FantAsia 2003: Ichi The Killer
Jul. 23rd, 2003 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaNow this - she says half-admiringly - is one fuxx0red movie. Half-admiring because it's not one of Miike's best, in terms of kinetic wow; it's not a musical, no one sprouts fluffy wings, there are no penii longer than people are tall, and so forth. Probably one of the most dramatically cohesive, unsurprisingly as it was based on someone's (hopefully short) manga. Certainly one of the sickest. Miike Takashi directs something like six films a year every year, mind you, and you have to have stainless steel innards to see them all, but I think that last statement is pretty safe.
(Come to think of it, he directed the MPD Psycho TV series. Never seen it, but can't think of anyone more obviously suited to the job.)
The story. Do you need a story? The yakuza boss Anjo disappears along with 100 million yen of syndicate cash. Kakihara, his second-in-command, is convinced that he's been captured by a rival gang; he takes the pursuit personally, nearly instigates an internecine gangland war and gets himself and his followers kicked out of the syndicate. His course of action is less dictated by loyalty to his former boss per se than because he had something of a hard-on for the guy and wants him back. Kakihara is a pain freak, taking or dealing, and Boss Anjo was purportedly the only person who could beat him into a satisfyingly pulpy mess. Frankly it's hard to imagine, because Kakihara is incredibly exacting. We eventually see him being sought after by the Boss’s ex-moll Karen, a genki conscience-free type who speaks in a mish-mash of Cantonese, English and charmingly-accented Japanese – very Miike, who likes his underworld multicultural in a way that most Japanese won’t admit to – but she doesn’t punch him hard enough, or possibly with too much latent consideration for his feelings, so it's no go. More on this later.
It transpires that the entire situation was staged by the Iago-like Jijii, a mousey middle-aged hypnotist cum yakuza toadie with a Shakespearean hate-on for the Anjo gang. Reason not provided, unless it was in the first five minutes I missed. Because they're evil, I suppose; which isn't half bad justification given that in Kakihara we have a main character who got expelled from the yakuza for giving the other crime lords the willies. I particularly enjoyed the bit where he hung a prisoner from the ceiling with a dozen meathooks poked into his back while he made shrimp tempura, then poured the boiling oil over the guy's head when he wouldn't cooperate. ...Where was I? Plot, yes. Jijii employs an assortment of disposable pimps and creatively disguised thugs to do his intricate bidding, but the ace up the sleeve of his dingy tracksuit is Ichi, a woeful baby-faced creature who’s just. Well. He’s insane. Fucked. Needs Boogiepop to come and take him away ASAP... Factually he’s a surface-milquetoast, maladjusted otaku who waits tables and comes home to play fighter games with a blanket over his head. He’s tormented by memories – possibly implanted by Jijii – of being bullied at school, and witnessing the rape of a girl who tried to protect him. So, of course, now he has a rape fetish, and with a bit of prodding sallies out to rid the world of "bullies" dressed in a rubberised outfit that strikingly resembles the Fremen stillsuits in the Dune movie, only with a big yellow "1" on the back. I’m sure he pees in it too, which I’m frankly astonished Miike didn’t think of showing, but Little Ichi is too busy getting hard every time he dismembers a woman by accident. It confuses him in a way that in any other set of circumstances would be cute.
How Ichi Rids The World Of Bullies: he’s got flat blades coming out of his heels. He does what looks like Chun-Li’s high roundhouse kick, and goes for the carotid. Of course all this is supposed to be teh funny. What did you think it was?
Jijii has Ichi wrapped around his little finger, and looses him in the direction of any underworld figure in need of a little slice-and-dice. Kakihara eventually narrows down on the name of the assassin, upon which he decides he wants to sleep with him – well, no, he wants to be killed by him, but same difference – since going by the raw hamburger he makes of his victims, Ichi has to be the most psychotic sadist in the world. Kakihara is the most psychotic masochist in the world, quite open to slicing bits of his own tongue off as a form of ritual apology and slurring into his cellphone while the other gang bosses in the room are still reeling, so he figures the potential for showdown is perfect. (An aside: he puts an apple-green chiffon scarf around his neck to spare his suit. Kakihara has a Special dress sense that involves lacy see-through sequin shirts and lavender patent leather. It would be hilariously foofy if he weren’t so scary.) He spends the last half of the film in a frenzy of anticipation, waiting for Ichi to finish taking apart everyone else in the Anjo gang and get to him. He is, of course, in for a surprise.
