The Way of Kitano Takeshi's Gangs

Anahi 2022-03-30 08:01:02

We can't say The Wicked is a totally underrated movie, but it's certainly a movie that has received negative or mixed reviews in the West. The first episode of the film was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the Cannes Film Festival. After its world premiere in Cannes that year, it was immediately overwhelmingly negative by the film festival's publication "Screen Daily", with a full score of 4 points, and the film's score was only 0.9 points. The lowest rated one in the main competition unit of the year. The IMDB website gave the film a score of 6.8, which is just above average. It is worth mentioning here that the bad reviews of the Cannes Film Festival. First of all, it is worth affirming the selection of the Cannes Film Festival. It takes a certain amount of wisdom and courage to choose such a genre film with Japanese characteristics to enter the main competition unit, which is usually dominated by art films. The negative comments of Western film critics on the film show the narrow and cramped vision.

As a film critic, if you lack a basic knowledge of the history of Japanese gangster films, it is very likely that you will not be able to make an objective assessment of the origin, meaning, and the value and aesthetics derived from "The Wicked". Because the research, judgment and appreciation of genre films are based on the tacit interaction between the film text and the audience, the changes, revisions, subversion, and demise on the basis of the formula all change with the change of the audience's understanding. This is a historical evolution process. It is a pity that Japanese gangster films are not like American westerns, they are not public knowledge and basic textbooks of world film history. Western film critics may be able to turn a deaf ear to Toei Renxia films, Daying's "Zatoichi" series, and Nikkei's "stateless action films", but they must not be ignorant of the Western films of John Ford and Sam Pekinfa. This is the prejudice and blind view of a certain type of film caused by cultural barriers.

Kitano Takeshi himself was a little surprised that "The Wicked" could be shortlisted in the main competition unit of Cannes. Historically, Cannes has strictly controlled the nomination of traditional genre films. Only the film itself has a great breakthrough on the basis of the genre, or the film itself has a strong author's color to reach the standard. It is in the eyes of the French that Eastwood has a full authorship, and one of his genre films will be shortlisted. Hu Jinquan's "Chivalrous Girl" is a similar example. Therefore, the nomination of "Extremely Wicked" actually represents Cannes' great affirmation of the Japanese gangster film full of long history and now extinct.

The development of genre films is always associated with changes in some social mechanism. Westerns have become the most important national type and national allegory of American films, precisely because the western frontier is the most important carrier of American value formation. In the 1960s and 1970s, the most important phenomenon in Japanese society and the Japanese film industry was the Japanese underworld and Japanese gangster films. A glance at the global underworld organizations including Italy, Hong Kong, the United States, and Russia. The most special thing about the Japanese underworld organization is that it is a legal organization in Japan. The government admits that this is the only one in the world, and it has also contributed to the prosperity and uniqueness of Japanese gangster films.

It is said that Japanese gangs first originated in the Edo period. The Tokugawa shogunate's policy of reducing the domain led to the weakening of the samurai class, which eventually led to the transformation of samurai into ronin and ranger. The emergence of casinos gradually gave rise to gangs. The golden age when Japanese gangs began to grow and develop began after the end of World War II. At that time, the Japanese government lost public power due to the failure of World War II. The police department was completely unable to dominate the overall situation under this circumstance, so the gangs followed the trend. The five-year period from 1960 to 1965 was the so-called Warring States period in the history of Japanese gangsters. In order to snatch the black market, major gang organizations entered the most brutal and violent war. It was also during this period that Japanese gangster films came into being. The iconic film was "The Theater of Life, Speeding Corner" directed by Tadashi Sawashima in 1963. In the following years, the series of "Japanese Heroes" series, "Woman Red Peony" series, "Showa Cannon Heroes" series, "Game Fight" series, and "Abashiri Fanwaidi" series brought Japanese gangster films into one wave after another. wave climax. Orthodox, Showa 38 - Showa 47 (1963-1973) was the golden heyday of Japanese gangster films. In the Japanese gangster films of this period, the mainstream value complex is chivalrous family affection, and absolute loyalty has become the only rule for Japanese gangster characters to act.

