Review of Gozu (2003) by Dale J — 26 Feb 2009

Takashi Miike has the tendency to take a well known genre (in this case, the Yakuza genre) and contorting it in unimaginable ways. Case-in-point would be Gozu. What starts out as an almost-normal Yakuza flick, Miike pulls a 180 on us and then drops us in one of the most bizarre towns of all time.

Ozaki is a Yakuza who is slowly loosing his sanity. This can be seen when he unloads his fury on an "Yakuza attack dog" and throws it violently against a window. Poor chihuahua. The head of the Yakuza tells Ozaki's underling, Minami, to take Ozaki to a desolate town to dispose of him. Things almost go according to plan, before they get "attacked" by a car that is trained to attack Yakuza. Ozaki eventually goes missing and it's up to Minami to find his mentor and finish the deed.

Gozu is a truly bizarre film, even by Miike standards. Then again, since he is a freelance director, he has the power to do these things. The usual Miike theme can be found here, that being the "fish out of water" scenario. Minami is lost in a city where the inhabitants constantly say, "You're not from Nagoya, are you?" We meet a man who has a patch of white skin on his face. The lack of pigmentation serves as a metaphor for the split-personality he goes through. However, the big issue in Gozu would be the homosexual tendencies we see from Minami towards his mentor. You could go as far as to say that he sees Minami as a father, since Yakuza is family. Interesting, since when a mother figure is shown (the lactating old woman from the inn) he completely rejects her and "most" of her hospitality. This theme can be seen in Miike's previous sado-masochistic film, Ichi the Killer. There is a lot of religious imagery here, as the man with the cow head that drips milk, and the road that suddenly drops off into a river (Styx perhaps?). Reincarnation is also heavy here, as Ozaki comes back as a woman, and then proceeds to come back again as himself, but this time out of the woman's vagina. Gozu is a very surreal journey and a nice departure from what one might expect from Miike.