Highlight on Cult: Gozu

by Andrew Jupin

It is a fact that anyone who can produce over seventy films in just about sixteen years is a very impressive artist indeed. Making a film takes money, time, skill and even more money. Some directors spend years, even decades, making what might in fact be the only film they ever complete. For instance, director John Stainton poured his blood, sweat, tears and time into his The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, and it is the only feature length film of his to ever be completed.

Think about it.

All hilarious material aside, making films is a time consuming effort and when you think about just how prolific Japanese cult director, Takashi Miike has been in his sixteen year career, it is startling. As we speak he has two films either in production or post-production with still another two in development. Over the years Miike spent lots of time working in the direct-to-video market in Japan which is what made him into the fire-breathing film machine he is today. Direct-to-video is a do or don’t type of business where you see directors come and go, titles get released one day and just as quickly disappear the next. Miike has enjoyed success in this market as well as theatrical releasing. His 1999 film, Audition was what gained him acclaim in America and his popularity worldwide has been growing ever since.

The great thing about Miike’s films is that a lot of them lure you into a false sense of security. They make you think that you are entering one world, when in fact you are entering a world that appears like a normal world and then without notice, slaps you across the face and pulls you under. Under where, you ask? Well, I suppose that is for Miike to decide.

In 2003 he released a film so disturbing, so twisted, so out-there that I found it difficult to not look away at times. I like to consider myself at the top of the pile; the most desensitized of the desensitized when it comes to material on film and off, but when I screened this gem for the first time, I was floored. This film is Gozu or Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu.

Gozu starts off with a seemingly re-hashed story. Minami (Hideki Sone), a Yakuza soldier, is instructed by his boss (Renji Ishibashi) to execute a fellow gang member (Sho Aikawa) who Minami sees as a brother. It would appear that his brother, Ozaki, is losing his marbles and is starting to make the Yakuza family look bad in the face of all the other crime families. So the Boss instructs Minami to take Ozaki on a road trip and execute him somewhere along the way. We learn that at one point Ozaki had saved Minami’s life and there is no way he can kill his fellow Yakuza brother. But as to not displease the Boss, Minami agrees to the job. So the two soldiers embark on the road trip with Minami having no intention of actually going through with killing his life-saving brother. Along the way, Ozaki is accidentally killed and Minami somehow manages to lose the body. As he starts his search for recently deceased Ozaki, Minami checks into a strange roadside motel and from there…well let’s just say that “descent into madness” is far too innocent a phrase. If your interest isn’t peaked just yet, let me use one word to try and sell it: Milk.

I have to say that as disgusted and shocked as I was by Gozu, I can’t help being totally and utterly impressed. Miike is a master storyteller who knows just when to input shock scene A and how long to hold off until shock scene B. Everything is timed perfectly down to the last second. Sitting through Gozu is like having a mentalist hypnotize you; at first you are skeptical, but you agree to the act. You are then lulled into a fuzzy state of consciousness until even the most shocking of sights or sounds will not make you get up or leave. The truth is you’re stuck. You can’t turn it off. You need to know how it ends or else questions will plague you for the rest of your days. I can assure you that by the time the credits roll on Gozu you won’t really have any definitive answers, but you’ll certainly be less of a person for watching the whole film.

And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.