DVD: Gokud?ɬ¥ ky?ɬ¥fu dai-gekij?ɬ¥: Gozu (2003)
Gozu. Hmm. The only other Takashi Miike film that I’ve seen is ?É‚Äùdishon (Audition) (1999), and they are both pretty screwed up.
Miike cites David Lynch as one of his influences, and I can totally see it - what’s interesting is that I don’t like Lynch, but so far I do like Miike. Anyway, I read the essay on the DVD after watching the film, and there was no way that I would have been able to identify all of the references he makes throughout it. For example, I’d never actually heard the term yakuza, but now I know that I’ve seen a bunch of these such Japanese gangster movies. I ‘m also not familiar with the many Buddhist references that appeared throughout the film.
It was fun to watch. Creepy, but not scary. It seemed to be very tongue-in-cheek in regards to genre and style. It’s always nice to see a director having fun while making a movie. One of the first pieces of dialogue is a character saying something like, “Don’t take anything that I’m going to say seriously.” I think that was Miike telling us, through one of his characters: to sit back and relax, and allow him to have his fun.