The fission occurred in 1973. This year, Shinji Fukasaku filmed the famous "Battle of No Kindness and Righteousness". This epoch-making Japanese gangster film swept away the values ​​of loyalty, filial piety and justice in the previous gangster film, and expressed the process of power struggle within the Japanese gangster organization in a highly realistic way (historically known as "recorded gangster film"), and the principle of personal interests first became a gangster character The most important rule of thumb. In terms of horizontal comparison, this is a bit like the development of American Westerns in the 1960s. After the myth of the frontier was told, professional Westerns such as Pekinfa's "Sunset and Yellow Sand" appeared that told the story of killing people for money. In 1977, the "Chief of Japan" series directed by Nakajima Sadao became the curtain call for Japanese gangster films. Since then, as a pure genre gangster film, it has withdrawn from the stage of history, and since then, the gangster film has only appeared in other types of films as a genre element. For example, the school film "Sailor Suit and Machine Gun" directed by directors such as Ami Shinji will include elements of gangster films. Later, Takashi Miike directed a large number of movies with gangster elements, but the style, narrative, and motif of the film were far from the gangster movies of the year.

With the simple review of the above historical background, it is not difficult to see that "Extreme Evil" is indeed a film that pays tribute to the "Battle of No Kindness and Righteousness" series by Shinji Fukasaku, as said by Takeshi Kitano.

Takeshi Kitano made his debut by shooting gangster films. The early "Sonata" was a movie with a story that completely took place inside the gangster. Injected into it his own unique serious thinking about life in the desert. "Big Brother", which was filmed in the United States in 2000, is more of a genre. The film constantly shows the process of gang battles and is full of differences between Eastern and Western cultures. The Japanese-style chivalrous spirit of life and death is repeatedly sung in the film.

"Extremely Wicked" is the work of Takeshi Kitano who returned to the violent underworld ten years later. The narrative law of the film is a battle for power where you come and go. The starting point of the narrative begins when the president of Kannai (played by Soichiro Kitamura) wants to snatch the territory of Muraze (played by Renji Ishibashi), and the strategy used is not very clever to sow discord, and let Chi Yuan, who used to be a cellmate with Muraze, (Kunimura Hayabusa) fight against it. The Otomo (played by Kitano Takeshi) group under Chi Yuan's team and Kimura (played by Nakano hero) of the Muraze group also began to fight. This is a movie about all beings. The important characters related to it are Ishihara (played by Ryo Kase), Mizuno (played by Shiina Kupei) of the Otomo group, Kato (played by Miura Yuka) under the chairman, and the policeman in charge of the violent group. Kataoka. The literal translation of the Japanese title of the film is "All Villains". There is indeed no morally kind person in it. There are no heroes, only villains. In particular, several leaders, President Kanai, Chi Yuan, and Murase, have no morality or charisma at all, and some are just greedy for profit. Some of the friendships of Japanese gangs in the past are also gone. Ike Yuan and Murase were originally inmates. In the first episode of "Battle of No Kindness and Righteousness", the inmates used to be shown as brave and loyal relationship who dared to rely on their lives, but in this film they are worthless. In the face of questioning, Chi Yuan even said, "The worship is just a ceremony." Kimura didn't even dare to cut his fingers. But when Otomo really apologized by cutting his fingers, he was ridiculed by the president that it was outdated, "the old-fashioned finger-cutting is useless." It is particularly worth mentioning here that Kitano plays the role of Otomo. It is the existence of this role that has injected some different vitality into this gangster film that is unique to Kitano Takeshi's thinking.

