Fantastic Fest 2009: FISH STORY Review

Can a punk rock song from a failed band in 1975 save the world in 2012? Fish Story will tell you and you’ll believe every minute of it. The story isn’t simple at all, but by the end you’ll understand everything and where it’s all been headed. When the movie begins it’s 2012 and a meteor is headed for Earth. It’s hours away and most of Japan has evacuated except for an old man rattling through the streets of a closed down neighborhood. He’s knocking over bikes, making a mess and just being a cranky old pain. Soon he comes upon a shop, a record shop that’s still open. Out of pure shock he gets off his little scooter, and walks into the store to not only find that it’s open, but that some one is actually browsing and listening to music, and that some one is still running it. This is where we’re introduced to Fish Story, a song from 1975, by a punk rock band that didn’t go anywhere, right before The Sex Pistols made it big. Huge pioneers that will never get the respect they deserve.

The song Fish Story links us to several more stories, each one amazing in their own right and all of them very funny, touching and moving. This is a story about hope, dedication, strength and love. It works so well that it’s easily one of the best movies of the year, if not the best. I can’t express enough how wonderful this movie is and how great every single performance was.

Fish Story is a rare kind of film. It’s the kind where right away you know you’re watching something truly amazing and when it all comes to a conclusion you immediately want to start it over again to see where all the hints to the future are, where are all the links between one story and the next. And the stories are really diverse. You have a guy driving his friends around that stumbles upon a terrible scene, you have a champion of justice trying to save people from terrorists on a boat, and a band failing at every turn to try and break out into the main stream before their genre of music has even blown up in the west. To top that off you keep coming back to the end of the world where a discussion about what you should do in the face of death.

If you have a chance to see Fish Story on the big screen, take all your friends and run out and see it. It’s a true masterpiece and one of the best films of the past 20 years. It’s incredibly smart, well written and acted. It is one of the few films I can actually call PERFECT. It was the highlight of Fantastic Fest for me, and I will always cherish it.