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Showing posts with label Takashi Miike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Takashi Miike. Show all posts

Saturday, July 18, 2020

Kinji Fukasaku's Films

As opposed to starting at the beginning, I started at the end. The first Kinji Fukasaku film I saw was Battle Royale (2000), the last one he directed. He started work on the sequel Battle Royale II (2003) but passed away before it was completed so his son Kenta Fukasaku completed it. After that, I only saw a few of his films but not enough for a proper spotlight. So a correction was in order.

A mini-spotlight of 7 of his films, 5 of which constitute the Battles Without Honor and Humanity or the Yakuza Papers series.

Street Mobster (1972)
Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973) / Yakuza Papers, vol. 1

Hiroshima Death Match (1973) / Yakuza Papers, vol. 2
Proxy War (1973) / Yakuza Papers, vol. 3
Police Tactics (1974) / Yakuza Papers, vol. 4
Final Episode (1974) / Yakuza Papers, vol. 5
Cops vs Thugs (1975)

All 7 films were released over a quick 3 year span. The prolific Fukasaku also did a New Battles Without Honor and Humanity trilogy (1974-76) but those films were not seen as part of this spotlight.

The 5 film Battles Without Honor and Humanity series is an absolutely incredible epic series unlike any other in cinema. The Godfather (1972) came out just a year before Battles Without Honor and Humanity and there are some overlapping aspects regarding the thirst for power and hierarchy of gangs but both films are cut from different cloth. Instead, I thought of Johnnie To’s Election (2005) and Election 2 (2006) and Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) as distant cinematic offsprings of Fukasaku due to the usage of historical references and cyclic nature of events. However, those films still don’t have the scope of Kinji Fukasaku’s movies and methods. One differentiating method is that Fukasaku states historical events and dates up front, introducing characters by their real names and stating dates of their death. In addition, there is a documentary style narration to place the movie’s real life events and meetings. This includes starting all the films with historical reference to Hiroshima and the chaotic post-WWII world that allowed gangs to prosper via the black market. Even though the 5 films came out in a two-year span, they cover almost 25 years in scope. The films also highlight the changing political climate brought by the Korean War and the Cold War that further impacted the Yakuza gangs’ style in Hiroshima and Kure City, an aspect covered by the third film Proxy War.

The scope of the films increases in the series starting with individuals to gang battles to cross-city rivalries as the yakuza go from street-level activity to political and company businesses impacting regular citizens. Despite the changing scope of the films, all 5 are united by some common elements related to the gang’s methodologies, rituals and mannerism. The films show repeated cycles of men drinking, eating, planning and then killing, not always in that order. When the men are not looking behind them, there is always some young person lurking behind to kill them and take their place. The young men collect kills and move up the yakuza leader before they are in turn themselves killed. This killing doesn’t only take place at the lowest level of the hierarchy but also takes place at the top, between bosses of the rival yakuza gangs. Boss vs boss, company vs company. Each man wants to be the boss and set up his own company, which results in more violence. This violent cycle continues throughout the 5 film series.

The common rituals shown in the Battles Without Honor and Humanity/Yakuza Papers films follow strict ceremonies some of which are brotherhood vows, loyalty tests or peace offerings. The loyalty tests or peace offering are first shown in Street Mobster and brutally depict a member chopping off a finger to make things right. The subsequent bandaged hand, dripping with blood, is like a badge of honor which lets others know of the true character of the injured man.

Hirono (a remarkable Bunta Sugawara, present in all 7 films) is the beating heart of multiple Yakuza Papers films but he is not always the main focus. As Hirono serves his multiple jail sentences, other characters take centre stage and often Hirono drifts into the background due to the larger scope that Kinji Fukasaku is covering regarding the structure of the gangs. Women are an afterthought in the 5 films and mostly make an appearance when a gangster wants to have a good time with a prostitute. The wives and girlfriends are sometimes shown but even then, they have no say in events. Instead, some examples show that a woman is waiting to be taken over by another man when her male partner is killed or jailed. The one exception is Mrs. Yamamori (Toshie Kimura) who is an equal accomplice in the plans and schemes of Yamamori (Nobuo Kaneko), one of the prominent bosses in the series.

