SusannahSUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO
August 20th 2008 10:39
SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (2007)
Starring: Hideaki Ito, Kaori Momoi, Quentin Tarantino.
Written by Masa Nakamura and Takashi Miike.
Directed by Takashi Miike.
A Japanese dish that typically involves thinly-sliced beef, a popular genre of American film and a mythic Spanish gunslinger. These three things make up the peculiar title of this blood-spattered Eastern/Western from filmmaker Takashi Miike.
The Western is an unusual genre: it is commonly considered a deeply American form of storytelling yet the most enduring of those films took archetypes, themes and even entire narratives from the Samurai epics of Akira Kurosawa. The genre was then famously transplanted to Italy where the seminal works of Sergio Leone were produced. Fittingly, Sukiyaki Western Django takes the core narrative from Yojimbo and Fistful of Dollars (and nudie fantasy “epic” the Warrior and the Sorceress but that’s not really relevant) and creates a deranged mishmash of those two film’s aesthetics while at the same time delivering the package in a manner that is uniquely Miike’s.
Sukiyaki begins with a sequence that seems like a hyperactive homage to the legendary wordless opening from Once Upon a Time in the West. A windmill rears against a (literally) painted sky. A snake coils in the dust. A man lies dead from a single gunshot to the head. Quentin Tarantino shoots a flying eagle and slices an egg from a dead serpent’s belly. Yes, Tarantino. Trust him to be the first living person we see. He is presently confronted by a small posse of Japanese gunslingers. Two things hit home immediately. One: this film is going to be a bit nuts; two: everyone is speaking English. With the exception of Tarantino (whose role as uber-shootist cum mentor Ringo is brief but memorable) all the actors are Japanese and from their fractured intonations and stylised pronunciation I would hazard that most of them learned English phonetically. This gives the film an even more off-kilter quality, although it also makes a large portion of the dialogue hard to follow – the festival guide promised English subtitles but none were provided. After the surreal intro the film leaves the painted sets behind and moves into the narrative proper.
It is the 1100s in an isolated town named Yuda. Two rival gangs reign over the few townspeople that remain – helpfully the gangs display their membership by painting themselves in their gang colours: red in one corner, white in the other. There is talk of a treasure that the townspeople have hidden somewhere (this is in the wake of a goldrush) and it is for this that the two gangs stay, locked in a tense feud. Into the town rides a nameless stranger. Within seconds of his arrival he has proven himself a phenomenal shootist and is much sought after by both gangs. Instead he follows Ruriko: a black-clad and sharp-tongued woman who cares for a mute boy born of a “red” man (brutally killed by the leader of the reds) and a “white” woman (now serving the leader of the white gang in a bid for revenge against her husband’s murderer).
You know how this goes: the nameless gunslinger then proceeds to play off the two gangs against each other until it all culminates in a bloody confrontation. However, there are a number of fascinating twists along the way as well as a surfeit of memorable characters. The leader of the whites is compelling and coldly brilliant, superb with a sword and gifted with inhuman reflexes. The leader of the reds is comically brutish with a fondness for Shakespeare, human shields and…er…armed with a crotch-mounted automatic weapon for the climax. There’s a hooker who may or may not have a heart of gold but definitely has a tragic back-story and grows red-and-white roses to symbolise a union she can no longer imagine. There’s the mute boy with wounded eyes and dual-coloured braids in his hair, the trumpet-playing mystic, the split-personality sheriff, and many more besides. Best of all is Ruriko, whose acidic humour is consistently delightful and who turns out to be a whole lot more than she first appears. Oddly, I found the nameless gunslinger one of the less compelling characters.
The town itself is a masterpiece of set design. It looks to be rural Japan, cloaked in fog, dust and (for the climax) snow. Both cultures collide here…does that temple have saloon doors? There’s even a barroom sequence: in the place of Dietrich-style Cabaret or honky-tonk piano we are treated to a disturbing Butoh-esque dance that culminates with the dancer regurgitating a string of bells. The soundtrack smokes: blending Eastern and Western instrumentation (and even didgeridoo) into Morricone-esque desert soundscapes. It even boasts a J-Rock take on that perennial favourite - the cheesy cowboy theme song (apparently a reworking of Luis Bacalov’s piece from Sergio Corbucci’s Django). All together now: “DjangOOOH!”
Throughout Miike’s visceral obsessions are apparent. The violence is stylised but still shocking brutal. The comedy couldn’t be blacker. The cinematography is sometimes kinetic, sometimes lyrical. It is a strange, jumbled, nightmare of a film: surreal and hilarious and oddly affecting. It is not the most demented western that I have seen (that would be El Topo) but it is the only one to feature a grotesquely-aged Tarantino rattling around in a clockwork wheelchair. And with its gleeful pillaging of Seventies film-styles (plus a whiff of exploitation flick about it) Sukiyaki Western Django would make a fitting third addition to the Grindhouse bill. Best of all, here is an Eastern film that would be pointless to remake for Western audiences.
