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| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
Two
years before getting himself fired from Nikkatsu over his surreal yakuza freak-outs
Tokyo Drifter and particularly Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki was a
longtime director for the Japanese film company directing as many as three to
four films per year. Often dabbling in
yakuza fare or sociopolitical discourse regarding varying sections of Japanese
history or modernity as demonstrated in Arrow Films three boxed sets of films
including but not limited to his much revered The Taisho Trilogy, Suzuki’s work across the board was generally
accepted in the Nikkatsu landscape. But
nearing those two legendarily infamous hyperkinetic provocations, Suzuki’s work
started to change with significant visual flair that became increasingly
experimental if not indicative of a heightened subconscious reality. During this intermediary creative period when
Suzuki decide to throw the book of rules out the window, early warning signs of
the director’s extravagant, wild visual flair started to present themselves.
Which
brings us to Radiance Films’ worldwide blu-ray premiere of Suzuki’s 1965 yakuza
fable Tattooed Life. Originally released in 2004 on DVD via Home
Vision Media following renewed interest in Suzuki’s work after The Criterion
Collection’s releases of Tokyo Drifter and
Branded to Kill, Tattooed Life was only two years away from Drifter and sneakily forecasted the director’s foray into sensory
excess while blurring the lines and rules of narrative fiction. In it, a yakuza period drama with elements of
The Sands of Kurobe running through
it, we meet low-level yakuza “Silver Fox” Tetsu (Hideki Takahashi) who finds
himself under attack from his traitor boss who sends a hitman after him. However, his younger art-school student
brother Kenji (Kotobuki Hananomoto) comes to his rescue killing the assailant,
forcing the two to go into hiding in Manchuria evading rival yakuza gangs along
the way.
Swindled
of their money before they can reach it, they hastily take on work in mining
construction while Tetsu tries to hide his yakuza tattoos from being seen by
the miners as he and Kenji start navigating romantic affairs with their boss’
wife and sister-in-law. It becomes
evident they might need to leave again however as fellow yakuza factions start
turning up the heat, leading towards an extravagant and visually wild finale
that is classically Suzukian. With
steadily more artificial use of lighting and color flooding the picture
including a sequence Luca Guadagnino had to have lifted for the finale to his
latest film Challengers, Suzuki’s Tattooed Life though faithful to the
conventions of the yakuza genre programmer starts to spread his funky weird
wings open stylistically but not quite to the extent of his later works.
A
harbinger of things to come regarding the Suzuki vs. Nikkatsu combustible
relationship, Tattooed Life starts
out like his other earlier works as a straightforward genre entry only to turn
into a jack-in-the-box funhouse as it nears conclusion. Playful, zany and heightened to a dreamlike
level, the finale is not only the first kind to come out of the Nikkatsu dream
factory but it is to be studied in yakuza handbooks for decades. Opening the playbook and gleefully ripping
pages out and tossing them aside, Suzuki’s film is a bit like a venus fly trap
or in some ways a precursor to Takashi Miike’s Audition in which the film doesn’t reveal its true colors until the
end. Much of the visuals stem from Outlaw: Gangster VIP cinematographer
Kurataro Takamura who fashions the film in fairly straightforward visual language
before the impish personality of Suzuki starts to seep in. The score by recurring Suzuki composer
Masayoshi Ikeda of Kanto Wanderer is
appropriately orchestral when it isn’t steeped in Japanese traditional
instrumentation, working to lull the viewer into a false sense of security
regarding the film’s Grand Guignol finale.
Hideki
Takahashi as Silver Fox Tetsu best known for Suzuki’s Fighting Elegy makes the lead yakuza into a wild animal in hiding,
laying low refraining from showing his true yakuza swordsman skills and uncompromising
brutality until cornered, only showing emotion when his younger brother’s life
is in danger. Co-starring Hiroki Ito,
Akira Yamanouchi and Woman in the Dunes actress
Masako Izumi, all the ensemble actors give excellent supporting performances
that help further Tetsu and Kenji’s journey.
Last but not least is Kotobuki Hananomoto as endearing innocent younger
brother Kenji who brings to the character a poignancy as though his frail meek idealism
will be part in parcel to his downfall.
The
movie that started to get Nikkatsu to zero in and take closer scrutiny over
what bad boy Seijun Suzuki was up to, Tattooed
Life though faithful to the conventions of the yakuza yarn nevertheless
goes bananas in the still legendary finale including a swordfight filmed from
beneath the actors and jigsaw puzzle set pieces. Alarming for Nikkatsu heads but invigorating
for worldly cinephiles who just began to discover Suzuki’s work decades after
his tumultuous blacklisting for nearly all of the 1970s before his grand return
to critical and commercial acceptance with Zigeunerweisen,
Tattooed Life for Suzuki fans
represents a key artistic intermediary period for the director as he was just
beginning to find his niche. Radiance
Films’ blu-ray premiere of the film is beautiful and includes archival
interviews with Suzuki in the extras.
Fans of Suzuki’s visual flair and incessant challenging of narrative
storytelling conventions will find much to enjoy here as the wild playful
sensibility of its director shines like a diamond in the rough.
--Andrew Kotwicki
