Surrealism in the movies comes in all shapes and sizes; you just have to give yourself over to it, or not as the case may be. "Symbol" opens very much in the real world, in this case Mexico, and the only incongruity is that the truck-driving nun we see smokes and swears like a trooper, and then suddenly we are in a gigantic white room where the only inhabitant is an Asian gentleman in what I assume are brightly coloured pajamas and around the walls and on the floor are a series of protruding phallic looking objects which, when touched, give off a honking sound and send various props into the room. The man, it would seem, is as confused as we are.Attempting to apply any meaning to Hitoshi Matsumoto's movie is futile. The film moves between its 'realistic' Mexican setting where a hooded wrestler is getting ready for his big fight and the white room from which pajama man attempts to escape using the props that fall out of the walls. Is the film a comedy? Well, not really unless you have a very bizarre, surreal or just Japanese sense of humour. It's certainly not a drama or a thriller. A comic fantasy perhaps, complete with toilet humour? It's certainly weird enough at least not to be boring and at the end the two totally unrelated stories meet in a mildly amusing if highly imaginative way. You could almost say the movie is worth sitting through for these last 10 minutes; almost but not quite. Personally I could have done without it.

Comparisons to El Topo and 2001 A Space Oddysey are counter-productive with regards to this movie. It has the surreality and meta-physicality of neither, nor is it as well put together as those two. This is a bizarre comedy, nothing more. As such it's quite entertaining at parts.A guy in a dreadful yellow and green pajama finds himself in a white room totally empty except for some strange bumps in the walls. What follows here will keep you laughing long after the movie finishes.The director Mattchan is a man with a lot of ideas, some of them good, some of them not. For instance, the parallel stories serve almost no purpose (at least successfully).

I'm baffled. You meet this kind of movie only very rarely.It defies attempts to categorize it. It destroys your preconceptions of what a "special" movie might be. There's slapstick and there's nonsense and there's meta babbling, except its wordless meta babbling. Also there's angel penises, like a lot of them. Seriously, this movie weirded me out.In itself the story moves in a pretty straight line. Well, two straight lines. There's the wrestler plot, and there's the white room plot. The wrestler plot is utterly forgettable and, frankly, quite boring. It just functions as the opposite of the white room. One of many incarnations of what opposite could mean in this case.The white room plot centers on a man trying to get out of the white room. Simple right? Pressing the angels penises (You heard me!) reveals certain, seemingly random, objects. In combination they might lead to an escape. Here the movie really shines. Through sometimes silly, sometimes clever trial and error means the protagonist starts coming up with an escape plan. I found myself thinking along with him (and normally being way ahead of him and getting frustrated with him... JUST USE THE POT!!!).In the end the two story lines meet to give the audience a bigger picture. The ending still came as a surprise, although, in hindsight, it makes complete sense. It leaves only one question, but I came up with an answer immediately. I think thats how its supposed to be. Not everyones answer will be the same, but there will be one. Perfect example of closure without closure.Watch this if you like to see special things, don't finish watching it if you're bored after the first white room scene. It probably won't be the movie for you.9/10 I subtracted one star because the effects in the final scene were so crappy that they really distracted me from fully enjoying the ending but that's probably just me and other people working in that field themselves. Nothing to cry over really.

How can I explain such a simple yet complex film such as Symbol? It's not easy, but I'll give it a try.Symbol see-saws between two stories and is shown in three chapters which are labeled Education, Implementation and Future. There's the story of an out-of-shape Mexican wrestler known as "Escargot Man" as he prepares for a title fight in some tiny dusty little village. And simultaneously, there's the story being told of a Japanese man who awakes to find himself in a large, all white rectangular room with no doors or windows.Just how are these two stories connected? The answer is an existential journey into the energizing and inventive script of Matsumoto. For those who have seen his first feature Big Man Japan, in where a solitary middle-aged man periodically transforms into a giant to defend Japan from an array of monsters, you might have a little clue as to what you're getting into with Symbol. Let me assure you right now that Symbol is definitely its own monster, and perhaps one that will make both fans and newcomers to Matsumoto's work say WTF.Perhaps the best film I could compare Symbol to would be Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, it's a bold comparison, but an apt one as well. Just substitute Kubrick's towering monolith and epic wormhole sequence for Hitoshi Matsumoto's room full of baby penises and a penis wall climbing ascent into the future and you're basically looking at the same film.