Review of Gozu (2003) by Dsfsdfdsf S — 14 Aug 2012
A black comedy, a horror flick, a yakuza yarn gone wrong, a twisted freudian romance, but also really none of the above. You can't really pigeonhole an artistic statement this personal into some marketable niche.
Sexual repression and gender seem to be the film's major thematic interests, but even if viewed in a superficial "WTF japan" sense (sadly, this is how most people approach this director), there is much to offer in terms of pure visual communication; there's an inscrutable nostalgia to Miike's vision of a rural town where something is profoundly wrong. One of the "purest" films I've ever seen in how intuitively it uses the medium without spoonfeeding.
Disturbingly honest. It's not scary in the sense of other horror movies, it's scary in how it taps into a queasy sense of childhood adventure--like being lost in some unfamiliar place--and then starts distorting the lens. As surreal as it gets, though, the humanity of the characters keeps us grounded and caring about what happens.
This review of Gozu (2003) was written by Dsfsdfdsf S on 14 Aug 2012.
Gozu has generally received positive reviews.
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