Majority of the characters in the films are caught in cycles they can’t break out of. The only escape for some bosses or senior gang members comes when they either retire or are forced to retire and give control to someone else. These retirements are either mandated or reactionary due to circumstances. They don’t result from soul-searching. However, Hirono is the one exception whose uses his 7 year prison sentence to change himself. He also wants to give advice to young men so that they don’t repeat his errors. During his 7 year prison sentence, Hirono is showing writing about his experiences and this phrase from him illustrates the situation of the gangs but also our current world:

“When foolish men stand at the top, the men under them suffer and shed blood needlessly.”

These words still ring true. Our present world is full of foolish men standing at the top and causing others to suffer needlessly. The closing words at the end of the 5th film are even more relevant today.

“Quarter of a century had passed since he’d [refers to Hirono] cast his lot with the yakuza amidst the post-war turbulence.

With the passage of time, one group begat another, and with each new group came new seeds of conflict.Thus, much young blood had been shed.

Will the bitter battles that arise from the strong preying upon the weak ever be banished from this earth?”

Those words were spoken in a 1974 film but almost 5 decades later, we are now living in a world where the battles are fiercely bitter with no honor and humanity. The strong are still preying on the weak.

Starting this spotlight with Street Mobster was a good decision as the film lays out the gritty realistic yakuza style and template of Fukasaku’s subsequent films. All these 7 films depict the endless violent cycle and lay out the hierarchy that the gangs follow and their rituals. The rituals also include peace making deals between gangs including the brotherhood vows that the members take. It is also clear that Fukasaku’s style and films influenced numerous other directors including Takashi Kitano and Takashi Miike.
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Reading material:

From the Taschen book Japanese Cinema, Stuart Galbraith IV writes of Battles Without Honor and Humanity:

The picture is a slap in the face to the romanticized nostalgia of 1960s ninkyo eiga (“chivalry movies”) that had come before. Instead, Battles Without Honor and Humanity exposes the hypocrisy and emptiness of criminal codes of honor while creating new myths with its fatalistic, disillusioned, and ultimately existential antihero (Bunta Sugawara), a man only too aware of his dead-end lifestyle.

Often likened to Sam Peckinpah, Fukasaku exerts the same unflinching brutality and ambiguous use of violent expression, which has likewise polarized critics. Indeed, Fukasaku’s last completed film, Battle Royale (Batoru rowaiaru, 2000) has come the Straw Dog of its day. Unlike Peckinpah, however, Fukasaku had a markedly left-of-center cynicism born out of his terrifying teens, when he witnessed the deaths of countless friends and neighbors in Allied bombing raids. Immersed in postwar chaos and its thriving black market, Fukasaku was also strongly influenced by the Italian neorealist films he saw during the Allied Occupation. Fukasaku brought these experiences to his genre films, endowing them with an uncanny verisimilitude previously absent in such films. -- Japanese Cinema, page 112

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Global Cinematic Duels, Part II

The idea of pitting different movies from a country/region against each other was quite enjoyable so here’s a second and final installment for this year atleast. If a country had 2 or more movies, then I decided the country could compete separately. If a country only had one movie, then I paired that country with the nearest region, with the pairing based more on culturally and cinematic grouping as opposed to geographically. For example, I combined the sole Mexican film in the list with South America under a ‘Latin America’ category as opposed to having the Mexican movie under North America.

