Takashi Miike: Lust for Gory

Posted by Mister Hand (misterhand@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 28, 2007

Many American horror film filmmakers have cited him as an inspiration. Eli Roth gave him a cameo in the original Hostel. (Miike was the guy who said, “You could spend… all your money… in there.”)

Odds are, you’ve never heard of him. He is far better known in his native Japan than he is here in the States. Nonetheless, he is one of the most prolific directors alive, having dabbled in all sorts of genres with successes in most–along with some notable failures. Keep in mind, however, when you make an average of four to five movies a year, you can’t expect all of them to be awesome.

You read that right. The man makes somewhere between four to five movies per year. And every single one of them is better than anything Joel Schumacher has slapped up on the screen over the course of his career. (I could have listed any one of a dozen incompetent directors, but I really hate Schumacher, and the garbage he puts on screen is tantamount to a monkey flinging poo.)

A recent article on this site proposed to list the ten greatest torture scenes ever filmed. The list was noticeably lacking in Takashi Miike films. A list like that could be entirely populated by Miike’s films. You think Hellraiser knows torture? Hellraiser doesn’t know torture.

Miike knows torture.

Anyone can show torture in a film and make you feel queasy. Miike’s skill goes beyond torture porn. There’s a certain spark of… something in his films that I find impossible to explain. Sometimes it seems he’s trying too hard to shock. But those moments are the exceptions. Most of the time, the terror is totally organic–seamlessly woven into what I can only describe as “Miike world.” If horror is, as Stephen King has said, all about breaking societal taboos, then Miike’s horror is about breaking taboos you didn’t even realize existed.

But while Audition and Ichi the Killer feature some of the most suck-air-through-your-teeth scenes of brutality I’ve ever witnessed, horror is not Miike’s only line of expertise. So for every Ichi the Killer in his oeuvre, you’ll find a children’s story like The Great Yokai War, or a historical drama like Sabu. Miike isn’t afraid of breaking out of his own box, and his lean and mean directorial style (no pun intended) affords him the ability to do so at least twice a year.

Not long ago, the girlfriend and I were watching an early Miike film called Full Metal Yakuza.

“This sucks,” she said. “It looks all crappy and the dialogue is stupid and the story is ridiculous.”

I nodded my head. “Yes,” I agreed. “But look at how deftly it sucks.”

Miike’s films since Full Metal Yakuza have a more developed visual style, and Miike has grown considerably as a storyteller. But you can tell a lot about a director by studying the lesser movies in his filmography. What we learn from Full Metal Yakuza is that even in his most slapdash days, the Japanese auteur displays greater panache than most big budget Hollywood directors can muster with one-hundred times the resources. Give me a choice of sitting through Michael Bay’s upcoming Transformers movie or re-watching Full Metal Yakuza? I’ll take Miike, thank you very much. (Oh, come on! It’s Michael Bay for crying out loud! What past work has this man accomplished that makes anyone think Transformers is not going to suck? Pearl Harbor? Armageddon? Bad Boys II? And even if Transformers doesn’t suck, Bay’s still a witless, self-obsessed jerk.)

I’m presuming that I’m not speaking to the “I won’t watch anything with subtitles” crowd here, so I offer this starter guide to those of you unfamiliar with Miike’s work. If you are curious, I suggest you watch the films I have laid out in the following list, in order. I believe you will find yourself richly rewarded. Takashi Miike is one the most unique director I know of working today, defying comparisons, and pushing the medium to its limit.

So, with that bit of hyperbole out of the way, here’s the list:

1. Audition: It was the first Miike film I ever saw, and probably his most technically accomplished, most mature effort to date. It is also quite terrifying. It’s a movie that takes its sweet time to get going, but once it grips you, it doesn’t let go. The climax will stick with you for quite a while.

2. Ichi the Killer: The first ten minutes of this film are insane. You will not know what the hell is going on, and by the time the… er… unique titles are displayed, you will be wondering if you’re the butt of some sort of sick, twisted cinematic joke. Stick with it. What Miike has done in those first ten minutes is delay some exposition in favor of giving you a very small taste of what you’ll encounter in the remaining eighty. The film is batshit crazy but really quite awesome. You’ve watched Audition by now, so you know what Miike’s capable of. What at first appears to be randomness comes together and gels into a surprisingly tight story.

