Wherever the place be whence the zaniest Imamura, Ôbayashi or Greenaway might stem, Suzuki's films come from there as well. Not that "Tokyo Drifter" (1966) would exactly share a room with "Hausu" (1977), though. In fact, I find it to be closer to the early Wong Kar-Wai up until 1995, or even the contemporaries beside Imamura, certainly not excluding Kurosawa, whose "Yojimbo" (1961) could the quintessential film in the genre.
Yet still I find the most pervasive companion to Tokyo Drifter from the multitude of Zatôichi films. There the kind of James Bond pop-art of a larger-than-life quest to defeat gravity (here to break free from the yakuza world) ends in the predestined pull back toward Earth. Tetsu is the one to recognize this when he's unable to escape trouble amid the snow.
This was my first Suzuki, and "Tokyo Drifter" is a gorgeously synchronized film. By "synchronized" I mean the utter control Suzuki and his crew have over the movie: the story utilized effectively through the use of every cinematic means possible to not only forget about the story but to emphasize it. This means the film doesn't forget what it's supposed to do (to carry the story), yet carrying the story is the least of its concerns. What do I mean by this? One could argue that the story is weak. The reason for this is the fact that the story is so simple. It's simple, yet deceptively so: by furnishing us with all the possible known material in the genre, Suzuki doesn't go the usual way as modern action directors might as to forget about the story and concentrate on whatever skill it is some might wish to show off. Instead, he has a deceptively simple story made into a strong film because he plays the story out. And the way he does this is still not exactly what the modern cinema has been doing from the sixties onward — by looking at itself, pointing at its possibly perceived flaws and laughing at them, modern self-aware cinema makes us aware that it's our twisted notions about film that are to be laughed at. In other words, I really find much of the New Wave basically trying to educate us by showing our mistakes as filmgoers.
Suzuki, however, doesn't do this. This film acts out like a guilty pleasure, which it is to some extent, yet without the washed out feeling in the end that we're somehow worse off because of it. He doesn't hoodwink us into believing what we're seeing is something it's not, and instead he carefully makes the ironies even stronger. Sure, the story is generic, yet what he does with it is unapologetically cinematic and unapologetically true to not only itself and its great sense of rhythm and humour, but also to us, since it doesn't punish us by trying to teach us a lesson about what film should be like.
Instead, this is a film that's just as jazzy as its back cover descriptions make it out to be. So much of its humour is visually oriented that it's a marvellous joyride for people like me who find from Chaplin and Keaton the elixir for a rainy day. The brawl toward the end is so masterfully executed, the timing of each movement and the fun of it all, that it's one of the highlights of the film.
And one last thing. Another reason why it works so well is that the actors are taking it seriously. They're not acting hip by knowing it's an act, they're actually invested in the stereotype they might be playing. This way it's Suzuki who can channel that atmosphere back to us. If this still makes sense in the morning, I'll eat my hat, although first I have to buy one.
Yet still I find the most pervasive companion to Tokyo Drifter from the multitude of Zatôichi films. There the kind of James Bond pop-art of a larger-than-life quest to defeat gravity (here to break free from the yakuza world) ends in the predestined pull back toward Earth. Tetsu is the one to recognize this when he's unable to escape trouble amid the snow.
This was my first Suzuki, and "Tokyo Drifter" is a gorgeously synchronized film. By "synchronized" I mean the utter control Suzuki and his crew have over the movie: the story utilized effectively through the use of every cinematic means possible to not only forget about the story but to emphasize it. This means the film doesn't forget what it's supposed to do (to carry the story), yet carrying the story is the least of its concerns. What do I mean by this? One could argue that the story is weak. The reason for this is the fact that the story is so simple. It's simple, yet deceptively so: by furnishing us with all the possible known material in the genre, Suzuki doesn't go the usual way as modern action directors might as to forget about the story and concentrate on whatever skill it is some might wish to show off. Instead, he has a deceptively simple story made into a strong film because he plays the story out. And the way he does this is still not exactly what the modern cinema has been doing from the sixties onward — by looking at itself, pointing at its possibly perceived flaws and laughing at them, modern self-aware cinema makes us aware that it's our twisted notions about film that are to be laughed at. In other words, I really find much of the New Wave basically trying to educate us by showing our mistakes as filmgoers.
Suzuki, however, doesn't do this. This film acts out like a guilty pleasure, which it is to some extent, yet without the washed out feeling in the end that we're somehow worse off because of it. He doesn't hoodwink us into believing what we're seeing is something it's not, and instead he carefully makes the ironies even stronger. Sure, the story is generic, yet what he does with it is unapologetically cinematic and unapologetically true to not only itself and its great sense of rhythm and humour, but also to us, since it doesn't punish us by trying to teach us a lesson about what film should be like.
Instead, this is a film that's just as jazzy as its back cover descriptions make it out to be. So much of its humour is visually oriented that it's a marvellous joyride for people like me who find from Chaplin and Keaton the elixir for a rainy day. The brawl toward the end is so masterfully executed, the timing of each movement and the fun of it all, that it's one of the highlights of the film.
And one last thing. Another reason why it works so well is that the actors are taking it seriously. They're not acting hip by knowing it's an act, they're actually invested in the stereotype they might be playing. This way it's Suzuki who can channel that atmosphere back to us. If this still makes sense in the morning, I'll eat my hat, although first I have to buy one.