Sukiyaki Western Django
September 10, 2008
A Western Heads East
There may be no director working on the world cinema stage today as interesting as Japanese auteur Takashi Miike. Granted his work isn’t for everyone. In films like Audition and Ichi The Killer, Miike pushes his vision to the extreme, almost challenging the audience to be offended. It’s no wonder that two of his biggest cheerleaders are Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill) and Eli Roth (Hostel), two American directors known for pushing the boundaries themselves.
In fact, Tarantino makes a cameo appearance in Miike’s latest effort, Sukiyaki Western Django, as Piringo, a gunfighter with an appreciation for a well-made bowl of sukiyaki. This is Miike’s first English-language feature following his contribution to the Master of Horror series entitled Imprint, which was never officially released after being deemed too disturbing. It may also be Miike’s most accessible work to date, which may please those who haven’t been able to stomach his past work while turning off those who may think Miike is going “soft.”
Inspired by the 1966 film Django and the other Italian spaghetti westerns of the period, Sukiyaki Western Django is just what it’s title suggests-a hybrid of East and West, a Western that is in fact an Eastern.
The setting is the type of small town in the middle of nowhere that we’ve seen in countless Westerns. Two clans rule this territory-The Genji who dress in white and the Heike who dress in red. Both clans seek a legendary treasure said to be hidden nearby and have procured a fragile truce that threatens to erupt into full-blown war.
Into this world enters a lone gunman (Hideaki Ito) who possesses such skill that both clans want him on their side. But the gunman, a spiritual son to Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name and Toshiro Mifune’s Yojimbo, has plans of his own. Throw in a mythic female killer named Bloody Benten (Kaori Momoi), a bumbling sheriff playing both sides (Teruyuki Kagawa) and a host of colorful characters, the film is ready to blast off. Except it never does.
There’s much to admire here-Miike is too much of a visual stylist to not create an interesting feast for the senses. The camera work by Robert Altman alumni Toyomichi Kurita and the production design by Takashi Sasaki are excellent and effectively meld with Miike’s clear vision of what this film should be.
At first, it may be strange to hear Japanese actors speaking English with a Western twang in what appears to be a Japanese village in the American Old West, but the contradictions give the proceedings a unique flavor and distinction. Even Tarantino’s appearance as the only non-Japanese and weakest actor in the cast can’t derail Miike’s vision.
The problem is the script attributed to Miike and his frequent collaborator Masaru Nakamura. While it’s clear that the two have a great love for this genre and are doing their best to infect the audience with the same feeling, there isn’t much here that feels fresh. Sukiyaki Western Django approaches the genre with such reverence that the twisted imagination so clearly in abundance in Miike’s best work feels muted here.
It’s possible that with this film a wider audience may be exposed to his talent, which is still impressive compared to the hacks whose works we usually see in multiplexes. But it’s like a punk rocker putting on his best suit and table manners to not offend his favorite grandfather.
Sukiyaki Western Django opens on Sept. 12 in Los Angeles to be followed by other cities in coming weeks. For more info: myspace.com/sukiyakiwesterndjango
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7 Responses to “Sukiyaki Western Django”
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Philip:
World-class “review” here.
Not that you need to be patronized by your inferiors, but EVERYone needs to know that world-class “critiquing” has no “color,” only clear-eyed perceptions based on knowledgable references, and sans bias.
I do think that you neglected to note that the likes of our Tarantinos have also moved the East, as in “martial arts” to the West, as in almost every shoot-em-up, bang-bang idiocy to infest the multiscreen malls.
And the corollary fact that a nouveau take on a threadbzare comic-strip theme has overtaken, gasp, “The Godfather” as the reigning “best flick” of all time in mainstream “rankings.” Sorta like the Oscars of the the 12-year-olds.
It’s all apples and oranges and pissing-contests, anyway.
Frank
P.s.: How did your onstage “Suddenly, Last Summer” go? No matter how it went, in one very important way, it had to be more “real” than the Clift/Taylor/Hepburn onscreen version,, even with Joe Mankiewicz directing. In any event, all I can recall is, yawn, what?
Thanks, Frank. And our production of SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER ended up being a critical and commercial success. Who knew there was an audience for Tennessee Williams done with an Asian American cast?
Dear Phil C.:
Man, oh, Manischewitz, I am SO delighted for you and your kidlets. for Tennessee too, whose short stories and other writings are as evocative and stimulating as were Capote’s at his best.
And, remember, “audiences” matter not in size, but, rather, in the “presence” of their perception and understanding, in their “taste” and “discrimination,” in the finer and better sense, none of which has to do with sheer numbers or commonality, as in lowest common denominator. Who wants a “pet rock” today? Or a “kewpie doll”? Well, maybe a collector? In need of some validation?
Did the Times send a critic? Time they did. In my day, you had to be able to afford adverts to claw above the radar of public recognition, and the “critics” they sent were rarely equal to their obligations to either performer OR public. Even if they ended up with self=congratulatory and self-anointed “awards” rites and related “symposia.”
I just recently found out that the original grandpa of a “symposium” was nerely a gathering, well, elite for sure, of Athenian citizens of the “male” persuasion, who, cup of vino in hand, reclining on couches, bandied, back and forth, their erudite AND subjective views on PEDERASTY.
In that estimable Home Box Office series, “Rome,” Caesar invites the plebeian “soldier” Lucius Vorenus and his commoner wife to a “symposia” his noble niece, and what a literal killer tiger SHE was, wherein the cream of then Roman society appeared to be in nothing nore nor less than a “high-end” Hollywood cocktail party tossed by the movers-and-shakers of the industry.
