lleeheflin Reviews

Flower and Snake (2004)

GRAND OPERA for the 21st century

[10/10 · 26 November 2006]

Takashi Ishii is my best movie 'find' of the last year (along with Park Chan Wook). When I finished watching BLACK ANGEL #1 I said to myself (silently since the film had left me utterly speechless) I have seen the face of grand opera for the 21st century. FLOWER & SNAKE takes its place on that same lofty summit. But whereas BLACK ANGEL fits neatly into the groove of Verdi and Wagner, FLOWER & SNAKE is more attuned to the hothouse orchid atmosphere of Strauss' SALOME, but dressed up (and down) in very contemporary style. I can imagine that Strauss would have loved for his SALOME to look like this! It is all about unrequited 'forbidden' love/lust. Westerners tend to be very uneasy with this area of human experience: witness S. Kubrick's last gasp of a dying breath EYES WIDE SHUT. Not so the Japanese. They grab Priapus by the horns and do their damnedest to wrestle him to the ground. More often than not leaving a trail of their own blood and guts strewn along the wayside. AND making ART of it all the while.

While all S&M is ritualized to one degree or another, in a culture like Japan where RITUAL is fundamental to all cultural experience, the ritualization of the 'forbidden' is raised to the level of the sublime. This is most especially true in its artistic expressions. Erotic art is a very well established genre in Japan. And S&M erotic art is a very well established sub-genre there as well. One need not be an 'S&Mer' to appreciate it's artistic merits. But you can not deny it's artistic merits. I have seen rather a lot of (gay) Japanese erotic art on the web and a lot of it belonged to this sub-genre. If this is not Ishii's bag, then he did his homework very well. The traditional male loin cloth plays a very big role in Japanese homoerotic art, so I was rather surprised to see this fetish lavished so lovingly on the woman in the film. And the whole bondage business!!! The ritualistic binding with rope and knot tying is astonishing!!! And nearly verbatim from the many Japanese prints I have seen. (To see for your self google 'Gengoroh Tagame') This is erotic art of the highest order, albeit of a very specialized order. I can not recommend it too highly. On the other hand, if your sexual tastes are firmly entrenched in the vanilla flavors of Hollywood 'tweenky' sexploitation movies, then you might want to knock back a few before watching this. On the other hand if you enjoy sex while riding a roller coaster thru the funhouse and the chamber of horrors, you will die over this. It gives a whole new meaning to 'two thumbs up'!!!!

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

what do you mean this isn't a gay cowboy movie?!!

[10/10 · 20 January 2006]

I have spent the last several hours reading user comments here about BBM (I got up to page 11). Everybody has said pretty much everything that can be said about the astonishing quality of this film in all possible aspects. And I was very very pleased to see how, almost universally, everyone was overwhelmingly moved by the sheer experience of it on the emotional/visceral level. At the same time, as I read on, I became more and more annoyed by so many of the commentators, gay and straight alike, wanting to 'neuter' the story by asserting the primacy of it's so-called 'universal' theme of thwarted LOVE at the expense of the specific example of it presented in the film. What is astonishing about this film is precisely the fact that the universality of "LOVE" in all of it's heavenly AND earthly pleasures and pains plays out to the fullest between homosexual couples AS WELL AS heterosexual ones. A few years back we got the straight version of this theme in Wong Kar Wai's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, a nearly equally astonishing ravishing film. And I don't recall any reviewer of that film feeling it necessary to down play the heterosexuality of the couple involved. As a gay man, I had absolutely no problem with the fact that they were straight. It never even occurred to me to want to 'explain away' that seemingly essential aspect of their story. As a gay man who came of age in the late 50s, I learned without having to think about it how to twist the straight stories that constituted the social environment of this world to fit my own personal needs. Given only a little imagination, any heroine can be morphed into another hero. By and large heterosexuals never find themselves in the position of needing to do this. This kind of 'make believe' is foreign to their lived experience. Until now that is.