WARNING: Once you’ve watched Ichi the Killer, your life as a cinephile will forever be changed. You will totally lose the ability to be shocked by anything you see in an R-rated horror film. You will walk out of films like Hostel and 28 Weeks Later wondering why the hell the reviews called them “gory.” At some point, you might decide it’s no longer worth viewing any horror movie at the theater, choosing instead to wait for the unrated DVD. And even then, your satisfaction at the gore level will be greatly decreased. You will have Ichi the Killer to thank for this.

3. One Missed Call: Miike looked at The Ring and said, “Feh–I can do that.” Here, Miike eschews his usual gory style in favor of some nicely woven suspense. (This one scared the hell out of my girlfriend.)

4. Dead or Alive: No, this is not Tecmo video game characters in skimpy bikinis doing dragon punches. This is Miike’s Yakuza drama. At first it’s all pretty much by the numbers. By the end, though, Miike’s flair for insanity (as well as his affection for anime) comes through like gangbusters. If you like this one, don’t go into Dead or Alive 2 expecting more of the same. The second film in the trilogy (different story, different protagonists, but retaining the two lead actors) is more character-driven, and superior to both its prequel and Dead or Alive 3. Taken as a whole, the trilogy is uneven, but all the films have moments that shine.

5. City of Lost Souls: An action film with an engaging love story and a chicken fight featuring bullet time. Need I say more?

6. The Happiness of the Katakuris: So now that Miike has conquered the horror, suspense, action, and drama genres, what’s left? Why, the musical comedy, of course! A family acquires a hotel in the mountains. They run into problems when the guests start turning up dead for various, seemingly random reasons. The Kutakuris try to make the best of their bad luck while disposing of the bodies. (Did I say “musical comedy?” I meant to say “musical black comedy.”) By the end, you’ll be surprised how much heart comes out of the story. The film is a remake of a Korean movie called The Quiet Family, which is played without the musical numbers. Both films are pretty great, in my opinion, with the more reality-rooted original barely edging out Miike’s remake.

7. Visitor Q: If you’ve made it this far, you’re finally ready to step up to something truly perverse. Miike’s take on reality television follows the travails of a Japanese family. It mixes slapstick comedy with moments of sheer randomness and tops it all off with a dash of incest. You read that right. Incest. You will never be more disturbed with yourself for finding a film laugh-out-loud hilarious. Be warned: once you’ve watched it, you cannot un-watch it.

8. The Great Yokai War: Personally, I didn’t like this film all that much. It had it’s moments, but it’s definitely not my favorite. My girlfriend, however, who was a big fan of the The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock as a kid, liked it a lot. I did enjoy the cheesy special effects and the hot chick villainess with the silver bouffant hairdo. The film’s rather sweet story of a scared little kid finding the hero inside of himself (with the help of some magical creatures) is probably the perfect thing to cleanse your pallet after watching Visitor Q.

9. Sabu: A historical drama, as meticulous in recounting relationships as it is with its period details. A fascinating, confident film that shows off Miike’s eye for quiet, human spectacle. As in Ichi the Killer, Miike puts off exposition for a good while. So you spend the first part of the film wondering what the hell is going on exactly. That’s okay. When it comes together, it’s all the more satisfying.

10. Izo: Now that you’ve made it this far, you might be interested to see how Miike can go totally wrong. His imagery and insanity are on full display here, but the film never meshes. It’s one of those movies that you tell people about, and they think, “Wow! Samurais fighting vampires! And crucifixion! And a journey through hell! That sounds awesome!” But then you have to say, “Actually, it’s not awesome at all. In fact, it pretty much sucks.” But it does show that even at his worst, Miike is always interesting.

HONORABLE MENTION:

Masters of Horror: Imprint: Showtime’s Masters of Horror series was supposed to give horror directors an outlet for their darkest, most gory work, without ratings restrictions or opening weekend box office considerations. It is supposed to be Horror Unleashed. No holds barred. Bring it!

Showtime execs, however, after screening Miike’s installment, said something to the effect of, “Oh, no, no, no, no, God no, Holy Sweet Mother of Binary Bacon, no!” Then they curled up in fetal positions in one corner of their corporate boardroom and whimpered, “I’m in my happy place. I’m having hap-happy thoughts in my happy place.” After some counseling, they deemed that Imprint could never, ever, not in a million-trillion years air on American television–not even pay cable!

They released the installment on DVD and, while it is indeed quite disturbing, it is not Miike’s best work. I believe the biggest problem Miike has here is casting. Billy Drago chews the scenery in the lead role and it hurts the story. (I don’t think it’s entirely Drago’s fault. Without the language barrier, I’m sure Miike could have given him some better guidance and shaped his performance–something even the best actors need from time to time.)

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