Xev,
Fine, it unsettled my tummy. Especially after several Sapporo, alcohol makes me sensitive.
Oh. There were unsettling scenes, to be sure, but what I meant was that this was not the only way it makes you think. It was a study in disparity between humans. How people can, on the outside, actually seem siimilar but on the inside be completely different.
Mostly the difference lies in Kakihara and Ichi as I've noted. Both are killers. And yet they kill hor completely different reasons.
Take note of the first murder. The murder of the boss. The cronies wait out in the van. They talk about how they don't even really do anything nowadays except clean up after Ichi. Then they go inside and their are intestines and blood everywhere. What kind of a monster did this? is the thought that comes to mind. At this moment he is the quintessential killer. Mysterious and open. Only later when you see that he is a whining little sot do you realize what kind of killer would do that. You can almost hear the echoes of his tears as he cut the boss down to size.
Poor Ichi. So downtrodden.
But, when the movie begins on a proper course and you are introduced to Kakihara, now you see what it is that you paid to see. A killer. A stereotypical loose cannon. In love with pain and violence. You can't help but imagine Ichi in terms of this Kakihara.
And then. When you meet him. It's almost a disappointment.
Familiar with Freud? Ichi has learned to project his desire to harm onto others - he wants to rape the girl in his implanted memory, he wants to be a 'bully', he wants to kill, but he 'represses' that. He pushes all of those things onto the others.
Exactly. He kills with his weakness.
And Jiji is his psychotherapist? Reminds me of Cabal. Somewhat.
Christ, why do you people here all think alike? It's from all that inter-net-fucking I swear.
We are one. Join us.
Kakihara is a true masochist. He appreciates the aesthetics of pain, not just some stupid psycho-sexual fantasy (wheras a sadist is all about the psycho-drama aspect of it) (compared to Ichi)
That's why Kakihara is so feared. There's nothing he won't do to himself, thus there is nothing he won't do to others. But it's also why he has to die.
Exactly. But, I don't know if I'd call him a true masochist as he also likes inflicting pain on others. He enjoys it.
See. This is the heart of the matter between Ichi and Kakihara, isn't it? Ichi is in great pain when he kills. Kakihara is enjoying it immensely. Shouldn't a true masochist be one who will take the punishment on all levels? Neither Ichi nor Kakihara are pure sadist or masochist. Ichi suffers too much to be a true sadist and Kakihara enjoys it too much to be a true masochist. Maybe if they were cut in half and sewn together they could somehow be made into two pure people. Sadist. Masochist.
He had sex with her, thus he can track the guy down from the smell of his come.
Yeah. I got that, just thought it was kinda stupid. Like I said, it's probably an inside Japanese joke of some sort. Demonism or maybe a Saturday Morning Cum-sniffing cartoon for the kiddies.
That part and the part where he suddenly knows that his brother is dead were disappointments to me. They were the only moments of... I was going to say spiritualism, but that's not right... supernatural? No... Not... real. There were some farfetched things in the movie, sure, but these two things forced a suspension of disbelief that was too far. I wasn't prepared to do so. It made the tenuous threads of plot shake and threaten to come crashing down.
I find it somewhat interesting that the brothers were enmeshed in both elements of the mystical moments. I have the feeling that there is a layer of symbolism at work that we, as westerners, are just not seeing.
Quit calling women 'whores', you sound like a nigger.
She was a whore, wasn't she? You prefer prostitute then? Whatever, tomatoes... tomahtoes. Same fuckin' thing.
Ichi was being beaten up because he 'barfed all over one of our girls' and had no money to pay the hooker.
Ahh. Must have missed that line. I thought he was getting beat up by loan sharks...
(So, you prefer them to be called hookers instead of whores then? Is this less distasteful to you? Why?)
That was Karen. Kakihara rejected her because she was a poseur. She wasn't capable of cruelty on her own, but she wanted to vicariously take part in it. So she tried to seduce Ichi and be his woman. But she was weak and had to die.
Ah. Ok. I knew that she was the guy with Kakihara earlier. The one that slipped back and forth between english and Japanese but I didn't realize that she was the same one who was yanking on that guys cheek and later disappointed Kakihara by not putting her all into her beating.
Tell me. Which scene unsettled you more. The one where the
hooker was being punched in the face by her pimp or the one where the
hooker had her nipples cut off?
The thing is that both of those scenes were later turned comical. The first when Ichi tells her not to worry and that he'll beat her up from now on. Then she freaks out on him and tries to take a baseball bat to him (funny that she'd never use that bat on her pimp) and then he slices her throat and the comical moment where the blood is spraying from her neck and she looks so bewildered by it all. Fucking hilarious.
And the second when Jiro decided to try his experiment on ripping off arms. Hmm. I guess that was later... Well, I guess it got funny when the failed cop started beating on her after the rest left to get the pimp. Reminds me of that scene in Fargo where Buscemi comes in and the woman is dead. He asks his partner wtf and he looks around and says, "Meh. She started screaming and stuff." (Heh. Which brings to mind the next scene where the guy decides to kill Buscemi with his axe but on the way out the door he's putting on his Elmer Fudd hat. Don't know why I find that so comical...)
I've looked for Audition. No luck. I have found several other Takashi Miike films online, but not that particular one. Maybe I'll find it eventually. Probably will.
The Happiness of the Katakuris seems interesting. It's a musical. Musical hack and slash.
Here's a review:
http://www.theoneliner.com/film120.html