China + Hong Kong: Butterfly (Yan Yan Mak, 2004), Blind Shaft (Yang Li, 2003, also co-production with China and Germany), Fear of Intimacy (Hong Kong, Vincent Chui, 2004)

Butterfly is a refreshing love story, although not a conventional one. A young girl develops a crush on her teacher. Even though the teacher is a married woman with a child, she reflects on her youth when she had a fling with another girl. That relationship ended unhappily and her repressed feelings from that fling finds another outlet via the present situation with the young student. The movie is shot partly in Macao and just like a lot of movies shot in that exotic Island, Butterfly contains some sensual elements which just enhance this film. Well worth the watch! Rating 8.5/10

Blind Shaft came out of nowhere and blind-sided me. I had never heard of this movie when I discovered this tucked away in the video store. But oh what a movie! The opening shot shows men working in a darkened coal-mine. While three men take a break, they pass the time with meaningless conversations. And without any warning, one of the men is killed by the other two. As it turns out, the purpose of the killing was money. The two men go around scamming mine owners by pretending that one of their relatives or brother is killed in the mine and as result, the mine owner is forced to pay some money to keep them quiet, lest they make it public. When the two men find another prey, this time a young16 year old kid, one of the men starts having second thoughts (ethics and morality). How the movie ends is a surprise but not totally unexpected. This is a very watchable movie that is well paced and takes time to lay the characters out. Rating 9.5/10

Fear of Intimacy starts off interestingly but then gradually loses steam. A busy photographer does not have time for his girlfriend and is constantly leaving her. One day, when he rushes for an assignment, she leaves him for good. The story then picks up 5 years later when the photographer now works as paparazzi stalking and taking pictures of celebrities and rich people. A young woman becomes his partner and a quiet relationship begins to take shape. Things take a twist when he discovers his girlfriend from 5 years ago, but she seems to be involved with a shady character who might be involvement in a rich woman’s murder. Nothing great, but not a bad film either!
Rating 6.5/10

Overall Rating: 24.5/30 = 8.17

France: Sex is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002), Unleashed (aka Danny the Day, co-production with UK and USA, Directed by Louis Leterrier)

The two movies can be summarized as Sex and Violence! Sex is Comedy is unlike Catherine Breillat’s other shocking sex filled films but the idea behind this movie came from her film Fat Girl . She uses the same young actress from that movie and tries to show how much works goes in filming sex scenes for a movie. While the final product might seem passionate and erotic, in reality the scenes could not be more boring and dull to shoot. A light hearted movie that does get dull very soon because after the first 30 minutes the viewer gets the point that the complains/fuss of actors can be a real hindrance to the final product. Rating 7.5/10

Luc Besson has really developed his own system of action thrillers which form a middle road in between the big budget Hollywood productions and the lavish Asian martial films. Most of Besson’s films atleast have a well defined story which revolves around a plot of revenge and clear cut good/bad guys. Every now and then, Besson scripts unique scenes to spice up the tried out action/thriller genre. This time around, the main character, Danny (Jet Li) is a trained fighter who is merely a slave to his master (Bob Hoskins). When his master removes Danny’s collar, he is ready to kill at will. But one day, Danny finds reprieve in the form of music via a blind piano tuner (Morgan Freeman). The soothing music triggers long buried memories in Danny which lead him on a different path. The story of revenge from this point on feels like earlier Besson films but it is not that bad, although it feels dull in parts.
Rating 6.5/10

Overall Rating: 14/20 = 7.0

India: Lage Raho Munna Bhai (sweetly directed by Rajkumar Hirani), Fanaa (mis-directed by Kunal Kohli)

Two hyped up Bollywood movies but two completely different outcomes!

Lage Raho Munna Bhai is refreshing flick that is very rare in commercial cinema while Fanaa is just another run of the mill patriotic trash that has plagued Bollywood for more than a decade or so. Fanaa may be technically good (with some stunning Kashmiri visuals) and even has some touching performances from Kajol and Rishi Kapoor but overall, it has too many loop holes and an awful miscast role for Tabu (why on earth do directors/producers keep picking her even though it is obvious she can not deliver dialogues?). Lage Raho… is not a sequel to the original Munna Bhai film but simply a different story with the same loving lead characters. I have to say that the character of Circuit (played amazingly well by Arshad Warsi) is one of the best characters to ever grace the Indian celluloid screen – the loyal street savvy tapori has been played countless times over the decades but never this well and this good!