BROKEBACK MOUNTIAN has changed all that. It is precisely the fact that it is about the blooming of love/lust between two seemingly 'ordinary' (and at first seemingly straight) young country boys in the outback of Wyoming that gives the film it's astonishing visceral impact. I do not think it is now possible for a 'love story' about a straight couple to achieve such a level of impact on an audience. We've been there and done that ad nauseum. No, BBM is the utterly astonishing experience it is precisely BECAUSE it is about the socially doomed sex/love relationship between two men. Not two stereotypically 'gay' men of the "Will & Grace" type or like that pathetic caricature of a gay man in that awful film of Tod Haynes. But rather real flesh and blood MEN whose maleness is unquestionable.

This then brings us to the real crux of the 'problem' with BBM: in a word SEX. Sex between two very hot & virile men who could have had any woman they wanted (and did) and yet who only knew truly mind boggling passion in their physical sexual experience with each other. It is precisely THAT which dooms their love for each other. It is precisely THAT which is the 'forbidden' about their love for each other. 'Love-buddies', if you will, only become 'problimatic' when they veer too close to becoming 'F-buddies' (if I'm not mistaken, one has to be 'coy' about these things on this site.) After all, BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID was a huge huge success. It was very easy to ignore the 'homoerotic' guts beneath the platonic skin. And that is what I see happening now with the response to BBM. People are desperately trying to hide the 'wolf' of real men, not just having sex with each other, but having the most rapturous sex of their lives, sex beyond anything they ever experienced with a woman, under the 'sheepskin' of some kind of sexless platonic 'ideal' called L O V E.

Both Ennis and Jack were sexually functional with women. But they were only sexually ALIVE with each other. When Jack resurfaced into Ennis' life with his postcard, what nearly drove Ennis crazy was not just the prospect of seeing his ole buddy. It was rather the prospect of becoming ALIVE again in Jack's arms in the throws of their sexual passion. When Jack finally arrives they both try as best they can to maintain a buddy/buddy stance. That lasts about 10 seconds. And it is Ennis who breaks that impossible illusion, throwing all caution to the wind and in his sex/passion crazed state drags Jack, not into hiding, but rather to the foot of the stairs to his own back door where he practically devours him with kisses to the utter horror of his wife who, at that precise moment, has come looking for them. What so blows her mind, is less that he is kissing another man, but rather the total abandonment of his passion. She had never seen her husband that totally and unabashedly ALIVE before.

Ennis and Jack are not mere 'symbols' for some kind of sexless platonic 'ideal'. They are very real men who were nearly starving to death for want of the nourishment they got from their sexual passion for each other. It is the sexual component of their relationship which gives it it's overwhelming power. To rob it of that, would leave us with just an empty not very noteworthy sheepskin. And BBM would not be the movie it is.

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003)

One of a kind fabulous fantasy

[10/10 · 5 February 2005]

Since most of the other comments detail the plot, I won't go into that here. Save to say that the story is, by and large, the least interesting thing about this wonderful film. It is what Kitano does with a simplistic genre story line that compels the viewer to engage with the story. And he does this by making all of the central 'characters' into believable people that you can take an interest in and care about. As is the case with so-called 'real life', it is not the 'big picture' that is of interest here but rather how boring reality is played out moment to moment that tells the real tale of life. In the midst of the on going humdrum routine are flashes of real beauty, comedy, tragedy, horror, and 'mystery'. It is 'believable' in the same sense that our own lives are believable.

But in the film this kernel of reality is played out on the stage of cinematic art. And Kitano obviously has a fantastic artistic sensibility. From the first moment to the last the film is truly stunning to look at. The color, the frame composition, the camera movement, the action of the actors are all created and combined to delight the eye/mind and to propel the story forward. This is further enhanced by the use of natural sound and music. The music score is wonderful! And the several times when the natural sounds of the action are woven into the music as integral parts of the music are truly delicious.

