Wicked City
[Yoshiaki Kawajiri, 1987]:
The representation
of women in this film is contentious, to say the least. As with certain other films directed by Kawajiri,
such as the analogous Demon City Shinjuku (1988), and perhaps his best known
work, the violent and vivid samurai fantasy Ninja Scroll (1993), the female
characters here tend to fall into two distinct types. Although strong-minded and independent enough
in their own way, they exist, either as pawns to be placed in perilous situations
that arise for no other reason than to facilitate an act of heroism from the archetypal
male lead, or they become helpless victims that are subjected to lengthy and
gratuitous scenes of sexual sadism and violent abuse. While the practicalities of this particular
example might seem tame when compared to a more notorious title, like the
infamous Urotsukidōji series (1987-1989), or even a live-action feature, such
as the Takashi Miike directed Ichi the Killer (2001) - both of which seem to objectify
sexual violence and degradation to a pornographic degree - the air of sexism
still detracts from the other areas of the film, which - in their design and initial
direction - attempt to reach beyond the obvious levels of adolescent
titillation to instead explore a rich and deeply layered mythology that is
fascinating throughout.
That Wicked
City begins with a scene of male/female seduction that very quickly descends
into a physical nightmare of psychosexual dread (as the central character finds
himself terrorised by a literal "black widow"; a spider-woman with a
snapping vagina that opens up like a ferocious Venus Flytrap) will do little to
curb the previously discussed issues regarding the representation of women (and
female sexuality) as viewed through the male gaze. However, in this instance the sequence is somewhat
necessary (even justifiable) in establishing the conception of the film, and the
basic idea of something "otherworldly", or extraordinary, lurking
within the realms of the mundane. To
illustrate, Kawajiri begins the scene as if it were just another routine romantic
liaison between two attractive office workers meeting for drinks at the close
of an exhausting day. However, the subsequent
revelation of a lifeless hand protruding from one of the washroom cubicles as
the woman seductively applies makeup, tips the audience off to a potential threat. As the couple make their way back to her place
- passions enflamed, as if the author is bringing to life a storyboard from an
imaginary Adrian Lyne directed soft-core thriller - Kawajiri lets the tension
and anticipation simmer and swell. The
seduction and love-making seem too easy, almost staged; the effortlessness of
the endeavour at odds with the film's mutating colour palettes, or the growing pulse
of an ominous synthesizer on the soundtrack.
When the
revelation finally occurs the effect is as disarming, frightening and
bewildering for the audience as it is for the central character. Our expectation or anticipation for violence
- for the female to reveal her true intentions, as a charlatan, or worse - is far
exceeded by the transformation from attractive young woman into monstrous
beast. This moment, at first juvenile
and misogynistic in sub-text, represents the sensibility of the film in
miniature. It's an example of Kawajiri
dismantling the walls of reality; confronting his audience with the existence
of a "Black World" that exists hidden within the walls of our own
cities - in the spaces between spaces - like a twisted mirror to our own seemingly
polite and cosmopolitan milieu. From
here, Kawajiri will use such images to occasionally punctuate the progression
of a supernatural police procedural that predates both The X-Files (1993-2002)
and Men in Black (1997), using just enough violence, titillation and surrealism
to create a lasting feeling of terror and uncertainty. It would be easy enough to dismiss the film
for the treatment of its female characters - a personal concern in many
Japanese films of this period - but to do so would be to overlook the film's
finer points, from Kawajiri's always impeccable direction, to the rich, mythological world that his writers create.
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Yojimbo [Akira
Kurosawa, 1961]:
The
amalgamation of intense political drama, stunning samurai set-pieces and
explosions of physical slapstick, creates - through the progression of scenes -
the feeling of a film at war with its own ambitions; the drama, too often
interrupted by a fight or skirmish; a scene of conflict, too often cut short by
an expulsion of boisterous humour; the punch-line, too often lost amid the
political intrigues that define the life in this rural setting. Draped in the influences of the Hollywood
western (and the work of John Ford in particular), the film seems characterised
by an overall crisis of identity; an unevenness, as if Kurosawa and his
collaborators were in a way "pitting" the various genres against one
another; allying themselves, initially, with the iconography of the European
art film (black & white cinematography, tracking shots, cinemascope
compositions, long silences; a general feeling of emotional detachment, or
alienation) only to then sell out or betray their new associate by joining
forces with the rough physicality of a traditionally "blue-collar" American
genre (with its bumbling old drunks, clownish villains and cowards fleeing
battles like children throwing fits).
