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GOZU
8/10
Gokudo
kyofu dai-gekijo - Gozu : Japan 2003 : MIIKE Takashi
: 127 mins
When veteran
Tokyo yakuza Ozaki (Sho Aikawa) shows distinct signs of severe mental
instability, his boss (Ryo Isiiibashi) decides to have him 'taken care
of.' The task is assigned to inexperienced twentysomething Minami (Hideki
Sone). As they drive to the distant city of Nagoya a car-accident apparently
kills Ozaki, saving the nervy Minami from having to carry out the 'hit'
himself. But, soon after arriving in Nagoya, the corpse goes missing.
Confronted by a bewildering array of weird/hostile locals (whose sinister/banal
dialogue is worthy of Beckett), Minami pieces together evidence that suggests
Ozaki is actually alive and well somewhere in the city.
Realising
he's already some way out of his depth, he finds accommodation in a 'love
hotel' run by a constantly-lactating old woman (Keiko Tomita) and her
taciturn brother (Harumi Sone). Minami's mood isn't helped by a bizarre
dream in which he's visited - and licked - by a Minotaur-like figure (human
body, bovine from the neck up) named Gozu (i.e. "cow-head").
The next day, an attractive young woman (Kimika Yoshino) introduces herself
as Ozaki to the nonplussed Minami, and the pair head back to Tokyo and
a confrontation with the latter's boss - who proves to have some oddball
traits of his own...
It's easily
the most intriguing question in world cinema right now: just how
does Takashi Miike do it? We generally use the word "prolific"
for a director like Woody Allen, who manages to churn out a new movie
every twelve months or so. But Miike is in another league altogether,
now averaging a steady six or seven feature-length titles a year: not
since the coke-fuelled days of Rainer Werner Fassbinder has a 'proper'
film-maker even approached this level of activity (Andrei Tarkovsky made
fewer films in his whole career than Miike notched up in 2001 alone).
 Of
course, it helps that Miike never actually writes a script - Gozu is
credited to Sakichi Sato, who played 'House of Blue Leaves' functionary
Charlie Brown in Kill Bill
and was also responsible for Miike's notorious 2001 gore-fest Ichi
the Killer. And the director - who claims never to refuse any
cinematic project offered - prefers to style himself as an "arranger
of his films rather than their author" (according to Tom Mes's invaluable
book Agitator - The Cinema of Takashi Miike).
Even so, regardless
of whose name appears in the screenplay credit, Miike's films are unmistakeable
- and not just because of their oft-repeated images and tropes (the Innkeeper's
excessive lactation, for example, harks squarely back to the similarly-afflicted
Mother from 2001 gross-out Visitor
Q.) Do the scriptwriters deliberately come up with 'Miike-type
material'? Does Miike himself make so many alterations and amendations
that, despite the actual credit, we should really see him as at least
the co-author of his film's screenplays? And where do all of these ideas
come from?
Even at a
slightly daunting 127 minutes, Gozu finds Miike on top form. This
is one of the funniest and most exhilaratingly entertaining films for
years, with the set-piece highlights sufficient in number and imagination
to compensate for the plot's occasional dragginess and repetitions. Miike
makes so many films it's hard to imagine he has much time to watch anyone
else's, but there's evidence here that he's seen (and ingested) the work
of David Lynch and David Cronenberg: propelled by Koji Endo's terrific
score, Gozu leads the viewer into world which looks fairly
unremarkable, but where anything-goes nightmare-logic prevails at every
turn. This is 21st-century cinema in the great old surrealist tradition:
radical, innovative, transgressive, challenging and experimental, but
never less than totally accessible. And Miike, somehow, makes it all look
so effortless.
26th May,
2004
(seen 23rd May : National Museum of Film, etc, Bradford : one-off mini-festival
show, 'Fantastic
Films Weekend'. With thanks to Tony Earnshaw. In memoriam Ellis Davies.)
by Neil
Young
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