The viewer is never allowed to forget for long that this is a movie and at the same time a piece of movie art. This is especially true at the film's conclusion, it's GRAND FINALE!! Much has been said of the film's musical ending. Every comment that mentions it is a spoiler for sure. I was lucky in that, while I knew something of the 'Zatoichi' story, I knew virtually nothing about this particular version. So Kitano's ending came upon me a complete, and in the end, overwhelming surprise! Since the 'cat' is well out of the bag in all these comments, it can't spoil it any more for me to say: Who would have anticipated a full blown Broadway Musical Grand Finale AND have it work stupendously!! And why not? The bad guys have been vanquished with blood sweat and tears. The good gals and guys are victorious. God is in IT'S heaven and all is right with the world (at least for the moment) so why not celebrate? Which is precisely what the people do. (It just occurred to me that this ending is very much like the ending of SHREK!) They have a 'festival'. And what is a festival without music and dancing.

In this case the music and dancing are straight out of the realm of the extraordinary KOTO DRUMMERS in which percussion music is taken into wild and wonderfully new places. (Remember STOMP!!) I could write a million words about this ending and still not capture it at all. So I won't try. I will just say that if you have any 'soul' at all, you will be dancing with joy yourself and thanking Kitano with all your heart that he had the 'soul' to end his film on this note. It is a moment of pure joy!! But it is not, in fact, the 'end' of the film. At the very end Zatoichi approaches the festivities and stumbles upon his own moment of 'truth' and in that instant brings the whole trip into 'perspective'. It was the final 'catch' of one's breath.

As I have tried to point out in all of the comments I have written for IMDb, any work of art must be approached on it's own terms. It cannot be criticized for not being some other work of art. This movie is the movie it is in the very best sense possible, and is, I think, almost certainly the movie Kitano set out to make. I for one, congratulate him for being absolutely successful in making a really great movie!!

Kumamoto monogatari (2002)

TRASH!!! And believe me, that is NOT a compliment!!

[1/10 · 28 January 2005]

It is pretty well known that Miike will take on just about any project offered to him. In 2001 (according to IMDb) he made at least 6 films including ICHI THE KILLER, VISITOR Q, & THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS, which I liked very very much, and KUMAMOTO MONOGATARI. (I am a BIG FAN of Miike's! I have 22 of his dvds.) I was particularly interested in seeing KUMAMOTO MONOGATARI cuz it is supposedly a 'period piece'. I was very interested to see his take on the 'historical drama'. What an utter disappointment it turned out to be! It is one of the tackiest, cheesiest movies I think I have ever seen. The costumes are look like they were made by grade school mothers in small town Nebraska for the 4th grade pageant. The acting was on a par with the costumes. As were the sets and SFX. And as best as I could tell, this trash aesthetic served absolutely no legitimate end of any kind. If you are a fan of Miike's, do not walk but RUNNNNN away from this piece of crap as fast as you can!!!! OK to give credit where credit is do: there is a little fluffy white puppy in it that is truly magical! But believe me, watching any of the rest of the movie to see it is a price too great to pay!

Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000)

DOA for the heart

[8/10 · 25 January 2005]

The problem it seems for so many Miike viewers is that their expectations build up from viewing earlier films. And then they expect all of his films to meet those expectations. And then whine and bitch when he confounds them. Why can not you all accept each of his films on it's own terms? Why would you expect DOA 2 to be like DOA 1? If you do, you don't know Miike and his approach to movie making.

The DOA TRILOGY is, it seems to me, Miike's meditation on the relationship between seemingly opposing energetic masculine 'forces'. In the films these forces are characterized in various ways: 'good'/'bad', 'light'/'dark', 'white'/'black', 'social'/'antisocial', police/gangs, Yakuza/triad, bla bla bla. And in this respect the trilogy is a meditation on man-to-man relations in general in our world today. In the first film, like positive and negative electrons, the personifications of these forces eventually annihilate one another in a cataclysmic explosion that destroys the planet that really messes with the audience's mind.

In the second film the embodiment of these forces are brought back together to explore the possibility of their working together as a positive conjunction for a 'greater good'. They are also shown here to have originated from more or less the same source. Their relationship here is glossed with 'gay' overtones. (A theme in more than a few of Miike's films.) But it would seem that the 'world' is unable to accept such a relationship, such a 'love' if you will, and the world eventually hunts them down and destroys them. This inevitability suffuses the whole film with a melancholic dread. Even in the lightest (and yes) Funny moments, you are aware that fate is stalking this Appollo/Dionysius pair relentlessly to bring them down. And of course the 'Furies' do descend on them (in a bizarre contemporary incarnation only Miike would have been able to think of!) and do destroy them. Though this time with a whisper and not a BANG. In musical terms DOA 2 can be seen as a kind of 'apache adagio', a dance of death.