Of course this, as a creative proposal, is also an
extension of the main character's own role in the ensuing narrative; this story
of a wandering rōnin, Sanjuro Kuwabatake, who flits between the two rival gangs
that have occupied the fringes of a village; displacing its citizens and
generally disrupting the flow of life.
While Sanjuro moves between the two sides in an effort to set both factions
off against each other, the filmmakers likewise cross back and forth between
serious scenes, driven by strong political power struggles and elements of
actual history, with sillier or more exaggerated sequences of coarse violence
and over-the-top physical comedy. This
creates a war, not just between the characters on-screen, but between the expectations of the audience left with no alternative but to embrace the film and its often
staggering emotional shifts.
Nonetheless, there are images here that manage to transcend this tonal
divide and that capture the eccentricity of the film and its often peculiar or
incongruous concoction of influences and ideas.
For instance, the near-iconic image of the dog, retreating from the
aftermath of battle with a human hand in its mouth is, in a single gesture,
able to convey the insanity of war in all of its stark, satirical absurdities,
while also providing a more serious comment on the harsh realities of life
during the time of the film's period setting.
____________________________________________________
Wes Craven's New Nightmare [Wes Craven, 1994]:
Anyone kind enough to have browsed the pages of this blog for
more than thirty seconds will already have noticed a particular theme or
interest that permeates a great many of my notes and observations. It's a fondness for works that are
self-aware; that acknowledge the relationship between the audience, the
material and those that create it, and that use this particular approach to
inform a basic level of commentary, if not critique. I have no idea where this interest comes from,
or how it began, but it's something that I've become much more self-conscious about
since the beginning of the "key films" series, as I tend to return to
this same (limited) critical theory so often now that I can only imagine it
inspires much eye-rolling from the unknown reader, and perhaps even some occasional
jeers. I've tried to escape from it,
even choosing not to write about a
particular film - Nicolas Winding Refn's Fear X (2003) - because there was no other
way to adequately approach the subject matter beyond the film's clear emphasis
on voyeurism and the role of the central character as a surrogate for the
viewing audience investigating the images on-screen.
Once again, I'm faced with a film that is so intrinsically
self-aware and preoccupied with dismantling the line between fiction and
reality that such critical insights become unavoidable, if not genuinely necessary. The practicalities of Wes Craven's New
Nightmare - the name of the director in the title establishing, upfront, a
sense of authorship and intent, is already an obvious sign of self-awareness,
or self-reflection - relate very clearly to the notion of the "fourth wall"
and in taking a representation of evil that exists on the page (and eventually,
on the screen) and bringing that evil out, into the "real world" - or
into some fabricated Hollywood facsimile - in order to question the role of the
horror movie in depicting this evil, and indeed the responsibilities of those
that create it. In the original A
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the badly disfigured form of a murdered child
killer, Fred (later Feddy) Krueger, was confined to the world of dreams;
haunting the thoughts and fears of a generation of suburban youngsters directly
related to the unsavoury circumstances of his initial demise. This, as a concept to base a movie on, was pure
genius, with Craven understanding that what movies are, traditionally speaking,
is a representation of a kind of dream-state; an unconscious space where the
viewer remains passive, witnessing images both pleasant and disturbing, with no
real physical recourse to alter or interfere with the narrative, as presented.
In later instalments, Freddy became something else. He transformed from a figure intended to
represent the unspoken evil that haunts children and young adolescents (the
traditional "bogeyman" archetype) into everything from a symbol of
homosexual panic, to the fear of the adult world (with its adult
responsibilities), before eventually become a genuine post-modern media
personality, too recognisable to be truly terrifying, too self-aware, as a legitimate
pop-cultural icon, to instil fear. With
this New Nightmare, Craven is essentially bringing his evil back down to earth;
reinforcing it by illustrating the power of Krueger as something no longer
bound by the perimeter of the silver screen but able to transcend the
boundaries of a constructed fiction. In
one sequence, his outstretched hand adorned with razorblade fingers reaches
out, almost three-dimensionally, over the Los Angeles skyline, visualising the
idea of Freddy not just as meta-textual but metaphysical. If movies are able to enter our subconscious
- their images, scenes, stories and characters staying with us long after the
film has ended - what better way for the evil of Freddy Kruger to retain his
grasp on the unconscious minds of his teenage victims? It's a chilling thought...
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