Review: Villain (2010)

Villain

Directed by Sang-Il Lee

Starring: Eri Fukatsu, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Akira Emoto, Hikari Mitsushima, Masuo Keijo, Kirin Kiki, Masaki Okada

Grade: B

 

Japanese director Sang-Il Lee has seemingly decided to follow in the footsteps of his Korean peers with new murky crime thriller, "Villain." The film, about an unhinged young man's approach to sexual relationships, emulates the recent works of Bong Joon-ho and Lee Chang-dong - "Mother" and "Poetry" respectively - in so much as it details the impact of crime on the families of said criminals and where the blame behind their deeds resides. As a part of recent attempts to address the social and contextual factors attributed to spawning criminality, one would tentatively describe "Villain" as part of a cinematic trend, and foremost an indication that Asian cinema is providing alternatively rich perspectives on perceived societal evils.

When we first spy petrolhead Shimizu (Tsumabuki) he’s loitering at a gas station and looking thoroughly bored with existence. While he doesn’t loom as a particularly dangerous figure, his presence intimidates through what appears to be an ambivalent disassociation with his surroundings. This young man is an emotionless wildcard. And as we follow him on his journey to meet popular college girl Yoshino (Mitsushima) his thorough lack of belief in either himself or anyone else quickly comes to the fore. The night does not go well for Shimizu when Yoshino spurns his advances and takes off into the sunset with her local crush Masuo, and the discovery of her dead body the following morning raises serious questions. Is Shimizu the prime suspect in her murder?

The ensuing conflicts are separated between Shimizu confronting his involvement in Yoshino’s final hours, and the grief-stricken parents of the girl trying to gain perspective on how and why she died. When Shimizu is hunted down by police he flees home, aided-and-abetted by Mitsuyo (Fukatsu), a girl he met just days earlier in a random internet meeting. As his situation becomes increasingly precarious he and Mitsuyo develop a strong attachment, which leads them to go into hiding from the law and the world.

"Villain" achieves much emotional heft through its construction of Shimizu and Mitsuyo, two central characters with an inherently awkward lack of social skills and self-worth. Theirs is a connection founded upon solitude and necessity, both exhibiting impulsive and wildly off-kilter relationship ethics through having so far lived modest, sheltered lives. You can gauge a significant sense of backstory from even their first five minutes together, as they murmur sheepishly in a car with little sense of how to build a dynamic or engage beyond pleasantries and eventual physical gratification. Founded upon this partnership “Villain” succeeds as an interconnected would-be Shakespearian tragedy, very much a fresh take on the emotive aggression of youth but possessed with the bitter melancholia of classic works.

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Review: Pigs and Battleships (1961)

Pigs and Battleships
Directed by Shohei Imamura
Starring: Hiroyuki Nagato, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Masao Mishima
Grade: A-

Written for Subtitled Online:


It might not come as a surprise to reveal that the pigs in Shohei Imamura’s curiously-titled “Pigs and Battleships” are as metaphoric as they are literal, their use as a ruse for shadier business a more-than-scathing attack on the invasion of Americanised ideology within Japanese culture. The country’s well-documented tense relationship with World War II enemy America was an ultimately destructive affair, culminating in the now-infamous atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Made in 1961, “Pigs and Battleships” depicts a period of eerie aftermath and cultural rebirth within Japanese society, and its adoption of a way-of-life which cultivates corruption, greed, and disloyalty.

As U.S. G.I. soldiers stop off at the Japanese harbour town where young, plucky Yakuza member Kinta (Nagato) resides, local women are plied with booze and pimped out by the authorities. While Kinta remains in charge of the local pork farming business, this is largely a cover for the power-political schemes of the town’s mobsters, who are vying with rival gangs and trying to keep officials sweet. Difficulties arise when the corpse of a local businessman is washed up on the shore, forcing the gang to deal with investigations into his disappearance and manage conflict within their organisation.

Despite Kinta’s enthusiasm for his peers his girlfriend Haruko (Yoshimura) struggles to deal with the dangerous nature of the world he has entered into, and encourages him to get a stable, straight profession. This disagreement causes a fierce rift between the couple, forcing them to escape their relationship in extreme ways, and casting into doubt whether this is the right place for them to begin their life together. Kinta himself learns that being part of the Yakuza has its distinct downfalls as well as its benefits, as many of his colleagues are keen to see him sacrificed for the greater good of the unit.

