Blood feast! The enduring allure of gore

NEW YORK -- Glazed in tattoos and amniotic fluid, Sho Aikawa's head and shoulders twist luridly out from between the legs of actress Kimika Yoshino.

The scene, which occurs towards the end of "Gozu," a Japanese film being released Aug. 13, is startling rather than sexual: The middle-aged actor is being born, or, rather, born again. It's also more funny than uncomfortable, but by then the viewer will have sat through a nonstop, nearly two-hour onslaught of bodily fluids and other absurdist, eye-popping imagery engineered by Japan's foremost visual prankster, Takashi Miike.

Not surprisingly, "Gozu" is not for everyone. The director, who gained international attention for "Audition," "Ichi the Killer," and "Dead or Alive," is known for his weirdness, which often crosses the line into the offensive and grotesque. "Gozu," translated as "cow's head," takes the cake.

The movie is a rough approximation of a yakuza ghost story. At its narrative center is Minami, a junior yakuza (Japanese gangster) and 20-something virgin who has wandered into a life of crime. Minami is sent on a mission: to eliminate Ozaki, an older yakuza who has come unhinged. But Ozaki (played by Aikawa) is Minami's mentor, and the younger man feels acutely guilty.

The job is a done deal. Minami, played with wide-eyed innocence by Miike veteran Hideki Sone, inadvertently kills Ozaki in a freak accident. The body disappears, and in the ensuing investigation Minami encounters cross-dressing bartenders, a lactating innkeeper, a man with a half-painted face, and a stunning girl inhabited by Ozaki's soul. In other words: the usual mix of Miike misfits.

The titular cow's head is a soothsayer of sorts, and the character, played by film critic Tokitoshi Shiota (also a Miike veteran), comes to Minami in a dream.

"The Japanese are a little strange when it comes to religion," says the director, speaking in New York through a translator. "Wedding ceremonies are Shintoist and deaths Buddhist. In one of these traditions, there is a character known as Gozu who exists between evil and the human world. He's the assistant of evil."

For Miike to call something "strange" is surely a compliment. "Gozu" producer Kana Koido, speaking by phone from Japan, explains his snowballing appeal. "Japanese audiences expect something different from him," she says. "Miike-san used to be the director that only young kids knew. Now even my mother knows him."

"Gozu" is a Dali-esque dreamscape, replete with gushing bodily fluids, soup ladles stuck in unfortunate locations, laundered yakuza body "suits," and other heavy-handed visual schlock. In explanation, Miike offers only a riddle: "If you were a child and rode on a bike to a place you've never been, you'd feel like it's real but not really real. `Gozu' is like that. You go to a place you've never been but you don't have to make any sense as to why or how you are there." Wiry and creased, with blond patches in dark hair and inscrutably mirrored sunglasses, Miike looks easily like a figment of his own fertile mind. "Gozu" began as a straight-to-DVD production with what the director describes as an "unbelievably small budget."

"No one told me what to do," he says. "The budget was so small that no one cared. I could be creative."

Creativity landed the film at Cannes International Film Festival last May, as an entry in the Director's Fortnight sidebar. It didn't win, but the selection helped launch the film theatrically.

Those familiar with "Ichi the Killer" will recognize the shock-humor polarity of writer Sakichi Sato, whom Miike picked to pen "Gozu." The producers originally approached Miike with a different yakuza story. But he wasn't interested.

"I said, `Can I make any yakuza movie I want?' " he recalls. They said yes, and he hired Sato, giving the writer a mere week to write a brand new script. "I didn't want to give Sakichi time to reflect and second-guess himself," he explains.

Not that Miike stuck much to the script anyhow. During the three-week shoot, actors were given only their characters' names and occupations. They improvised the dialogue and pivotal scenes, including Ozaki's memorable rebirth.

"Sho Aikawa is not only famous for being an actor, he is a well-known father of five," says Miike with a laugh. "So he knows about deliveries. When kids come out, they twist themselves out, like he does in the scene."

And thus birth joins blood and death in Miike's extended repertoire of gags. The director's acuity with images is not sheer happenstance: They, rather than story or character, are his starting point. "There are always a couple of images -- a face, a landscape, or action -- in my mind," he says. "I try to link the images, make them connect, to form the story." "Gozu" is an extreme example, and the random, meandering parade of unmentionables will be either a delightful shock -- or a turnoff.

None of this is unusual, although "Gozu" does represent a departure from the Miike oeuvre that is gaining cult recognition in the United States. "Audition," from 2000, for example, portrayed a nightmare vision of romance gone bad. Although it offered alternative realities, the movie, unlike "Gozu," was comparatively linear and grounded, as was "The Happiness of the Katakuris," a wacky musical about a family of innkeepers whose customers keep dropping dead.

Miike, who began as an assistant director, hadn't intended to helm anything. In the mid-1990s, someone approached him with a television script. Since then, he's never been without a film. In the past four years, he's completed 27. Koido, who has worked on films in Japan and Hollywood, says this is partly due to the absence of contractual formalities in Japan. Still, Miike stands alone.

There's also no denying Miike's yen for yakuza. "I don't intentionally set out to make mobster movies, but people write about them, and I don't exclude them from my repertoire," he says, adding that "the Japanese really admire -- even envy -- yakuza, because they're free from society's restrictions." The innocent Minami bears striking similarities to Ichi the killer, another virgin who's chosen a life of crime. These characters act out Miike's own search for a place in the world. The director calls it "homework."

If Miike movies tend to star innocent men, women -- often marginalized as prostitutes, stalkers, and victims of rape, abuse, and murder -- don't fare as well. Few who have seen "Audition" can forget actress Eihi Shiina pulling her weapon of choice, piano wire, taut between sleek black gloves.

The attitude emanates from awe, not misogyny, Miike insists. "Women are so mysterious," he says. "So in my movies it's more of a questioning: Who are they, what kind of creatures do they resemble?"

Koido has a different take. "With women, he's so over the top that it does not really bother me," she says. "It's like watching a cartoon."

The director's agrarian roots may explain his propensity for carnal frankness. His grandfather was a hunter and his grandmother a fisherwoman. "I have a really good idea of how food ends up on the table," he says, a bare trace of swagger piercing his modest manner. "It gives me more feeling about the meaning of life. Nowadays people don't have that appreciation. I have a special view of the world." He turns pensive. "People have said my films are too violent. But I always think of violence as the real thing, unlike movie violence," he says. "The real world is far more violent. Violence in movies is kind of cute."

Asked to name his own favorite movie, he doesn't hesitate. "Dawn of the Dead. The remake."

Jean Tang can be reached at
jeandelinstang@yahoo.com.