Phil, I kid you not, you have to listen closely to the nuggets of dialog that absolutely ab-fab the bejesus out of the spoken tongue, ANY tongue, yesterday, today, or tomorow. The characters speak, and having spoken, move on, each in his or her own manner and conviction, secure in their insecure beliefs.
All of which is to say, I think, that nothing matters here, other than that you and your kidlets continue to explore your challenges, and then give the reply that suits you best, to the best of your abilities.
Then you shall have fulfilled your “roles” and your destinies.
To hell with the rest.
So, thanks, from afar. And sdmiringly.
Frank
P.S.: Bet you could write a subjective tragicomedy of your own experience and sensibilities that would light up the stage and engage the serious attention of any audience, WITH your kidlets, and any stray reject from the mainstream “majority” theafer precincts who evince talents outside their sniffish boxes. Set your own parameters, AND “goals.”
“Production” is great; creativity is divine.
Open letter to
Philip W. Chung:
Having just finished watching, late as always of course, the Walter Hill production of “Broken Trail,” I am moved to write and urge you and colleagues to consider the possibility of envisioning the “back story” of this most excellent and persuasive evocation of the turn of the 19th Century Chinese “slave” “prostitutes” of pubertal age.
At first glance, I demurred on the opening titles claim of “thousands” of such, maybe hundreds?, and the fact that the promised/promising “San Francisco Chinatown — 1898″ turned out to be one smoky candlelit tenement room.
However, from that point on, including the “types” of Chinese faces and costume presented, “Broken Trail” proved, at least to me, a surprisingly honest and seemingly accurate reprise of theme AND characters.
Actually, the five girls, well-enacted as unpatronizingly presented, were the precipitating factors but not quite the central theme and focus of the film, which remained true to the best “western” flick traditions, and a welcome and refreshing antidote to the John Ford/spaghetti western iconologies.
All that said, what I am suggesting here is that you, your colleagues, SOMEone out there in the great Asian-American audience will be moved to investigate the Ruthanne Lum McCann model of novels, and come up with a script that really invokes the realities of 1898 San Francisco Chinatown.
It was, near as I can figure, the actual year AND place of mine own parents’ marriage, and the abuse and “sale” of teenaged girls “sold” by impoverished parents is a very small, relatively that is, and to all but those poor children, part of the larger picture of an immigrant ghetto and its inhabitants and lives and hopes and fears, joys and celebrations, and indomitable survival instincts.
In any event, it is this Chinaman’s wistful, wishful thinking, even as one is fully aware of the truth of the term, a “Chinaman’s chance.”
Frank Eng
Frank, Being a big fan of Westerns would love to see any Western with an Asian American slant. The problem is Westerns are considered box office poison and hard to get made unless your name is Clint Eastwood. Part of the reason why BROKEN TRAIL ended up being a TV movie was because no one would make it for the theatrical market. Even John Woo in his hey dey couldn’t get his Chinese railroad Western off the ground despite the presence of the then hot Nic Cage and Chow Yun-Fat attached.
With that said, who knows? Anything is possible. So we shall see :)
–Phil
Phil:
Okay, so the “theatrical” movie honchos deemed “broken Trail” too sectarian.
So, how did “Rome” get made?
And HOW!
“Rome” puts to shame, never mind the “pale,” ANY other assays into “historical” “spectacle,” “biographical” scenarios as “entertainment.”
God!, how could ANYone hope to approach, much less equal that series’ quintet of distaff portraits? Virilely matched by the men’s, especially that unapologetic and “physical” Mark Antony.
Yes, HBO. The industry’s resounding rebuke to the natterers of pursestrings.
If each segment of “Rome” cost only a mil?, then there is ample investment space for similar investments, whether Asian-American or paleface prudencies.
“Brokeback” broke out of gay demographics.
And so could “boxoffice poison” “westerns.”
“Easterns:? East-Westerns?
Whythell not?
Who needs the multimillions boxoffices of the “Titanics,” a sad excuse for a blockbuster, and, in the long run, “Broken Trail” should MORE than retuirn its investment.
So, dude, how about a “little-theater” investment in said theme, an “original,” based on, etc. etc.with screenplay by Philip W. Chung and casting by Lodestone and backer/”angels” like, say, Yahoo’s cofounder?
Maybe Redford would go for it. Or Tarantino?
Hey!, this is very much a part of the American Dream, just as the spin/promo model of film marketing has become the nightmare template of contempolitical campaigns.
Frank
Phil:
Hey!, dude, don’t let me down now, I’m on a riff of sorts here.
How about a bitchin’ title like “Frisco Midnight”? That should bring a few of the Barbary Coast peasants in?
And maybe James Franco in yellowface as the young Walter U. Lum, so what if he WAS my maternal uncle?, soon to become the publisher/editor of the Chinese Times.
Then, maybe Russell Wong? in whiteface as the “black” Irish head of the “Chinatown detail,” in charge of the “pigeon” numbers racket with his Chinese opposites.
And, of course, as an in-house reference, maybe both Jackie the Chan, that mighty improvement on Charlie, AND Owen Wilson?, can never get these haole names correctly, in key cameos in reverse racist drag as well?
Then, the whole East/West “stew” could be marketed as a dramedy OR tragicom.
But let’s shoot it on Grant Avenue, and Kearny, and between Pacific and Sacramento, maybe a bit of Stockton and Powell as well.
What with the digital wizards of the Bay Area itself, sets needn’t cost all that much?
It’s all in the conceptuals, isn’t it?
So, think period and place and personae, and let ‘er rip, damn the established nonsense of common perceptions.
Worth a try?
Frank
P.S.: “Chinese” then were already culturally hooked on the same cliches as their presumed “betters.” And archival snapshots prove this point. Ah, “one world, one dream,” indeed.