1st International film since the blog: Sukiyaki Western Django [2007]

Movie: Sukiyaki Western Django
Director: Takashi Miike

*Sigh*  I've never dreaded writing a blog post more than this one. I'm not going to review it. I mean I have thoughts about this film but I'm not at all equiped to truly give this movie and this director any of my thoughts.

I had to do so much research to understand what it was I supposed to understand from this film. I thought that the issue was that I've only seen like two works by by Japanese directors. I've seen no Akira Kirousawa films [I can hear people yelling at me about this] and I haven't seen [or read] Memoirs of a Geisha. Then I thought it was the fact that I hadn't seen enough by Asian directors in general. Then I thought that I hadn't see enough by Takashi Miike himself.
You have to know so much history to be able to understand where this film is coming from.

This story is a remake of a 1966 "spaghetti western" film Django. The first thing I learned from this film is what a "speghetti western" was.

"Between 1960 and 1975, European film production companies made nearly 600 Westerns. Critics either blasted or ignored these films, and because most of them were financed by Italian companies, they called them  Spaghetti Westerns. Fans of the genre embraced the term which is now lovingly used to label any Western made and financed by Continental filmmakers. " http://www.wildeast.net/spaghettiwestern.htm

According to IMDB Django is about "a coffin-dragging gunslinger [who] enters a town caught between two feuding factions, the KKK and a gang of Mexican Bandits, and is caught up in a struggle against them." Miike takes this story and he adds Henry VI The War of the Roses on top of this.

The series of Henry VI plays revolve around the War of the Roses which lasted from 1455 to 1485.The war was fought between two branches of the Plantagenet family, the Houses of Lancaster and York. The War of the Roses were named after the emblems of the parties, the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster.                                           http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-king-henry-vi-part-2.htm

So basically. Man [wearining black] comes into town where there is a fued between a white and red clan over the gold in Nevada. They both want this guy to join their group to help fight the other. He says no. The main change in this film is that he makes all of the cast Japanese and has them speak in english. Many people just dispise this about the film. I LOVE IT. There is a long history of mocking asian accents and after WWII there is a long history of mocking Japanese people specifically so I like that they are speaking english no matter how much pain they have on their faces while they do that. Also Westerns have a very interesting and in all honesty deeply hilarious form of the English language that makes it completely easy to mock.

What i hated about the film was this really FORCED symbolism about white and red. It was interesting the first time but after awhile it was like omg I know I know I KNOW. 

Gender
Now I the first time I watched it , even though I recognized if only slighly that he was mocking Westernes, I didn't like the Red White divide. I know it's common for the US and it's true to Westerns but can quote un quote Red People not always be associated with the suffering of "white" people and and "white" women? Good God. This movie has two female characters, one named Akira who is  destroyed by all of the men in the movie but the only character that is at all punished for her suffering [ie. suffers a bit] is the "red" man. Miike from my reading gets called out a lot for his issues with women. Now I've only seen one films and in THIS film The other female character Akira's mother in law Bloody Benten dies at the end, and her awesomeness is down played by the fact that she [a long time ago] had, had sex with the only white male in the film. He slaps her and he yells at her [i'm down playing it]. Oh and that white man .... none other than Quentin Tarintino. Now Miike's women is something I can't talk about cuz I haven't seen enough of his films but if your interested....




read this
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc51.2009/Imprint-Miike/index.html
[I'm not going to comment ] 

So. In conclusion, in order to like this film you have to know so much about where Miike is coming from to be able to understand it. That makes finding an audience for this film very small. I feel only he really understands what this film was trying to accomplish. However I don't feel like there was enough in it for me to really want to learn about it. I read about it because I wanted to not hate it and hate myself for seeing it. There is something wrong with that.