Lago Raho…Rating 9/10; Fanaa….Rating 5.5/10

Overall Rating: 14.5/20 = 7.25

Japan: The Great Yokai War (Takashi Miike), All about Lily Chou-Chou (Shunji Iwai)

There was a time that I tried to watch every new Takashi Miike movie. But I quickly found out that was a difficult and frustrating task -- difficult because Miike directed and acted in several films each year; frustrating because his films are very inconsistent, with a brilliant film followed by a complete dud. Needless to say, I was still looking forward to The Great Yokai War which was hyped up quite a bit. It is not disappointing but it is nothing great either. It mixes fantasy, myth, sci-fi and action elements with robots, gremlins, humans, furry creatures, power sword wielding characters occupying equal screen time. A little boy uncovers a magical world where the battle of good vs evil is taking place and finds himself center stage in the fight for the planet’s fate.
Rating 6.5/10

All about Lily Chou-Chou has an interesting story but nothing not seen before – alienated youth finds solace in a fan chat room about the popular pop singer Chou-Chou. However, a series of incidents lead to a fan getting killed and the alienated youth finds himself lonely and more confused about what to do. After a while, the online web poetry gets tedious and the movie drags on longer than it should. Rating 6.5/10

Overall Rating: 13/20 = 6.50

Latin America: Caballos salvajes (1995, directed by Marcelo Piñeyro, Argentina), Ciudad de M (2000, Directed by Felipe Degregori, Peru), Sin destino (2002, Leopoldo Laborde, Mexico)

Caballos salvajes is a charming bank heist/outlaw/road trip movie. And like most Argentine movies, it has its own peaceful rhythm. Rating 9/10

City of M is a well crafted low budget with shades of Waiting of Godot . M can’t find a job but then again, he has no college education. Desperate to get work, M and his friends hatch plots to become rich fast. Eventually, three of them agree to smuggle drugs to America. All they have to do is wait for the ‘Bolivian’ who will give them the goods and help their dreams come true. The waiting part feels like the Godot play and at this point, I felt the movie might end. But the ‘Bolivian’ does show up and even though we don’t see his face, he gives them the goods. Since it is a low budget movie, I never expected the three to leave Peru so the events that follow after the three get the goods are not unexpected. Rating 8/10

Shot mostly in stark black and white, Sin destino is a film about street life. Fran is a 15 year-old boy who gets by prostituting himself for money. Via flashbacks, we are shows how a 9 year old Fran was introduced into this life by an elder man, Sebastian. Just when Fran is finally starting to fall for women, Sebastian enters his life again. Conflicted between his real desires and need for money, Fran ends up on a destructive path which leads him to destroy everything in sight. And when he is done, Fran reverts back to being a child again, attempting to regain the innocence that was taken away from him. The movie is influenced by Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados and even has a common thread via the role of Sebastian, who acted in Buñuel's 1950 film. Interestingly, the only time there is color in the movie is when Fran’s fantasies & nightmares are shown which indicate the hellish state of Fran’s fragile mind (no matter how pleasant the start of the fantasy is, it eventually turns ugly). Rating 7.5/10

Overall Rating: 24.5/30 = 8.17

Russia & former Soviet-republics: I am Cuba (1964, Mikheil Kalatozishvili, Former soviet-Union/Cuba co-production), Night Watch (2004, Timur Bekmambetov)

I am Cuba is vintage cinema and ranks alongside Battle of Algiers and Z as one of the best examples of great cinema that once existed! The film gives us a ring-side seat to a changing Cuban landscape and shows different stories about the rich, the poor and the revolutionaries. We see how the rich dance their life away in a haze of music and alcohol, how the poor farmers have to struggle at every step, how a revolution starts, how a revolution can be crushed and the creation of a legend! Amazing stuff. Rating 9.5/10

