An elliptical, psychedelic spirit-war odyssey that asks: where does self end and universe begin?
Toshiaki Toyoda’s Transcending Dimensions extends his fascination with ritual, violence, and inner awakening into full-blown metaphysical cinema. Following the threads of his Go, 9 Souls, and especially the recent The Miracle of Crybaby Shottan and The Day of Destruction, this is Toyoda in his most abstract, esoteric mode.
The plot relates to an assassin (Ryuhei Matsuda) who is asked by a woman (Haruka Imô) to find her vanished lover Rosuke (Yôsuke Kubozuka) – who may or may not still be human, or even exist on our plane of reality. But this summary only loosely suggests what follows. The journey is filtered through a series of increasingly surreal encounters: cult ceremonies led by the magnetic Master Hanzo (Chihara Jr.), cryptic broadcasts, a spaceship shaped like a human finger, and glitchy shifts in perspective that suggest reality itself is fraying.
In fact, the film seems to be attempting to transcend dimensions itself – it discards linearity, genre, and even dialogue for long stretches, in favor of mood, gesture, and sonic immersion. Visually, the film is frequently trance-like. Toyoda and DP Keisuke Imamura bathe scenes in shadow, torchlight, and electric blue, while Yohei Matsui’s sound design, paired with shamanic jazz and Afrofuturist motifs, pulls the experience further from traditional narrative. The result is a film that melts into its own vibes, coming at its storyline sideways and continuing of Toyoda’s obsession with characters trying to locate themselves amid social collapse and spiritual disarray, only now pushed beyond the terrestrial.
For some, this will feel like self-parody, and some will feel that Toyoda literally loses the plot. But the director isn’t lost on this vision quest, though he isn’t always sharing the map. Transcending Dimensions mirrors his ongoing project to collapse the space between film and ritual, body and cosmos. It may not always function clearly as drama, but as a continuation of his cinematic philosophy, it feels absolutely in line. For me the slightly opaque storyline of Transcending Dimensions prevents its emotional punches from fully landing, so my favourite Toyoda remains his excellent Pornostar. But audiences with a taste for the esoteric should open their third eyes and drink it all in.
Transcending Dimensions played at the Fantasia International Film Festival.
Whitlock&Pope 