That’s the plot, grosso modo. But it’s not the movie. Anyone can do splatter and tastelessness, and likely I wouldn’t go see it. A Miike Takashi movie, though, is built on technically brillant throwaway shots, over-the-top visual metaphors and thoroughly weird minor characters that project one into a sort of alternate universe dense with possibility: it looks like the real Tokyo, except there are ninja stripper schoolgirls who shoot deadly darts out of their vaginas. The stylistic signature is as solid as Tarentino or Lynch. Even the tastelessness is carried out with twisted invention.
A representative example, which by this point you may not want to hear about:
Kakihara brings in outside torture experts Jiro and Saburo, shambling, grinning twins who are to 'corrupt cop' what Lance Armstrong is to a weekend biker. (Remnants of triplets, actually, as you might have noticed from the names. Miike has a thing for evil triplets.) They capture the main girl of the Jijii underling they’re tracking, but she refuses to sell her pimp out even after they, um, slice her nipples off with a single exacto knife slash. (I ate a bag of popcorn through this movie, by the way.) There’s a movement of impatience in the room.
“I can take care of it,” says one of the twins – or words to that effect – and puts on a pair of fluffy doggy ears. He pushes the half-conscious woman’s legs apart and sniffs with thoughtful intensity at her bare crotch.
“Got it,” he says after a moment, “I know where to find him--” And the merry gang follows his sniffing nose. The scene cuts to pimp boy, who hears odd barking noises, turns around in bed, and sees the silhouette of a head with doggy ears outlined against the rice-paper screen of his window...
One last paragraph of analysis. Ced noted that all the promotional material makes Kakihara out to be the main character (hero or even anti-hero being the wrong word). I’d argue that he is, not only because he’s an active agent whose downfall constitutes the core movement of the film, mirroring classical tragedy even if it’s nothing of the sort; but because he’s much more obviously a Miike character than the snivelling and psychically-fractured Ichi. Kakihara has a dumb, almost cute innocence to his psychopathy that’s often played for comedy, which is very Miike. If the man has an overarching thesis to all his films that I can discern, it’s that violence is a profoundly primal human impulse, and so those who are most prone to it are the most child-like and pure at heart. Little kids of all ages kill in his movies, and sprout white wings that drop feathers like snow. Then they get gruesomely beheaded, but what can I say?
(Note on the actors. Kakihara is played by Asano Tadanobu, who's sort of like the Japanese version of Johnny Depp - fringe hottie with mainstream appeal, married to cute singer (Chara, in Asano's case). If he looks vaguely familiar, it's probably because you saw him in Gohatto - he was the samurai who may or may not have been sleeping with prettyboi but got shafted for it anyway - and aren't recognising him under all the bleach and creatively utilitarian facial scarification. Jijii is played by Tsukamoto Shinya - the director of Tetsuo, of all people - who would be Kevin Spacey in the American remake that will never, ever happen. Pay attention, there's going to be a quiz.)
EDIT -- It occurs to me that the alternate-worldliness I fumble at defining in Miike's films is, essentially, magic realism. ...Or maybe magic realism's stunted demon twin, locked in the attic with nothing to do but watch television. But something like that. All his lurid absurdities make complete emotional sense, like the symbolic visual shorthand employed in manga. One watches Amélie and secretly thinks, why shouldn't vinyl records be made like crepe pancakes? Well, why shouldn't Kakihara be able to identify his gang leader's blood by licking a wad of yen bills stained with it. All of the other characters take it for granted.
(Come to think of it, he directed the MPD Psycho TV series. Never seen it, but can't think of anyone more obviously suited to the job.)