Although Otomo is also a violent villain in the film, he is morally positive. He really regarded Chi Yuan as his godfather and worked for him, but after seeing this trick, he realized that it was a life-and-death battle. The people in the gang had already seen life and death, but when he realized that the Tao did not exist, Otomo regarded this battle as a game of death that had nothing to do with morality. The moment of death is the moment of liberation of the present clarity. This is the life philosophy of Kitano Takeshi's free-spirited and open-mindedness. It is this point of view that injects a detached and objectified point of view into this highly typified gangster film. It is also under the care of Takeshi Kitano's unique life philosophy that the violence closely related to death is expressed so extreme by Takeshi Kitano. Takeshi Kitano has expressed his personal views on violence many times in his interviews over the years. He hates aesthetic violence. He believes that the essence of violence is pain. "Violence is violence. I know how bad violence is, so I don't care about how it is used, how brutal it is. Maybe when you watch the movie, you already feel that you can't bear it, but in fact, this is what I created on purpose, and I hope that The audience feels severe pain and fear, and this feeling is the essence of violence. I hate the kind of movies that make violence beautifully, and also call it the aesthetics of violence. That kind of movie is the culprit of teaching bad children.” . John Woo-esque self-sublime romantic violence, or Tarantino-esque cartoonish violence, is not to be seen in Kitano's films. The violence that broke out in an instant, extreme, and brought incomparable pain is the real violence of Kitano. In the "Extremely Wicked" series, the type of violence that Kitano outlines is also extremely cruel: electric drills cut teeth, chopsticks slammed into ears, slammed tongues to death, and baseballs continuously smashed face doors. The most surging and ruthless violence is the Mizuno who fought side by side with Otomo to the end: the head was caught by a rope and the speeding car was pulled to death. The color of this scene is the world-famous Kitano Takeshi Blue, a color that represents a pessimistic life that is falling and living toward death.

The theme and narrative mode of the second episode of the "Extremely Wicked" series is similar to the first episode, except that the initiator of the power struggle has become the policeman Kataoka. The police's mode of fighting the enemy with violence and violence also comes from its own origin. In 1987, a violent and violent protest took place between the Ichiwa Association and the Yamaguchi-gumi. At that time, the One Union planned to assassinate the newly appointed Yamaguchi Group leader Masahisa Takenaka in the Osaka area, and they used more than 20 radios. The Kansai Telecommunications Bureau called the police after discovering the situation, but the police ignored it, in order to help the Yihe Association to carry out the assassination and exchange violence for violence. However, Kataoka is not a righteous person in the film, but a wretched blackmailer. When Otomo sees the dead end, he shoots and kills Kataoka without a word. The climax of the film comes unexpectedly, but it is hearty, agitated and detached.

It can be said that "Extremely Wicked" represents Kitano Takeshi's remembrance of a genre film that has died out, but the remembrance does not mean simple memory and praise. The unconventional existence of the Japanese underworld phenomenon is a product of a specific historical condition. For the brutal and abusive phenomenon in the underworld culture, Takeshi Kitano has always been able to provide a detached and anti-institutionalized expression. The most violent and death impulses can also be the deepest life epiphanies.

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Extended Reading
  • Tyler 2022-04-23 07:05:47

    Proud of me, ashamed of you. Be proud of life and be ashamed of death.

  • Jerod 2022-04-07 09:01:06

    Double-sided Takeshi Kitano

The Outrage quotes

  • Ikemoto: H-h-hold on a minute...

    [panting]

    Ikemoto: I'll reverse the banishment.

    Ôtomo: Huh?

    Ikemoto: I'll reverse the banishment.

    Ôtomo: You banish me, then you reverse it?

    [explodes]

    Ôtomo: How many fucking tongues do you have?

    Ikemoto: Huh?

    Ôtomo: Are you deaf? How many do you have?

    Ikemoto: I've only got one.

    Ôtomo: Only one? *Two* or *three* is more like it, you fucking prick!

    Ikemoto: I'm telling you I've only got one tongue!

    Ôtomo: [a little calmer] Open your mouth.

    [louder]

    Ôtomo: Stick out your tongue!

    Ikemoto: [beat] Huh?

    Ôtomo: [barking] Stick out your tongue!

    [Ikemoto reveals reluctantly a bit of his tongue]

    Ôtomo: MORE!

    [Ikemoto does]

    Ôtomo: STICK IT OUT, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!

    [Ikemoto sticks out his entire tongue, then Otomo slams his jaw so violently that Ikemoto chokes on his own tongue; Otomo eventually kills him]

  • Ôtomo: How the fuck can you come to play here just after you banished me ? I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU !

    Ikemoto: W-wait a second...

    [he pants]

    Ikemoto: OZAWA !

    Mizuno: He's gone already, you dipshit.