From the outset Imamura presents a glamourised impression of this town, which, with its cultural hybridism and willingness to embrace commerce, feels like it should be on a border between two states somewhere. There’s an element of Welles’ “Touch of Evil” in the way brass accompaniment and sweltering, smoky streets dominate the films’ opening, demonstrative of the thriving success of capitalism. Kinta’s pride in an early scene stresses the self-sufficient and morally-shy philosophies of a community reliant upon mutual exploitation, and a crisis of identity which reflects the director’s commentary on the disarray of the country’s hierarchal workings. These residents are governed by foreign money, and he does little to hide the characters’ motivation to aspire towards American values, caught up in a cycle of self-preservation and armed with a thirst to succeed.

“Pigs and Battleships” balances the crime and romance within the narrative supremely and shrewdly manoeuvres the journey of its characters to align with grander political concerns. Partly due to the off-kilter, occasionally infantile performance of leading man Nagato, Kinta isn’t always so relatable as a protagonist, but although he doesn’t encounter many overt threats in the film we still care about his tempestuous attachment to the feisty Haruko. Jitsuko Yoshimura, as a woman going out of her mind with worry and disillusionment at the people around her, is such a fascinating Actress, and in a similar way to Janet Leigh in “Touch of Evil” captivates by being the victim that never learns to keep quiet, die down, or give in. At some point in the midst of the film Haruko becomes its emotional centre, her fragility mirrored in the film’s sharp decline towards hysteria and unrest. As she grows to be consumed by resentment and unworthiness “Pigs and Battleships” is best served from her perspective, its second half a more sprawling story of Noir cinema’s easy dismantling of perceived strengths and friendships. A subplot involving Yakuza kingpin Sakiyama also stresses the feigned sense of grandeur that comes with the luxury of power.

“Pigs and Battleships” admittedly piles on the metaphors too flagrantly (particularly towards the end) in a finale that echoes the best and worst of Kubrick, opting for cavalry band-style music to accompany catastrophe in the way that Mickey Mouse Club booms out in 1987’s “Full Metal Jacket.” It’s a minor foible since the script exhibits such a breadth of allure – from intricate melodrama to fiery romance to ironic genre subversion – that the aesthetics going on around it merely form another layer to the avalanche. In aping a Noir structure Imamura approaches the common issue of small-town trappings with authorial verve, offering a spectrum of his setting which veers between appealing mystery and strenuous squalor.

While many of the characters on display here are essentially on a hiding to nothing, the same cannot be said for this film’s ambitious creator. “Pigs and Battleships” landed in Japanese cinemas at the time when the French New Wave and Italian Neo-realist movements were burgeoning, and Imamura’s study of Nationalism and its implication on society bears its own unique stamp, too. Occasionally overcooked, it’s nevertheless an astounding product of impassioned, effective, and thoughtful filmmaking, and finds its own pocket of time and relevance within this auteur’s carefully drawn-out filmography.

A Review of Confessions of a Dog (Takahashi, 2009)

Confessions of a Dog (2009)

Directed by Gen Takahashi

Starring: Shun Sugata, Harumi Inoue, Jun’ichi Kawamoto, Kunihiko Ida

Grade: B -

Written for Subtitled Online:

The DVD cover of "Confessions of a Dog" is emblazoned with the words, “banned in Japan,” a false claim which nevertheless mirrors the film’s struggle for justice. The political motivation behind Director Gen Takahashi’s barely-allegorical story of corruption within the Japanese police force is evident in this brazen marketing ploy, and certainly in its scathing depiction of bureaucracy. This three-hour-plus indictment of a state’s entire justice system spans several years, and is based upon the investigative work of Yu Terasawa, a journalist who has since campaigned against pro-police propaganda and for amendment to the way that the service is overseen.

