The title of Austin Film Society's upcoming Takashi Miike retrospective, "Bloodbath and Beyond," is an apt one. The prolific Japanese director's films feature enough arterial blood spray to drown the bride from "Kill Bill" with a few geysers to spare. But the shock doesn't stop there.
Miike's films also shatter every known sexual taboo, then invent a few new ones. For example, his family drama "Visitor Q" (admittedly, his most perverse film) takes necrophilia, incest and rape to unprecedented extremes with documentary-style realism.
With so much shock-value on the surface, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that Miike is one of the most talented and interesting working directors in the world. Yes, "Visitor Q" is wall-to-wall with disturbing images, but it also works as a scathing satire of reality television and as a surprisingly poetic retelling of Peir Paolo Pasolini's "Theorem," a film about a dysfunctional family that finds redemption through a mysterious stranger - and it's surprisingly funny.
While Miike is generally associated with excess of both content and style, critics overlook the fact that his films also contain moments of quiet contemplation and characterization. In fact, Miike has demonstrated many times that he knows when to show restraint as well, or better, than any of his contemporaries.
Take the first film of the series, "Audition," a suspense film about a widower who holds a phony audition in hopes of finding a new wife. The first hour of the film unfolds with a sentimental, lighthearted tone that veers between family drama and romantic comedy. Here, Miike carries the film using only subtle humor and human drama. Then, in a single scene, he pulls the rug out from under the audience and shatters all expectations that the first half created. The film continues to move slowly, playing with the perceptions of the audience and the protagonist, until it reaches an intense, terrifying climax that caused some audience members to throw up. Despite the disturbing climax, the fact remains that Miike uses suspense and tension well enough in "Audition" to make even seasoned veterans such as Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanksi blush.
Also, many of Miike's films contain subtext that explores issues of family, gender and identity. Professor Peter Seigenthaler, who teaches the radio-television-film class "Japanese New Wave," notes that these themes hark back to classic Japanese cinema.
"Violence and other bodily tricks aside, his themes are really quite conventional. That is, in 'Visitor Q' and in 'Audition,' threats to the nuclear family and the difficulty of building and maintaining families are of paramount importance," Seiganthaler said. "It's a theme as old as Japanese film, and Miike, at his best, deals with it in fresh and insightful ways, representing the life of 1990s and 21st-century Japan quite well."
Miike works tirelessly in Japan as, essentially, a "gun for hire." He takes almost every project offered to him, then makes it within the budget and schedule confines. However, Miike never returns the project to the studio without putting his own mark on it, sometimes completely transforming the source material. For example, when he was commissioned to remake a Korean drama about a family struggling to open an inn, he turned it into a fast-paced horror/musical/comedy complete with claymation sequences and a heartfelt tone. The film, "Happiness of the Katukuris," is some of Miike's most light-hearted and accessible work.
His rapid-fire filmmaking approach has resulted in a surplus of 60 films to his credit over the last 10 years. It also means that he works largely within genres, often favoring the "yakuza film," the Japanese equivalent of the gangster film.
However, even in these movies, Miike breaks down conventions and mixes other genres. For example, "Gozu" starts as a standard tale of the planned assassination of a Yakuza boss, then morphs into a surreal, psycho-sexual character study complete with lactating hotel owners, botched séances and a demon with a cow's head. "Ichi the Killer" tells a story of two rival gangs from the point of view of a Sadomasochistic crime boss whose desire to fight a rival gang's super-assassin stems purely from sexual desire. More than any other film, "Ichi the Killer" calls into question Miike's unflinching depictions of violence. While the tone parallels that of a comic book, the film depicts torture and abuse so graphically that it had to be cut to even see release in the UK.
"Clearly, violence is a staple of recent and current film-making, and Miike's films get noticed for it," Seigenthaler said. "He walks a narrow line, though, between self-indulgence and genuine expressiveness."
And so debate continues about whether Miike's trademark excess undermines the artistic merit of his films. Regardless of which side you come out on, the fact remains that no one in the world is making films even remotely similar to Miike's.
The retrospective begins tonight with "Audition," then continues for the next month with 14 films shown every Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown. Visit www.austinfilm.org for more information.
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