Starring: Hideaki Ito, Kaori Momoi, Quentin Tarantino.
Written by Masa Nakamura and Takashi Miike.
Directed by Takashi Miike.
A Japanese dish that typically involves thinly-sliced beef, a popular genre of American film and a mythic Spanish gunslinger. These three things make up the peculiar title of this blood-spattered Eastern/Western from filmmaker Takashi Miike.
The Western is an unusual genre: it is commonly considered a deeply American form of storytelling yet the most enduring of those films took archetypes, themes and even entire narratives from the Samurai epics of Akira Kurosawa. The genre was then famously transplanted to Italy where the seminal works of Sergio Leone were produced. Fittingly, Sukiyaki Western Django takes the core narrative from Yojimbo and Fistful of Dollars (and nudie fantasy “epic” the Warrior and the Sorceress but that’s not really relevant) and creates a deranged mishmash of those two film’s aesthetics while at the same time delivering the package in a manner that is uniquely Miike’s.
Sukiyaki begins with a sequence that seems like a hyperactive homage to the legendary wordless opening from Once Upon a Time in the West. A windmill rears against a (literally) painted sky. A snake coils in the dust. A man lies dead from a single gunshot to the head. Quentin Tarantino shoots a flying eagle and slices an egg from a dead serpent’s belly. Yes, Tarantino. Trust him to be the first living person we see. He is presently confronted by a small posse of Japanese gunslingers. Two things hit home immediately. One: this film is going to be a bit nuts; two: everyone is speaking English. With the exception of Tarantino (whose role as uber-shootist cum mentor Ringo is brief but memorable) all the actors are Japanese and from their fractured intonations and stylised pronunciation I would hazard that most of them learned English phonetically. This gives the film an even more off-kilter quality, although it also makes a large portion of the dialogue hard to follow – the festival guide promised English subtitles but none were provided. After the surreal intro the film leaves the painted sets behind and moves into the narrative proper.
It is the 1100s in an isolated town named Yuda. Two rival gangs reign over the few townspeople that remain – helpfully the gangs display their membership by painting themselves in their gang colours: red in one corner, white in the other. There is talk of a treasure that the townspeople have hidden somewhere (this is in the wake of a goldrush) and it is for this that the two gangs stay, locked in a tense feud. Into the town rides a nameless stranger. Within seconds of his arrival he has proven himself a phenomenal shootist and is much sought after by both gangs. Instead he follows Ruriko: a black-clad and sharp-tongued woman who cares for a mute boy born of a “red” man (brutally killed by the leader of the reds) and a “white” woman (now serving the leader of the white gang in a bid for revenge against her husband’s murderer).
You know how this goes: the nameless gunslinger then proceeds to play off the two gangs against each other until it all culminates in a bloody confrontation. However, there are a number of fascinating twists along the way as well as a surfeit of memorable characters. The leader of the whites is compelling and coldly brilliant, superb with a sword and gifted with inhuman reflexes. The leader of the reds is comically brutish with a fondness for Shakespeare, human shields and…er…armed with a crotch-mounted automatic weapon for the climax. There’s a hooker who may or may not have a heart of gold but definitely has a tragic back-story and grows red-and-white roses to symbolise a union she can no longer imagine. There’s the mute boy with wounded eyes and dual-coloured braids in his hair, the trumpet-playing mystic, the split-personality sheriff, and many more besides. Best of all is Ruriko, whose acidic humour is consistently delightful and who turns out to be a whole lot more than she first appears. Oddly, I found the nameless gunslinger one of the less compelling characters.
The town itself is a masterpiece of set design. It looks to be rural Japan, cloaked in fog, dust and (for the climax) snow. Both cultures collide here…does that temple have saloon doors? There’s even a barroom sequence: in the place of Dietrich-style Cabaret or honky-tonk piano we are treated to a disturbing Butoh-esque dance that culminates with the dancer regurgitating a string of bells. The soundtrack smokes: blending Eastern and Western instrumentation (and even didgeridoo) into Morricone-esque desert soundscapes. It even boasts a J-Rock take on that perennial favourite - the cheesy cowboy theme song (apparently a reworking of Luis Bacalov’s piece from Sergio Corbucci’s Django). All together now: “DjangOOOH!”
Throughout Miike’s visceral obsessions are apparent. The violence is stylised but still shocking brutal. The comedy couldn’t be blacker. The cinematography is sometimes kinetic, sometimes lyrical. It is a strange, jumbled, nightmare of a film: surreal and hilarious and oddly affecting. It is not the most demented western that I have seen (that would be El Topo) but it is the only one to feature a grotesquely-aged Tarantino rattling around in a clockwork wheelchair. And with its gleeful pillaging of Seventies film-styles (plus a whiff of exploitation flick about it) Sukiyaki Western Django would make a fitting third addition to the Grindhouse bill. Best of all, here is an Eastern film that would be pointless to remake for Western audiences.
| 82 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak