Directed by: Toshiaki Toyoda
Distributed by: TBA
Written by Eric Zhu
50/100
Early in Toshiaki Toyoda’s idiosyncratic sci-fi thriller, “Transcending Dimensions,” a character advises that “The world is made up of narratives (…) What you need is to rewrite your own narrative by yourself.” It’s a comically ironic moment, as the speaker, a cultish sorcerer, is freeing disciples from existing worldviews only to incorporate them into his own. Mashing genres and tones in its brisk 96-minute runtime, “Transcending Dimensions” embodies this particular tension, attempting to transcend narrative boundaries only to find itself confined within the limitations of narrative cinema.
To the extent that plot matters in a film as hallucinogenic as this one, “Transcending Dimensions” revolves around a series of conflicts at the monastery Mount Resurrection-Wolf. There, the sorcerer Hanzo promises nirvana in exchange for fingers. One of Hanzo’s followers, Rosuke, has recently disappeared, and his girlfriend has hired an assassin, Shinno, to enact revenge. Simultaneously, Rosuke wakes up in space, where he finds himself in a finger-shaped aircraft that carries its own promise of power. The intergalactic conflict that boils over between these three characters seems to take place in coexistent universes, with the titular dimensions traversed through the power of a mystical conch.
Operating simultaneously as urban revenge thriller, space opera, and a Japanese version of a wuxia flick, Toyoda treats each genre vernacular as part of the same overarching prison. Attempting to liberate the film from narrative, he subverts traditional thriller sequences, such as jazz-set slow motion struts, by dragging them to comic lengths, and problematizes his surfaces by mixing and matching genre elements. Shinno, dressed in a Western suit, fights Hanzo’s telekinesis with a pistol. Rosuke, dressed in traditional Japanese garments, prays in a phantasmagoric spaceship. The supernatural conch is as out of place in an arboreal stream as it is lying in outer space. Echoing the spiritual aims of the narrative, Toyoda shoots “Transcending Dimensions” with ghostly crane shots, and places emphasis on reflective surfaces, which gesture towards freedom just out of reach. Perhaps Toyoda’s most jarring choice concerns the digital texture of his images, whose cold, cynical tones are reminiscent of Kiyoshi Kurosawa during earthbound sequences, but become patently silly in space, where the setting is overwhelmed by kitschy digital effects.
With its absurdist logic and eagerness to take the piss out of itself, “Transcending Dimensions” is only intermittently engaging, its postmodern posturing rarely achieving the rush of its references and its thematics frustratingly vague. However, “Transcending Dimensions” is worth the price of admission for its mid-film credits sequence, a jazzy interlude of strobing psychedelia that fulfills the film’s promise of dimension-spanning euphoria.
“Transcending Dimensions” Trailer
You can follow more of Eric’s thoughts on film on Letterboxd, X, and The Insert