The story. Do you need a story? The yakuza boss Anjo disappears along with 100 million yen of syndicate cash. Kakihara, his second-in-command, is convinced that he's been captured by a rival gang; he takes the pursuit personally, nearly instigates an internecine gangland war and gets himself and his followers kicked out of the syndicate. His course of action is less dictated by loyalty to his former boss per se than because he had something of a hard-on for the guy and wants him back. Kakihara is a pain freak, taking or dealing, and Boss Anjo was purportedly the only person who could beat him into a satisfyingly pulpy mess. Frankly it's hard to imagine, because Kakihara is incredibly exacting. We eventually see him being sought after by the Boss’s ex-moll Karen, a genki conscience-free type who speaks in a mish-mash of Cantonese, English and charmingly-accented Japanese – very Miike, who likes his underworld multicultural in a way that most Japanese won’t admit to – but she doesn’t punch him hard enough, or possibly with too much latent consideration for his feelings, so it's no go. More on this later.
It transpires that the entire situation was staged by the Iago-like Jijii, a mousey middle-aged hypnotist cum yakuza toadie with a Shakespearean hate-on for the Anjo gang. Reason not provided, unless it was in the first five minutes I missed. Because they're evil, I suppose; which isn't half bad justification given that in Kakihara we have a main character who got expelled from the yakuza for giving the other crime lords the willies. I particularly enjoyed the bit where he hung a prisoner from the ceiling with a dozen meathooks poked into his back while he made shrimp tempura, then poured the boiling oil over the guy's head when he wouldn't cooperate. ...Where was I? Plot, yes. Jijii employs an assortment of disposable pimps and creatively disguised thugs to do his intricate bidding, but the ace up the sleeve of his dingy tracksuit is Ichi, a woeful baby-faced creature who’s just. Well. He’s insane. Fucked. Needs Boogiepop to come and take him away ASAP... Factually he’s a surface-milquetoast, maladjusted otaku who waits tables and comes home to play fighter games with a blanket over his head. He’s tormented by memories – possibly implanted by Jijii – of being bullied at school, and witnessing the rape of a girl who tried to protect him. So, of course, now he has a rape fetish, and with a bit of prodding sallies out to rid the world of "bullies" dressed in a rubberised outfit that strikingly resembles the Fremen stillsuits in the Dune movie, only with a big yellow "1" on the back. I’m sure he pees in it too, which I’m frankly astonished Miike didn’t think of showing, but Little Ichi is too busy getting hard every time he dismembers a woman by accident. It confuses him in a way that in any other set of circumstances would be cute.
How Ichi Rids The World Of Bullies: he’s got flat blades coming out of his heels. He does what looks like Chun-Li’s high roundhouse kick, and goes for the carotid. Of course all this is supposed to be teh funny. What did you think it was?
Jijii has Ichi wrapped around his little finger, and looses him in the direction of any underworld figure in need of a little slice-and-dice. Kakihara eventually narrows down on the name of the assassin, upon which he decides he wants to sleep with him – well, no, he wants to be killed by him, but same difference – since going by the raw hamburger he makes of his victims, Ichi has to be the most psychotic sadist in the world. Kakihara is the most psychotic masochist in the world, quite open to slicing bits of his own tongue off as a form of ritual apology and slurring into his cellphone while the other gang bosses in the room are still reeling, so he figures the potential for showdown is perfect. (An aside: he puts an apple-green chiffon scarf around his neck to spare his suit. Kakihara has a Special dress sense that involves lacy see-through sequin shirts and lavender patent leather. It would be hilariously foofy if he weren’t so scary.) He spends the last half of the film in a frenzy of anticipation, waiting for Ichi to finish taking apart everyone else in the Anjo gang and get to him. He is, of course, in for a surprise.
That’s the plot, grosso modo. But it’s not the movie. Anyone can do splatter and tastelessness, and likely I wouldn’t go see it. A Miike Takashi movie, though, is built on technically brillant throwaway shots, over-the-top visual metaphors and thoroughly weird minor characters that project one into a sort of alternate universe dense with possibility: it looks like the real Tokyo, except there are ninja stripper schoolgirls who shoot deadly darts out of their vaginas. The stylistic signature is as solid as Tarentino or Lynch. Even the tastelessness is carried out with twisted invention.
A representative example, which by this point you may not want to hear about:
Kakihara brings in outside torture experts Jiro and Saburo, shambling, grinning twins who are to 'corrupt cop' what Lance Armstrong is to a weekend biker. (Remnants of triplets, actually, as you might have noticed from the names. Miike has a thing for evil triplets.) They capture the main girl of the Jijii underling they’re tracking, but she refuses to sell her pimp out even after they, um, slice her nipples off with a single exacto knife slash. (I ate a bag of popcorn through this movie, by the way.) There’s a movement of impatience in the room.
