Review of Gozu (2003) by Danni G — 29 Jun 2008

Gozu is one of director Takashi Miike's first significant breaks with traditional approaches to narrative. The film uses a dream like structure reminiscent of David Lynch, however Miike takes this form and turns it on one of which he is more familiar Yakuza stories. Miike has made more Japanese gangster films than just about anyone and he knows the inns and outs of the savage patriarchal world that is Yakuza. Gozu is like a waking Yakuza nightmare, which like his earlier "Ichi The Killer" mines the inverts the Yakuza genre and shows us the some of the psycho-sexual dimensions of repression which are wrapped up with the violence.

This is a story about a low level Yakuza sent to escort his mentally ailing mentor, to an "elimination factory". They get lost impossibly and then it's own surreal misadventure after the other, that range from hilarious to disturbing often within the same scene. Somehow the mentor dies, and his corpse dissappears, only to reappear now dressed in a womens skin. Here the stories themes of homosexual repression become a little more clear, our hero does not just want to find his mentor, he just plain "wants" his mentor, but given he is part of a very masculine gangster culture he must transform his mentor into a women(this won't make sense at first, not until the final scene anyway). This is driven home in the films final scene where after finally consummating their relationship, Minami (our hero) finds he can't quite dislodge himself from inside of his mentor, who then crawls out of the womens skin vis a vis the birth canal in his fully grown adult form (as Udo Kier did in Lars Von Treir's The Kingdom series). The woman is then placed in the bathtub and revitalized and the three live happily ever after, Minami now having both his sexual components necessary for their relationship, both the male and the female.

Undoubtably there is "trippy shit" in this movie(not as much as Izo, Great Yokai War, or Visitor Q), as alot of the images follow a similar thread of psycho-sexual imagery, milk, nipples, whipps, suits made of human skin, etc. Gozu is definitely a great movie to watch if your looking for something abstract, funny, and bizzare, but would also make a fine queer or gender studies piece. It's also Takashi Miike at his most twin fisted conceptually and aesthetically. Not for everyone.