Night Watch is a completely unique and original film but does contain traces of Blade , Matrix, Ghostbusters and other sci-fi/fantasy adventure films. As per the well crafted story, there has been an endless battle between good and evil but so far the balance has been maintained. However, the ‘one’ will come one day and the balance will never be the same. The manner in how the story unfolds is very interesting (curses, spells, vampires + flashy special effects). The film is a slap-in the face for all the North American distributors who complain that foreign cinema is not entertaining enough! The second movie in this trilogy was released in Russia this year, with the third film will be out next year but will be in English. Rating 9/10

Overall Rating: 18.5/20 = 9.25

Thailand: Ong-bak (Prachya Pinkaew, 2003), 69 (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 1999)

I finally got around to seeing Ong-bak and it is nothing special, although the fights are amazing. Safe to say the story is paper-thin and the film is a mere excuse to see Tony Jaa in action with his Muay Thai moves. Rating 6.5/10

69 is a well crafted dark comedy/thriller. A boss can’t decide which of his employees to lay off, so he makes the women pick numbers. One of the three laid off employees has the number 9. As it turns out, she lives in apartment 6, but the number 6 is not properly attached to her door and constantly swings around to become a 9. One day, she hears three knocks on her door and when she goes out in the hallway, she finds a box. Upon opening the box, she finds bundles of money notes. What to do? She decides to keep the money. And when the gangsters come to get their box, a struggle ensues and she manages to kill both the men. From then on, no matter what she does, the body count just seems to keep increasing. Dark yet tinged with some unexpected humour throughout!
Rating 9/10

Overall Rating: 15.5/20 = 7.75

USA: Walk the Line (James Mangold, 2005), Fun with Dick and Jane (Dean Parisot, 2005), The Squid and the Whale(Noah Baumbach, 2005), Miami Vice (Michael Mann), The Illusionist (Neil Burger)

Yes the performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are very good in Walk the Line but so what? The movie story is something rehashed in Hollywood countless times – a nobody becomes famous, struggles with fame and dives into drug/alcohol, messes his life until he gets a second chance to turn it around. Yawn! And if the main character is based on a real-life character, well then you have an award winning movie! Rating 7.5/10

Fun with Dick and Jane is a comic look at present day corporate fraud, although the movie is set decades before Enron and the other greedy companies were caught red-handed. Jim Carrey is good in a role that requires him to go from slapstick to the dead-pan Truman character. Alec Baldwin is the usual cool & sly person who cheats others and gets away with it (almost...). In a funny tribute, the end credits give thanks to all the corporations caught in money-fraud schemes. Rating 6.5/10

I can finally see what the hype around The Squid and the Whale is about. It is indeed a very good movie and well worth all the praise it has received. A fighting writer couple’s marriage is shown and how it affects their two sons with each son siding with one parent. Amazing performances all around especially the two kids. Also, an interesting case-study on how easily kids can be influenced especially by parents they worship. Rating 9.5/10

Miami Vice was an unexpected surprise for two reasons – one it is actually a good movie and second (more importantly) is the seductive role of Gong Li. I had no idea she was in this movie and in the end if it were not for character’s affair with Sonny (Colin Farrell), this movie would not have been this good. There is no real story per se, (two undercover cops have to bust a drug ring) and most of the dialogues make no sense or are kept to single sentences. So it is up to the visuals to set the mood and with most Michael Mann films, the atmosphere gives a sense of cool with blue being the prominent colour in the background. In the end, the movie is about the characters and their lives. The fact that they happen to be undercover cops is just a technicality. Overall, the movie feels like a sibling of Mann’s Heat. Rating 8.5/10

Magic or simply an Illusion? A mere trick of the hands or genuine dark powers? The Illusionist is an intriguing thriller which has an innocent love story as its focal point. The production visuals are very good with Paul Giamatti stealing the show with an amazing and precise performance. Rating 9/10

Overall Rating: 41/50 = 8.20

Yet another surprise winner: A film from the former Soviet Union + a modern Russian flick take top prize with 2 solid entries!!!!!