So many people commenting on Miike's films here talk about his 'slow' moods as if 'slow' is a bad word. (If you are a speed freak then I guess 'slow' is a bad word in your vocabulary.) But it is to Miike's credit that he so obviously understands that some of the more profound of human experiences are lived in 'slow-motion' and can only be expressed and appreciated artistically in that mode. One has only to see some of his filmed interviews to know just how much he appreciates the 'slow' and 'still' in human experience. He is, after all, the product of a Zen culture. The two protagonists, Takeuchi & Aikawa, obviously know they are doomed. So they are doing their utmost to genuinely savior their remaining days. Much of this time is spent in a lush verdant countryside rather than in the city. And we are given the opportunity to savior their experience with them at their own pace. If one will but go on the trip with them it is a delicious beautiful bittersweet painful sad trip you feel lucky to have been allowed to trail along on.

I would characterize DOA 1 as being a trip for the groin and guts. DOA 2 as a trip for the heart. And DOA 3 as a trip for the mind/intellect. It was a stroke of genius on Miike's part to realize that he could introduce 2 characters in one film. Kill them off at the end of it. And then reanimate them in a second and then a third film with more or less totally different stories. And still have all 3 films truly be about those 2 same characters. And do it in such a way that they only reach full development at the end of the third film. Undoubtedly DOA 1 is the best of the 3 films. And all 3 films can and do stand well on their own. But it is equally true that the WHOLE STORY only gets 'told' by the trilogy.

Dead or Alive (1999)

One of Miike's masterpieces!!!

[10/10 · 24 January 2005]

I have read all the comments on this film posted here and am only adding my two cents worth because I think, in one sense or another, they all misrepresent the film I saw. I have now seen it 4 or 5 times as it is the film I use to introduce people to Miike's work.

I want to preface what I have to say with a comment on 'criticism'. I am frequently furious with film criticism because it negatively criticizes a film for not being the type of film the critic most favors. It seems to me that 'criticism' is only truly valid when it attempts to criticize the work of art within the paradigm within which the artist was working. In other words, did the artist realize the work of art she or he set out to create? I suggest that few of the 'critics' criticizing DOA here have adequately done this. So, climbing out onto a fragile limb, here I go!

One of the things that strikes me most forcibly about the whole of Miike's corpus is that virtually all of his films are, in fact first and foremost, made for a Japanese audience. He is NOT a 'foreign' director making movies for an American/European audience. So, as an American film freak, I see that I have to try and understand, as best I can, what Miike's 'message' is to his target audience. Much has been said of the theme running thru a lot of his work about the problem of 'fitting in' to ordinary 'life' in Japan as experienced by non-Japanese orientals, i. e. Chinese, Koreans, etc. For Miike and for these people this is obviously a very real and deep felt issue. I doubt that most white 'Westerners' can, or even want to, appreciate what this problem means to those experiencing it. But I think for Miike this problem of 'otherness' encompasses, not only the immediate racial/cultural differences depicted in many of his films, but rather the whole gamut of problems of 'otherness' as defined by those qualities which define 'good/proper' society in all countries. Gangsters, whores, queers, blacks, Chinese, the poor, the homeless, the destitute, etc. etc. are all lumped together as the 'outsider/other' in Miike's films (as they are in 'real life'.) Each of these categories represents a 'world' which is as REAL as the so-called real world of 'straight' society. Miike's films are all about the clash between 'worlds' and seldom about the clash between 'heaven' and 'hell'. Rather his work is about the clash between various hell-worlds. And according to the Miike cosmology, there are only hell-worlds in the universe. So-called 'Heaven' is just another region of Hell. DOA is just a cinema verité trip thru the Universe as Miike understands it to be. It's just another 'crappy' (I was told I couldn't use the real word!) day in Paradise, if you will. Just one more day of REALITY (somebody's reality!) to be gotten thru. If you don't want to go on the trip, then get off the bus. But once the bus starts up, don't complain about where it takes you! It is just what is THERE!!!! And for those willing to go on Miike's trip with him, the trip is truly astonishing in every sense of the word!

