Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I’m telling you... this guy is the next real cult god. I am sure of it. The buzz on him continues to build with each exposure new fans have to his work. A buddy of mine called me last week after seeing AUDITION and DEAD OR ALIVE here in LA during the excellent Japanese Outlaw Cinema series going on at the Egyptian. He was ranting, foaming at the mouth. “GREATEST... ENDING... EVER!!” People hate his work or they love it. They are horrified or delighted. There seems to be little middle ground. And now... this article. A full-on nuclear incident for today’s writer. One of those eye-opening experiences that we all keep going back to the movies in search of. Check it out...
Takashi Miike Meltdown at the Vancouver International Film Festival
Hi Harry,
Name’s Starkweather. First time posting, long-time admirer. I’ve been down on the state of filmdom for about 2 years now. Fight Club was the final nail in Hollywood’s coffin and what a way to go out. With the exception of Memento and Requiem For A Dream as blips on the radar American Cinema is all but dead. It is a long stretch of road between David Fincher movies and other than Solondz and Aronofsky there aint much to look forward to bub. When I turn my attention to the Far East I look on with equal despair. Time and Tide (fabulous piece of work by the way) signaled the death knell for the Hong Kong bullet opera, which had been on life support since the mid nineties. Korea is showing signs of promise but there is still much work to be done. This brings us to the focus of this piece. I want to talk about a madman or cultural terrorist if you will who resides on the island of Japan. He goes by the handle of Takashi Miike and he has been gaining a lot of notice on your sight and others. Unfortunately most of it has been for Audition, which is not even in his top five best films to date.
Throw in equal parts Takeshi Kitano, Shinya Tsukamoto and Seijun Suzuki and sprinkle a little angel dust and you might start to get a clue what this lunatic genius is all about. He usually starts out using the Japanese Yakuza crime sub genre as alaunch pad for his extremely creative and graphic imagination. He captures violence in an incredibly realistic and brutal fashion and then disarms it with a wickedly black sense of humor. He uses his particular brand of cultural terrorism to dissect Japanese society and even humanity in general.
Miike has already amassed about 40 films in his catalog during the last 10 years. He cut his teeth in direct-to-video features and busted out with Fudoh. He did the existentialist gangster thing with rainy dog. Horror with Audition and took things to new heights with Dead or Alive. This sucker has brass balls the size watermelons and rarely disappoints. With eight projects on board for 2001 alone, development hell does not exist in his vocabulary. Very rarely have we been allowed to see a director unbound so that he can cut loose to the limits of his imagination. If he tried to make films in North America it wouldn’t work. In between the time Fight Club hit theatres and our eager anticipation for Panic Room Miike completed about twelve films. This kind of output would have made Rainer Werner Fassbinder proud. If you tire of the witless whores, spineless weasels and journeyman hacks that populate modern filmmaking than please turn your attention to some of the following:
The films:
The City of Lost Souls (2000)
Mario is a Brazilian/Japanese excon. A half-breed by Japanese societal standards. Kei is his beautiful Chinese girlfriend. She is being deported. A bus travels down a lone stretch of highway. Perfect for ambush by helicopter. Mario swoops in and unleashes a hail of bullets. Romeo and Juliet head back to Tokyo. A Brazilian thug is being beaten to death in a bar. We see this through the bottom of a piss soaked toilet complete with two pieces of shit floating above. It is this kind of twisted attention to detail that Miike fucks you up with. Your not quite sure if you just saw that correctly. This sets the tone for the rest of the film. Cocaine deal goes bad. Chinese triads vs. Japanese Yakuza. 3D animated cockfighting Matrix style (you absolutely have to see this). Kei and Mario caught in the crossfire. Love will set them free and everyone else dead. Miike never bores us with typical crime film trappings. Over the top gun battles fill a frenzied journey through the Shinjuku district that takes us through hidden lairs and Latino cafes. Miike deals with three distinct cultures here (Brazilian, Chinese and Japanese) which lends the film an otherworldly atmosphere. Needless to say the end is littered with corpses.
Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000)
I was blown away last year by the first one. If you haven't seen it and some fucker who has tries giving away the ending, punch 'em in the face. They had it coming anyway. DOA had to have been one of the best practical jokes ever played. So how was the second one? Fantastic in a word. Didn’t have much to do with the first other than a similar structure. Crank up the action for the first 10 minutes then turn it into a drama for an hour and then light the fuse back up for the last 10 minutes.
