Metal Machine Music
Japanese director offers hellish technological visions
by Jim Ridley and Donna Bowman
That “pre-millennial” jazz gets tossed around a lot, but in Shinya Tsukamoto’s hellish movies there’s definitely the sense that life is fast-forwarding toward a fearsome destiny. His signature style (copied wholesale in Beastie Boys videos, in Darren Aronofsky’s Pi, and on every other segment of MTV’s Amp) uses stop-motion animation and frenzied cutting to evoke bone-jarring speed—the speed of man using machines to accelerate his own obsolescence.
That style is on display this week at the Watkins Belcourt in two of Tsukamoto’s most startling films, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer and Tokyo Fist. The first is a sci-fi Cronenbergian horror show out of William S. Burroughs’ worst acid trips; the other’s a boxing drama so twisted and transgressive it makes Raging Bull seem like a hissy fit. Yet they both share the same nightmare vision—of meat fusing with metal, of galloping decay, of cold cityscapes rocketing toward an apocalyptic reckoning.
A former ad man, the 38-year-old Tsukamoto has made only a handful of features in the past decade, but they’re already cyberpunk touchstones. 1992’s Tetsuo II is basically a color expansion of Tsukamoto’s notorious 1989 film Tetsuo: The Iron Man, an hour-long black-and-white shocker that constituted the most relentless assault on horror-movie conventions (and viewers’ nerves) since Eraserhead.
As in the first film, the hero is a timid businessman, Taniguchi (Tomoroh Taguchi), who undergoes a horrific transformation under the effects of urban rage. When his young son is kidnapped by skinhead demons, Taniguchi’s body erupts in lesions and appendages of jagged metal, a grisly variant of Videodrome’s “new flesh.” By the time he faces his nemesis, played by Tsukamoto himself (who also wrote, directed, edited, photographed, art directed, and served as his own gaffer), he has become a human tank—a literal killing machine.
If Tetsuo II isn’t quite as assaultive as its predecessor—a distinction, for most viewers, that’s as inconsequential as the difference between getting hit by a cement mixer and getting hit by a bullet train—Tsukamoto surpasses it with 1995’s Tokyo Fist. The theme once again is body modification, set against a high-rise Tokyo that’s all blade-like vertical lines and razor-edged grids. This time the director plays the victim: the Milquetoast salesman Tsuda, whose old high-school classmate Takuji (played by Tsukamoto’s brother) is now a pro boxer. Drawn to brute force, Tsuda’s fiancee aligns herself with the stronger man—leaving the salesman to hone his own fists of fury.
In Tokyo Fist, Tsukamoto’s new-flesh obsessions are metaphorical. No high-tech leprosy here: Instead, the three characters steel themselves with weight machines and piercing accessories. Even so, the movie’s linkage of humiliation with the urge to bulk up and punish leads to unforgettably grueling fight scenes—high-speed meat collisions that draw geysers of blood. To further note the vulnerability of all flesh, swarming maggots devour the screen between scenes.
As some critics have suggested, you can watch Tokyo Fist and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer as allegories of Japan’s postwar technological imperialism; they’re the splattery live-action kin of all those Japanimated “kiddie” cartoons in which humans shape-shift into cars and robots. But the films are too personal, too inextricably composed of organic and synthetic parts, to fit one sociopolitical catch-all. Shinya Tsukamoto’s movies rage against the machine, and the machine is us.
—Jim Ridley
Days of swine and roses
To the list of startlingly delightful children’s movies of the ’90s (A Little Princess, James and the Giant Peach, Toy Story), add Babe: Pig in the City. Even more than the original Babe, this sequel synthesizes the intimate fantasies of children’s literature with pure cinema, crafting a surreal meditation on loyalty and sacrifice. You don’t follow the story of Pig in the City so much as experience it in a visceral rush of emotion, adrenaline, and (dare I say it?) inspiration.
In the sequel’s urban setting, Babe the heroic sheep-pig becomes Babe the Christ figure, savior to dozens of homeless, unwanted animals. The little piggy sets out to save the farm from evil mortgage bankers, who descend after Farmer Hoggett has a wee accident. But on their way to collect an appearance fee at a state fair, Mrs. Hoggett and Babe wind up stranded in the city, forced to put up at an eccentric hotel that hides its pet-friendly policies from suspicious neighbors.
From the first glimpse of the mysterious city, Pig in the City leaves simplicity behind and heads for absurd artistry. Landmarks from every major metropolis crowd the skyline, a wondrous collage worthy of Delicatessen’s Jeunet et Caro. In chase sequences that grow ever wilder, director George Miller evokes vintage one-reelers from the Keystone Kops through the Three Stooges, using a menagerie of acting beasts 10 times larger than in the first film—a union wrangler’s nightmare. Yet the action slows for scenes of intense clarity: a feeding of the 5,000 right out of Pasolini, a troupe of performing apes that bring Fellini-esque poignancy to their greasepaint.
Babe: Pig in the City was rushed into release for the holiday season, where it has been overshadowed by more immediately accessible children’s fare like The Rugrats Movie and A Bug’s Life. Thanks to Universal’s god-awful hurry, there are times when themes drop out and reappear in odd, probably unintentional non sequiturs. And sophisticated moviegoers who loved the original, a big sleeper hit, may see a sequel as a callous attempt to cash in.
They couldn’t be more wrong. This Babe has an impeccable cinematic pedigree; it honors its eclectic sources with a sincerity that won’t win it any admirers in Universal’s marketing department. It’s one of the most original films of the year—honest and for true.
—Donna Bowman
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