True, the sub-structure of the 'story' is genre/formulaic. But so what!!! (HEY! Just how many 'human' stories are there anyway? Not many!!!) At first glance it would seem that DOA is a 'good' versus 'evil' plot. But that is quickly subverted. The 'good' cop is in league with the devil. And the demon is not such a bad guy after all. It turns out in the end that they are in fact mirror images of each other: positive and negative electrons that annihilate one another in a truly mind boggling finale.

Visually the film is an absolute feast! From the much mentioned opening sequence to final frame one could be satiated & satisfied with just the delicious flood of eye candy (??!! OK, perverse maybe! But 'candy' none the less!) Miike serves up.

But the film is also a feast in terms of the script & dialog writing. We are taken on a ride thru the high ways and by ways of hell the likes of which have never been seen on a movie screen before. Be afraid!! Be blown out!! But at the same time BE BRAVE & STRONG!! And take it! For this is the world we live in whether we want to admit it or not! No scene rings false! The dogie porno scene is set up more skillfully than any Hollywoood love scene. If one is capable of really listening to it, the yakuza boss's monologue as he drowns the dark angel's girlfriend in the kiddie wading pool full of her feces (will you believe I can't say 'sh*t' here!!) is truly mesmerizing. And when the cop confronts the ashes of his wife and daughter, your guts are torn out. And if you have managed to hang with Miike to the end, the finale will make you have an orgasm of shear visceral pleasure!! You will raise your fist in the air and shout "YES!!!" before you know what you are doing.

If you love movies you will approach this one with as little 'sophistication' as possible. Muster however much 'innocense' you have left and give your self over to Miike and trust him to bring you out whole (though maybe irrevocably changed) at the end. Oh my friends!! This is a ride well worth taking!!

Young Thugs: Innocent Blood (1997)

By no means Miike at his best

[3/10 · 23 January 2005]

In the last 3 months I have bought and watched 21 Miike films. I am a FAN!! I just watched this one tonight, and so far it, and FULL METAL YAKUZA are my least favorites. In general I am not a fan of movies about the trials and tribulations of 18/19 year olds, and to my mind the ones in this film were more boring than most. Only a couple of them (2 of the guys) had any real 'character' to speak of. While the girls were, for the most part, all hair and blank stares. Their lives started out 'no where' and ended 'no where' with very little in between. For a Miike film, even the cinematography was rather boring. On the other and the use of 'Western' music to try and give some 'life' to all the non-action was very well done. (Miike uses Western music to great effect in many of his films.) Which brings me to the one scene that totally transcended the rest of the film and made watching the whole thing worth the time spent. Having broken up with the least interesting of the 3 young men, one of the girls is forlornly riding a street car to the sound of flamenco guitar. The scene cuts to the bar/café where one of the other young men works as a cook. An older woman we had seen incidentally early in the film comes out from behind a curtain dressed in black sequins and rhinestones and starts to dance to the guitar music (which has continued to play), much to the amazement of the others in the bar. Her moves are OK but not great. The scene continues to cut back and froth from the girl on the street car becoming more and more despondent, to the woman dancing. Each time it cuts to the dancer her costume has become more and more authentic as does her dancing. Finally she has become totally transformed into an astonishing dancer of great power, while the young girl has become totally lost. The finale of this sequence is classic Miike!!! The whole thing was mesmerizing! But then we are dropped right back into the land of the boring. For another 30 or 40 minutes. Towards the end, Miike does throw in a moment of great fun, a kind of gloss on the American wild boys in a car theme. But that then trails off into the sappiest ending one could possibly imagine. If you want to see Miike do 'young people' and do it brilliantly then watch LEY LINES, CITY OF LOST SOULS, and BLUES HARP. These are some of his best films. Only if you are a die-hard Miike fanatic should you bother with this one.