Takashi Miike’s Black Society Trilogy was probably one of the weirder choices for my “series project” in the end. I think it’s the only set I’ve been watching that’s linked thematically rather than as a narrative of some kind. This isn’t a bad thing of course, but it’s a little nudge against the comfortable familiarity that generally comes with all the others. I was a big fan of the first, a little less of the second—so let’s talk about the third.
Ryuichi (Kazuki Kitamura) is a restless youth in rural Japan, his family of Chinese descent and mocked since they were children because of that. He wants to leave, and eventually convinces his friends to join him in a trip to the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. Everyone changes their mind at the last minute except the energetic Chang (Tomorowo Taguchi)—and his younger brother Shunrei (Michisuke Kashiwaya) who was not invited but shows up anyway. Once in town, they’re duped and mugged by a prostitute (Dan Li) and meet Barbie (Samuel Pop Aning), a Ghanese youth selling toluene. He sets them up with Ikeda (Show Aikawa) and they start to sell as well, hoping to make enough money to escape the country entirely.
So we’ve got Taguchi and Aikawa again, but since they’re yet again playing totally unrelated roles, we are indeed in another world yet again. The themes are picked up immediately with a deliberately-aged piece of film indicating presumably Ryuichi and Shunrei in their youth being harassed for their ancestry. As ever, the experience of being Japanese but not “Japanese” is the inspiration for what follows. If this were to be subtle, it’s followed with the first “present day” scene, where we watch a passport processor inform someone standing in front of them (roughly the camera, but more on this in a bit) that they cannot receive one while on probation, and then asking if this person is “actually” even Japanese. We pull back to Ryuichi and watch as he fumbles with a large potted plant before smashing it in the processor’s face.
It’s an economic way of introducing themes of the film and some of the film’s language. That shot that opens the present day is interesting, because it’s almost from the perspective of the character being harangued (Ryuichi in this case), but it’s actually sitting at a level to frame the speaker in the center of the frame and keep it there, with him actually looking up to the eyes of whoever he’s speaking to. This sort of shot is used a few times: sometimes it’s to allow the background to move and build out more of what’s going on even as we focus on someone (such as Shunrei studying), other times it’s like that early shot, just showing us the face of a speaker to the exclusion of all else. Overhead and distant, dispassionate views are given for moments like that potted plant, while others are hand-held and close up to characters as they move, not so much intimate as just “in the thick of it”.
This is another of Miike’s films that’s not really in the spirit of what he became famous for in the U.S. in the early part of this century. There’s violence to be sure, and sex, and there’s some black humour, but it’s a little closer to a straight drama like Rainy Dog was. The balance of the group of Anita (Dan Li’s prostitute), Ryuichi, Chang, and Shunrei builds out something rather peculiar, as their energies are all so very different, as are their motivations. Ryuichi is our lead protagonist, and interesting for this: writer Ichiro Ryu has given us a near-stoic lead, and Kitamura plays him with arching eyebrows and placid looks much of the time, a complete counter to Chang’s frenetic sycophancy, his brother’s shy tagging along, and Anita’s bitter defensiveness.
I couldn’t shake the feeling by the end that this fit into a familiar space with a lot of more “standard” arthouse fare, with some “magical realism” here and there, some off-brand (well, on-brand for Miike, but off-brand for the majority) black humour, and a pathos-laden narrative following a group of characters in a miserable state societally who are looking for a chance at something different. I was left thinking that all that curiosity about Miike’s films that came from the same place as most in the U.S. 20 years ago had led me down a wonderful path that didn’t match nearly as well with that first perception of his work. If I weren’t already open to looking at anything he’s made, I certainly would be now.
Meandering Milieu 