The master represents the detective's Buddha nature, his non-dual, already enlightened nature. This is very evident by the way the master at first comes across as completely nonsensical. But, as the movie progresses, he becomes more engaging in proportion to the detective's willingness to let go of his previously established dualistic methodology. Their relationship becomes less and less challenged until he finally reveals the secret about the orange. When the detective accepts this element of his psyche, the master is subsumed and thus dies.

Orange: The orange is a symbol of pratityasamutpada, or interdependent arising. The master reveals why he is infatuated with the orange near the end of the film where he explains how the entire universe comes together to become the orange. The master also recounts a tale where he ate the best orange of his entire life by eating it in mindfulness in the midst of overwhelming sorrow and pain.

My understanding of the movie follows the notion that every time someone dies, it is actually a symbol of the detective's mind expanding, where each person who dies defines a portion of the detective's mind-body with which he at first didn't want to identify. This figurative death then is more so the death of his own artificially created boundaries. The story begins with the detective alone in his room, routinely doing his job and then presumably drinking himself to sleep, day after day. The first death symbolizes the death of this dreary lifestyle and the awakening of the motivation to spiritual cultivation. If Kakuan's ox-herding paintings had a zeroth frame where the boy would leave the city and set out for the forest, this would be it. Getting to the monastery is then planting his feet in the forest, beginning his quest.

The detective is a bit confused as nothing seems to work the way he would like it. The monks are dismissive and confusing, especially when it comes to the master and his bewildering orange! This stage represents his method's usefulness and even applicability coming to an end. This is beautifully depicted by the scene in which the detective is chaotically trying to patch together his ideas on a corkboard with post-it notes and string, ultimately concluding with the detective bashing the board over his head in frustration.

The next "death" is the death of Ed, who represents a person who straddles the world of the detective and the monastic life. Ed's final words are along the line of assuring the detective that the answer is far greater than the detective can even imagine. This transition is made all the more meaningful by the next scene in which the detective has his first non-absurd conversation with the master. He is demonstrating here that he can set aside his discursive thinking, at least partially, which is exactly the state that Ed had achieved. It is also important to note that Ed kills himself with the detective's gun. The following expression illuminates this symbol quite well. "Use a thorn to remove a thorn and then throw both away."

The detective has a slight relapse here by trying to fit all of this new information into some sort of system, which ultimately collapses. "F*** it, I'm outta here!" he proclaims only to find himself running in and out of Scooby Doo-esque doors and encountering both chaos and madness. Apparently, there's no way out of one's mind.

Coming back to the monastery, he has his first encounter with Jane. I do not think I understand their sexual union, but working on my anima theory, it may have something to do with the union of Shakti and Shiva through the awakening of Kundalini, but that may be reading way to deeply into this. Their union does mark a very pronounced intimacy here, which is why I want to say that they may be the same being, thus symbolizing both the detective's fear of external thing's impermanence as well as his own. Jane also strikes me as the detective's anima as she is point-for-point his opposite. This encounter is followed by his first attempts at meditation as well as his first cutting up of his own orange. Jane then reveals her sorrow to him and tells the detective that she is dying. Later in the film we find out that she doesn't know when she will die, which I take as clear evidence of Jane's figurative nature. Also, Jane's dual role as external and internal impermanence is expressed when the detective cries out, "I can't do this," when confronted with the possibility of becoming involved with someone who will die. In the Zen sense, the meditative journey is overtly the overcoming of the fear of one's own death, and not just the death of others. I think this self-death is not emphasized nearly enough in this film.

The master then reveals the secrets of pratityasamutpada, marking the detective's awakening and likewise, the master's death. The detective is then in a far more calm state of mind and openly accepts Jane, mortality and all. Now, according to the Zen tradition, this is a terrible place to end as the movie does not address the theme of self-annihilation, or "the great death." I suspect that the film ended here primarily for the reason that self-annihilation would be pretty hard to depict onscreen and because sticking to the human element of personal relationships and romantic love seems to cater to a wider audience. Why not end with a love story? I do have to wonder if this was a deliberate concession of the filmmaker or perhaps the limitation of his own understanding of Zen? I will presume the former for now. Either way, keeping the film entirely within the realm of personal identity, in my opinion, doesn't really make this film about Zen at all as it excludes its most notable characteristic, but I'm just being critical.

Overall, I love this film. It only took me about six times to get it! I still have to work on Jane though. I'm not entirely certain about her role as potential anima. Hope this helps.

When I hear that a movie is "elliptical" or "poetic" or even "mesmerizing," I usually head for the hills. But "Zen Noir" has redeemed all of these words for me. It's elliptical and poetic and mesmerizing -- and I still loved it.

This quiet masterpiece spins off of director Marc Rosenbush's canny perception that the idioms of hardboiled detective fiction enjoy certain affinities with the assumptions of Zen Buddhism. Even if the viewer doesn't catch all the allusions to either Western police procedurals or Eastern philosophical paradoxes, he continually senses them bubbling beneath the surface.

And what an entrancing surface it is! The lighting is perfect, the camera is always in the right place, and the juxtaposition of lap-dissolves with the astonishing bells-drums-gongs-flute score evokes the riveting montage at the beginning of "Apocalypse Now." There are no flashy CGI effects here, only an intelligent use of basic film grammar. I think especially of the extreme closeup of an orange rind that suddenly becomes -- in an image simultaneously suggesting decay and rejuvenation -- a flurry of leaves.

Decay and rejuvenation, loss and love, death and eros: these are the themes that Mr. Rosenbush addresses astutely throughout. The dance of ideas comes to a climax when Kim Chan sits down with our gumshoe pilgrim, expertly played by Duane Sharp, and, using an orange as the objective correlative of everything, offers him insights into -- I use the phrase without embarrassment -- the meaning of life.

I absolutely loved it. Not for kids and could create some missconception or confusion for people who have not practiced Zen. It is quite raw, entertaining and on the money.

Zen Noir is a very inteligent and darkly humorous film.It's many film festival awards are richly deserved. It's a thinking person's movie and not something that you would want to pick up on a Friday night when you are wanting to wind down. You will not be disapointed and what is with those oranges?

I have just started studying Buddhism and Zen, so I could smile at the Zen humor. On the other hand, my wife and son just stared at the screen in complete boredom. I know this movie is a koan, 2 weeks later I am still trying to figure it out. A koan cannot be figured out with logic, so be prepared to feel confused (koans are supposed to confuse you) about how loved ones die and leave us heart broken, people in general just die, people commit suicide, and how all of us are slowly dying. All this death is like eating an orange. Hey, is that the answer to the koan?

After visiting the filmmaker's self-designed, award-winning "Zen Noir" web site, I was convinced this had to be a veddy cool film. So I drove five hours to St. Louis to see it the day it opened there in late October! It was just wacky enough to light me up. Next, I purchased the DVD and showed it to about 33 people, describing it in my invitation as a campy, zany, fun-filled, yet lesson-based film. Despite the low budget and occasional moments when the music level was too high (during non-speaking parts), the original music is fabulous and the message comes through at the end. It has what films I really like have: character development, though only one character needed developing. It's an inspired concept done with hutzpah, integrity and passion. Congratulations to a talented filmmaker. I highly recommend this film!