The Living Dead
Now Playing: Gozu (2003) & Shaun of the Dead (2004)
The setup of Gozu, the latest from Japanese shock-auteur Takashi Miike to hit western arthouses, sounds like a page from the Tarantino book of oddball gangster stories. Ozaki (Sho Aikawa), a senior Yakuza in the Azamawari crew, is meeting with the boss (Renji Ishibashi), when he becomes convinced that a Chihuahua is actually a trained assassin. When Ozaki bludgeons the dog to death, the boss becomes convinced that he is insane, and orders young Yakuza Minami (Hideki Sone) to transport Ozaki to a dump in the hinterland town of Nagoya, where he will be disposed of. Troubled by his conscience (Ozaki, whom Minami calls "Big Brother", saved his life in an unspecified incident from the past) but confronted with certain evidence of Ozaki's insanity, Minami undertakes the mission. Things do not go exactly as planned. This all occurs within the first ten minutes of the film, and after that all similarities to quirky American gangster films ends abruptly.

Shortly after arriving in Nagoya, Ozaki is apparently killed in an accident, but when Minami goes into a cafe to report to the boss, the body disappears. The bulk of the film is comprised of Minami's Orpheus-like quest for the body, as he encounters increasingly bizarre townspeople, including a prodigiously lactating innkeeper and her spirit-channeling brother, a cross-dressing cook, a cow-headed demon, and Minami's erstwhile guide through this netherworld, Nose (Shohei Hino), a strange bald man who explains the white splotches on his face as the result a pigmentation disorder despite the fact that it's clearly pancake makeup. Is he dead, dreaming, transported into some alternate dimension? If you're looking for a concrete answer, you won't be rewarded.

I've seen Gozu compared to the surreal grotesquery of David Lynch, but it shares little of Lynch's sensibilities apart from the use of dream logic when constructing the plot. Lynch's recent movies seem to be intricate puzzles that become more impenetrable the more the viewer attempts to unpack them. Gozu's audience is not invited to unravel the mystery, and attempts to do so are not rewarded. Lynch represents cinematic Surrealism where Gozu firmly belongs to the Theater of the Absurd. Many of the movie's scenes could have been lifted directly from Beckett or Ionesco, such as a local who spends his days plugging a pay phone with coins only to repeat the same terse weather report to his unseen counterpart; or the American wife of a liquor store owner, whose conversation in halting Japanese with Minami is revealed to have been written on cue cards taped to the wall of the store. As in Beckett's work, circular conversations, irrational actions, and inability for human beings to connect through language are all central themes. The incredibly weird yet happy ending (not to give too much away) also makes gruesomely explicit the themes of circularity and reincarnation.

The movie is deliberately paced, and features none of the flashy camera moves of his previous work. The bulk of the film takes place not in the neon-suffused urban landscape of Tokyo, but in daylight in a decidedly non-urban setting (Miike does a great job of capturing the surreal sense of timelessness in small towns). The gross-out factor is fairly tame compared to the rest of the Miike oeuvre (although there are a few disturbing images that will stick with you long after the ending). This, for me, confirmed that Miike is a filmmaker of true substance. As in his other films, the camerawork and compositions are first-rate, and he gets very believable performances from his actors-finding the truth in a particular scene, no matter how absurd or seemingly disconnected from real life. The fact that he can make a movie so bizarre and yet artistically satisfying is a testament to his abilities as a filmmaker. If you're not a Miike fan, Gozu won't change your mind. If you're primarily attracted to his gonzo ultraviolence, this probably won't be your cup of tea, either. But if you're a fan of Beckett, Lynch, Ken Russell, Bunuel, or movies that swallow you in the experience without spelling out their meaning, you'll want to give Gozu a shot. I just hope Miike won't be tempted to come to Hollywood to direct the latest remake of a Japanese horror film. His uniquely disturbed vision wouldn't flourish here, I fear, and he'd probably be assassinated by the Directors' Guild after making three quality films in a year.


I don't have too much to say about Shaun of the Dead, except that it's probably the best zombie movie since Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead (to which Shaun pays explicit and frequent homage). Not a spoof, but rather a tribute that stands on its own, Shaun doesn't require you to be a rabid fan of the zombie genre, though there are of course many in-jokes to be savored if you are. The plot is simple: late twenties slacker Shaun (Simon Pegg) is dumped by his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) for his steadfast refusal to get a life-or rather a life like she sees in her upwardly mobile friends, David and Dianne (Dylan Moran and The Office's Lucy Davis). Shaun lives in stoner squalor with his best mate Ed (Nick Frost), whose ambitions don't reach past smoking pot, playing video games, and heading down the pub to quaff some pints. As if this isn't bad enough, the citizens of London have been turned into flesh-eating zombies by a crash-landed satellite (presumably carrying the same disease that first generated the zombies in Romero's Night of the Living Dead). The central joke (and I don't think it's unique to London) of the first half of the film is that the zombies don't really seem that much different from the tuned-out non-zombified residents of the city. In one great scene, shot in one take, the camera tracks a hung-over Shaun as he walks through his neighborhood to the corner shop, oblivious to the signs of undead invasion because they are indistinguishable from everyday urban life: a car with a smashed windshield, zoned-out kids, a shambling panhandler. Even after all zombie hell breaks loose, Shaun is primarily concerned with getting his girlfriend back. It's a sweet, very funny, sometimes even scary experience. Some of the humor depends on a working knowledge of British reserve (A character doesn't reveal that she has been gnawed by a zombie because she "didn't want to be a bother"; Shaun's mother refers to zombie attackers as "a bit bitey"), but you don't have to have been weaned on BBC programs on public television to appreciate it. The heart of the movie is Shaun, who is shaken from his sleepwalk through life only by the threat of zombies, and Ed, who really doesn't want anything more from life but drags his friends down with him. They share an easy chemistry that adds a human element to what might have been just a clever genre exercise. The filmmakers obviously love the source material, and the film is clearly a labor of love for all involved. That gets many filmmakers only so far, however. Pegg and director Edgar Wright have gone one better: a film that caters to the genre fans but is satisfying for movie lovers of all persuasions. Well done, lads.