The themes of the film are mainly chronicled through Takeda (Sugata), who begins as a lowly neighbourhood officer and eventually rises to a powerful Detective position in the force, with the help of a tyrannical Chief Inspector. Despite some early scepticism Takeda becomes a mentee of the Inspector and heavily involved in his questionable mode of operation, which entails of physical intimidation, bribes, and appeasing gangsters who serve him best. He also adopts the untouchable attitude which many of the officers in the film demonstrate, an arrogance that extends to bully-tactics, drugs, infidelity, and a general distancing of his familial relationships, content to ply his wife and child with corrupt money instead of giving them emotional affection.

Increasingly frustrated with the police’s conditional attitude towards crime, renegade Kusama (Kawamoto) seeks to uncover their ways and expose them publicly, first happening upon a photo which demonstrates their laissez-faire attitude towards drugs, and then filming a fake gun-siege designed to enhance the force’s reputation. He and photographer Chiyoko attempt to use Chiyoko’s links with a prominent newspaper to force the issue into the public sphere, but later resort to more desperate measures in the heart of the city’s criminal underworld.

As a social commentary Confessions is incredibly single-minded in its view of the Japanese police, setting up situations designed to flaunt their exploitation of power. In the first scene, a young cop collars a teenage girl for not being at college, in the hopes of eventually seducing her, only to be prevented from doing so by an aghast Takeda. The scene is repeated later in a different form, as an inebriated citizen is cruelly cajoled into sub-consciously committing a crime he ordinarily wouldn’t. They are juxtaposed as the first scene of two acts, as the film is split either side of an invisible intermission that simply reads “Five years later.”

Even if the flash-forward narrative device reads as a mechanism of stretching the story to create a bigger, somewhat falsified level of scope, the decision to make the second half of the film feel more of a product of the first is definitely a wise one. There’s an element of Godfather-style ethics to Confessions; that protecting the brethren of policemen, judges, and officials will allow this breed of law enforcement to be preserved. Takahashi’s success comes from emulating that film’s insight into mafia reverence of trust, and the volatile barriers between inclusivity and exclusivity that are bound by psychological impulse. In the end, however, the film has more in common with Lumet’s Serpico in the way that Takeda ultimately suffers for realising the extent of damage his profession is having on his city’s infrastructure - just as Al Pacino’s cop did in the 1973 classic. Visually the film also bears more Lumet traits, assuredly dense without being so off-putting, and visually thoughtful in its confined, dour depiction of seedy illegality. Its final, arresting scene captures this influence more than any other, capping its assessment of the devolved nature of state protection with a harrowingly regressive image of a man’s final fall from grace.

The main issue with Confessions is that it reiterates this point without altering the dynamic between the characters, so we don’t necessarily see things shifting for ourselves – just a “before” and “after”. It consistently spurns opportunities to create new dilemmas for its characters, or chart their descent into profligates in fresher terms. We aren’t encouraged enough to delve deeper into the lives of college dropouts burgeoning into power, or explore their moral consciences — and even when we are, a particularly severe act of violence by previously naïve local beat cop Kunii comes as such a radical about-turn that it is difficult to take seriously. The instantaneous indoctrination of these men expose the too-freely-integrated motivations of the project, crudely manifested in some of its characterisation. It reads as much too eager to initiate a rebel-rousing rally cry, intent on making us sit up and listen by focusing predominantly on indefensible action and general injustice.

Kusama’s strand of the narrative is easier to digest, and his relationship with Chiyoko gets much more convincing in the film’s second half. Ironically, Confessions succeeds more in its portrayal of outsiders to the police force than the members of this insular racket, considerably less definite about these people and therefore less preachy or overwrought. The film owes a great deal of its intermittent success as an internal affairs drama to Shun Sugata, particularly compelling scenery-chewer Takeda in the second half of the film, and without being as cartoonish an orchestrator of villainy as his Inspector predecessor.

"Confessions of a Dog" is a mammoth, meaty slice of crime drama, which is too long for what it essentially contributes. It bears a vehemently sure sense of direction that carries it through its sketchier moments, but requires more intrigue, variation, and a bigger network of characters to truly make the most of the running time. Projects like this are probably reserved for the term “ambitious failure” but as long as people see it, one doubts Takahashi will care. The primary purpose of Confessions is to educate, and it definitely does that.

"Confessions of a Dog" is being screened at the ICA Cinema in London on Wednesday 16th February, and is released on DVD on March 14.