Tempura, misogyny and torture, oh my!

As promised, here’s the first installment in what I have opted to fondly name “Goreweek ’09″: I review some of the most notorious films out there for your amusement.

Luckily, I’ve been blessed with something of an iron stomach.  The first proper “horror” film I can remember seeing was Spawn, although this wasn’t my first actual “gore” film.  That was Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.  I remember feeling violently queasy after watching the infamous disembowling scene.  This was at 12 years old.  Since then my tastes expanded to the Evil Dead series and several obscure Japanese films.  Thanks, Dad.

Today I’ll be reviewing Takashi Miike’s infamous “Ichi the Killer”.  So sit back, relax and enjoy.

Although the film is indeed called Ichi the Killer (Ichi being the Japanese name for the number 1), the central character is a sado-masochistic Yakuza enforcer called Kakihara who is looking for his boss’s killer who just happens to be the eponymous Ichi.

I won’t spoil the whole plot for you, but here’s a little stab by stab lowdown as to just how viewing pans out for the viewer.

0.05 : A woman has had the shit beaten out of her and the film’s title has just formed out of a puddle of come.  Delightful.

0.30: Can I smell Tempura?

TEMPURA?! WHERE?!

The film then descends into an orgy of violence, torture, misogyny and some really crazy fucking plot twists.  believe it or not, the gore isn’t that bad.  It’s campy, over the top, silly.  And that’s the way it should be.  I just can’t say that I feel all that comfortable with the portrayl of women in the film.  One woman gets raped and beaten, then killed.  Another one says she fantasizes about being raped… whatever.  I’m split about the movie.  It disgusts and compells me; because the scary thing is that Miike actually does know that he’s fucking with a lot of conventions.

If you’re a gore fan, I’d watch it, but take it with a pinch of salt.  Good film though.

Style over Substance : The Movie Epidemic

It seems that in the modern cinema culture, fans are constantly valuing the content of a movie, I.E. how much gore and sexuality is present in the film, rather than the story itself. It came as no surprise to me therefore, when Film4 dubbed films like Hostel, The Devils Rejects, House of 1000 Corpses and various others as “Splatter Porn”.

So why do modern audiences seem more concerned with the amount of bloody fun than the content and quality of the actual film itself? One could rightly say it’s a direct product of modern capitalist society. Let us first of all look at the most obvious reason. The majority of mainstream audiences today are within the 13-20something age boundary. They’re the iGeneration (to quote MC Lars), and they come to the cinema not to think, but to simply be entertained. Therefore, they do no desire to have a complex, gripping storyline that forces the viewer to make connections in his/her head. They rely completely on the visual speech that the camera provides. Any conversation that does go on is simplified, for example “We’ve got to get out of here” or “Oh god! He’s coming!”.
One could argue that the cinema has become the proverbial bedroom for modern society. Behind these closed double doors we all gather to lose all common sense and decency, while laughing at a man getting his head chopped off in a dark room by a homicidal maniac. Our minds go to sleep, tucked in by images of the onslaught. People die, we laugh.

Do these violent films therefore desensitize us to violence itself? Many critics of such movies would say that the answer to that question is Yes, however I disagree. When we are watching a film, be it a slasher flick or a war movie, the screen serves as a constant reminder that we are safe from the violence. We know that it is not real, and that we are protected, because after all, this homicidal loon is really only an actor in a suit!
Regardless of the safety issues, I think in a way, if films that depict constant, bloody (some would say unnecessary) violence in a way that makes us amused instead of repulsed, there may come a time when we are faced with such a situation, where someone is trying to kill us; and we try to do what our good old friends the Hero did in their movie-which may lead to disastrous consequences.