“I can take care of it,” says one of the twins – or words to that effect – and puts on a pair of fluffy doggy ears. He pushes the half-conscious woman’s legs apart and sniffs with thoughtful intensity at her bare crotch.
“Got it,” he says after a moment, “I know where to find him--” And the merry gang follows his sniffing nose. The scene cuts to pimp boy, who hears odd barking noises, turns around in bed, and sees the silhouette of a head with doggy ears outlined against the rice-paper screen of his window...
One last paragraph of analysis. Ced noted that all the promotional material makes Kakihara out to be the main character (hero or even anti-hero being the wrong word). I’d argue that he is, not only because he’s an active agent whose downfall constitutes the core movement of the film, mirroring classical tragedy even if it’s nothing of the sort; but because he’s much more obviously a Miike character than the snivelling and psychically-fractured Ichi. Kakihara has a dumb, almost cute innocence to his psychopathy that’s often played for comedy, which is very Miike. If the man has an overarching thesis to all his films that I can discern, it’s that violence is a profoundly primal human impulse, and so those who are most prone to it are the most child-like and pure at heart. Little kids of all ages kill in his movies, and sprout white wings that drop feathers like snow. Then they get gruesomely beheaded, but what can I say?
(Note on the actors. Kakihara is played by Asano Tadanobu, who's sort of like the Japanese version of Johnny Depp - fringe hottie with mainstream appeal, married to cute singer (Chara, in Asano's case). If he looks vaguely familiar, it's probably because you saw him in Gohatto - he was the samurai who may or may not have been sleeping with prettyboi but got shafted for it anyway - and aren't recognising him under all the bleach and creatively utilitarian facial scarification. Jijii is played by Tsukamoto Shinya - the director of Tetsuo, of all people - who would be Kevin Spacey in the American remake that will never, ever happen. Pay attention, there's going to be a quiz.)
EDIT -- It occurs to me that the alternate-worldliness I fumble at defining in Miike's films is, essentially, magic realism. ...Or maybe magic realism's stunted demon twin, locked in the attic with nothing to do but watch television. But something like that. All his lurid absurdities make complete emotional sense, like the symbolic visual shorthand employed in manga. One watches Amélie and secretly thinks, why shouldn't vinyl records be made like crepe pancakes? Well, why shouldn't Kakihara be able to identify his gang leader's blood by licking a wad of yen bills stained with it. All of the other characters take it for granted.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 08:40 pm (UTC)lol, I think I spent the majority of this movie peering through my fingers and steadily scrunching down lower and lower on the sofa. I'm still not sure whether I'm thrilled or horrified that someone has seen fit to give this man a camera. ^_^;
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 09:26 pm (UTC)Have you seen any of his other films?
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 09:55 pm (UTC)I really need to see some more Miike. He's done a remake of Graveyard of Honor which looks really good (http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/gravhonr.shtml)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 09:57 pm (UTC)Going to bed now.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 11:06 pm (UTC)Im dying to see the MPD Psycho tv series he did, though I heard its not very good. Ah well. Have you seen Audition? I like how that compares to his more, um, flashy movies, in that its very quiet and seemingly normal (aside from the audition factor itself), then just gets creepier and creepier before the last 10 minutes sent the people I was watching it with running out of the room. Sob. So lonely.
oh, but i agree Kakihara does seem more like the focus of the movie.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 08:01 am (UTC)...Though my dad liked it. He does a really great impersonation of when the chick saws the guy's leg off. XD And people do laugh when they're nervous. With Miike you either have to laugh or run screaming, it demands some kind of response.)
Have you seen DOA2? It's also fairly mellow, I find, heartwarming with only occasional bursts of intense WTF.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 01:41 pm (UTC)I'm waiting for some time and more money (and a good video store...) to have a little DOA and/or Miike festival. :) Should be fun! I will watch it in my dorm room and hopefully chase my roommates away. Bwaaahaha. or make new friends!
no subject
Date: 2003-07-25 08:26 am (UTC)The first DOA has the greatest first five minutes of a yakuza movie ever. :P