Mizuki, a charismatic hit man with a penchant for obnoxious shirts is hired to take out a yakuza boss. Mizuki's boss aims to start a turf war between the two strongest gangs in town so that their numbers may be thinned down and he can step in and take over. This is all told in a cleverly written scene illustrated with packs of cigarettes. Mizuki sets up shop atop a roof ready with sniping rifle but a stranger arrives on the scene and kills everyone himself. Mizuki takes credit for the hit and pockets the cash. The ruse is soon discovered and his employers want their money back.
Mizuki flees the city and not so coincidently runs into the mystery assassin on the ferry that not so coincidently turns out to be Shu a childhood friend who he grew up with in an orphanage. The two decide to head back to the island where said orphanage is located and the movie shifts gears and becomes a nostalgic look back at childhood and coming to terms with the future. The middle act has a lot in common with Kitano's Kikujiro. Mizuki and Shu bond with the new generation of orphans and even join in the school play.
Ahhh the good life, simple joys. Only inter cut with scenes of the two crime syndicates butchering each other back in the city. Things are heating up and Mizuki and Shu decide that if the shit is going to hit the fan they might as well shift their focus and become philanthropists. Mizuki reasons that with $30,000 a hit, a hundred thousand kids can be vaccinated in the third world. This can only mean one thing. They have to kill as many yakuza as they can thereby saving lives in Africa with the bounty. The last 10 minutes have to be seen to be believed (this applies to almost all of Miike's films) and I aint giving anything away.
Visitor Q (2001)
Miike turns his lens on the family unit. This was a digital video feature and he makes good use of the format by giving us an almost pornographic look into the private aspects of each of the family members. Through a series of long unflinching scenes we become aware that the family unit has long ago broken down. Dad is a middle-aged has-been TV reporter who fucks young prostitutes in hotel rooms. The particular prostitute in the opening scene happens to be his daughter. In an awkward and tense conversation the daughter tries to talk dad into sex. Miike holds the gun and is not afraid to pull the trigger. They fuck.
The son is bullied by merciless pricks at school that beat him and launch fireworks into his bedroom. The son unable to cope turns to cane whipping his submissive and dutiful mother. She walks with a brutal limp. She’s a dope addict and prostitutes herself out at a local parlor to support the habit.
Q, a stranger arrives on the scene by way of bashing both son and father in the head (through several hilarious scenes) and becomes a centerpiece in the family by force. He helps the father to try and repair his damaged and all but destroyed career as a television reporter by becoming his cameraman. Dad and Q soon follow his son around and record on video camera the savage bullying that the son suffers on a daily basis. Somewhere along the way Dad ends up raping and killing his old producer who happens to be his ex-lover. He then turns the camera inward on his family hoping this documentary will propel him back into the television limelight.
The final act is filled with enough mayhem and debauchery to sate the most jaded fucks out there. Showers of breast milk, incest, necrophilia, shit smearing and a garden tool massacre. With a happy ending to boot. He somehow manages to keep you laughing throughout the proceedings. This is the true joy of using DV to free your creative impulses. An amazingly unrestrained little psychodrama.
Ichi The Killer (2001)
This is the apocalyptic epic that Miike has been hinting at and leading up to for the last five years. You will be hearing a lot about this one, as it is one of the most savage and unrelenting showcases of violence ever committed to celluloid. Do you remember seeing Evil Dead 2 or Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead (Dead Alive) for the first time? I sure as fuck do. Ichi is a celebration of brutality and pain. I read Darvin's review that you posted from the Toronto Film Fest and he seemed traumatized by the whole affair. Maybe he should have stayed at home. Sounds like he needed a hug. Stick with Jackie Chan, Darvin cuz your too sensitive for this shit. Hell I heard little girls laughing their asses off at the screening I was at. I guess they build ‘em a little kinder and gentler in central Canada.
Anjo, a crime boss has gone missing and Kakihara a sadistic S&M freak and his next in command is frantically tearing the city apart looking for him. Director Shinya Tsukamoto plays an old gangster who begins pulling the strings right from the beginning setting Kakihara off on the wrong path. You’ve heard about the torture sequences that are just 10 degrees right of snuff, the violent beating of women, the gushing rivers of blood and Ichi’s boot blades all rendered in gorgeous 35mm color. I don’t want to say too much about this because it would ruin the joy and shock for each potential viewer out there. I’ll just say that if you dig old Raimi, Jackson and Fulci films you’ll probably want to seek this baby out.
Cinema is still alive in kicking in Nippon. I know the crew at Aint it cool loves to see a director be able to realize his visions unhampered by any committee or studio heads. Check out Miike. His cinematic rebellion is a big middle finger raised upward at mediocrity.
Starkweather
I am going to go watch my tape of VISITOR Q right now, damn it, and I am going to cry because I haven’t seen ICHI or AUDITION yet.
"Moriarty" out.
