From the opening frames of Shinjuku Triad Society (1995), with its
bustling montage of crime, fringe-dwellers, and illicit back-alley liaisons, to
the melancholy downpours of Rainy Dog
(1997), and the closing song and sunset of Ley Lines (1999), Takashi Miike’s Black Society Trilogy is a gritty, uncensored journey into the
abyss of alienation and loneliness that lies at the very edges of society.
The ‘yakuza’ film is as entrenched
in Japanese culture as the ‘gangster’ film is in ours. Movies like Seijun
Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966), and
Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel (1948)
have cemented the genre’s staying power just as well as The Godfather (1972) and Goodfellas
(1990). However, Japanese gangsters have a distinctly different way doing things that makes their world seem all the more
seedy and sinister to Western viewers.
And beyond this difference even further
we find Takashi Miike. Where before was a shady, but structured underworld of
crime bosses and foot soldiers, cops and dealers, pimps and prostitutes, we now
find under Miike’s direction a blur of lines and a frightening chaos that
mimics the real world perhaps a little too well on the one hand, and yet seems
directly out of a cartoonish nightmare on the other.
Although now well known for his
shocking depictions of horror and violence in films such as Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001), as well as historical epics like 13 Assassins (2010) and Harakiri: Death of a Samurai (2011),
Miike’s first work was a redefinition of this yakuza genre that had been so
well established in Japan for decades. The
Black Society Trilogy is comprised of these three films: Shinjuku Triad Society, Rainy Dog, and Ley Lines. This trilogy is not one in the traditional sense. Unlike
Star Wars or Jurassic Park, Black Society
is not a film and its direct sequels. Rather, in the tradition of Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life, or Kieślowski’s Three Colors, it is a trilogy linked by
themes and motifs. Here specifically, the chief theme is alienation.
The first, Shinjuku Triad Society, follows Tatsuhito, a dirty cop who is working
to bring down a gay crime syndicate known as the Dragon’s Claw Society, only to
find out that his younger brother has become the group’s lawyer.
Rainy
Dog centers on Yuji, an abandoned foot soldier for the mob who must now
take work in the form of a contract killer-for-hire. Things only get more
complicated when a woman he hasn’t seen in several years saddles him with a
young boy she claims is his son.
Finally, Ley Lines finds three mixed-race youths struggling to make ends
meet by selling toluene. They finally discover a possible way out of their
dead-end existence by robbing the crime boss they supposedly work for.
Takashi Miike explores alienation
and loneliness throughout each of these films in three distinct methods. These
methods are present in all of the films, each in their own way, and never are
they mutually exclusive. It is in this way that the director ties the trilogy
together by its themes.
The first is a marked separation of
the main characters in each film from the society around them. Every character
has traits that contribute to his/her alienation. In all cases, the result is
not ‘me against the world’, but a profound loneliness that permeates every
decision, every action taken. Often, this culminates in the worst of choices
predicated on the desperate hope of a connection with someone, something,
somewhere.
In Shinjuku Triad Society, Tatsuhito is outside of every norm. He is a
detective, but corrupt, and therefore outside the law. His is half Taiwanese,
half Japanese, and therefore has no national identity. His brother works for
the crime syndicate he is trying to bring down, which tears his family apart.
He very literally has no place to call home. This emptiness drives him to the
most reckless extremes in an attempt to reconcile his broken relationships.
Rainy
Dog sees Yuji expelled from the organization he has always worked for,
perhaps the worst disgrace for a gangster! To be considered so utterly useless
and unthreatening as a henchman that you aren’t even whacked, you’re fired! This is compounded by the
obviously empty proclamations of love and kinship that his new employer
professes when contracting Yuji to kill this person or that one. The disconnectedness
of it all is underscored by the blithe muteness of Ah-Chen, his son, who
follows his father everywhere but never says a word.
The three youths in Ley Lines find their separation from
society in their fractured nationality – half Chinese, half Japanese. It is
startling to find such discrimination in this cinematic underworld where a gun is
all that is needed make every man equal. Indeed, the group believes this to be
true, only to find out firearms aren’t all that rare. What happens when
the other guy has one too?
As a sort of
counterweight to the traits that force each character into alienation is Miike’s
juxtaposition of this solitude with the acceptance and cohesiveness of groups
just out of reach. These arise in the form of those who lead and follow. There is
an eerie and agonizing similarity between Yuji’s son as he draws a gun in chalk
on the sidewalk (Rainy Dog) and the
mob boss Wang’s ‘pet’, who scratches a phallus into the desk, chanting about
his ‘favorite thing’ (Shinjuku Triad
Society).
Often, we have to question the
desire for belonging in Miike’s world, where unity and brotherhood seem to go
hand in hand with murder and betrayal. It seems as though the striving to part
of something is the driving force behind the pain, suffering, and inevitable
downfall suffered by all of our protagonists.
It is the camaraderie of the Dragon’s
Claw Society that takes Tatsuhito’s brother away from him, just as it is the
desire for a family that drives Yuji to confront the enemies hunting him, and
three friends to risk everything for a chance to escape their situation.
Finally, and perhaps most
poignantly, Miike explores alienation through the past, present, and future. At last we see the prime difference between each film.
Shinjuku
Triad Society examines the past. Tatsuhito battles aggressively throughout
the film to regain the family he has lost. He dwells in what was before, and it
informs all of his actions. He gives his money to his parents, he chases his
brother to the very depths of the criminal world just to bring him back and
make his family whole again. In many ways, this is the most desperate and angry
of the three pictures, as though nothing can equal the fury of a man who has lost
grip on all that was dear to him.
Rainy
Dog is the present. Yuji has the opportunity here and now to forge a
connection, a family to belong to. Who cares if that family consists of a mafia
hitman, an orphan, and a reformed prostitute? Yuji’s persistent attempts to get
out of the rain whenever it falls symbolizes his need to be sheltered by someone,
anyone. But he finds his purpose, in the end, is to be the one who shelters someone else. He embraces this even with
his final act, the shielding of his son from a hail of bullets.
Lastly, the future. Ley Lines is built upon the quest for
something better, somewhere else. It is most fitting that the ending of this
film is the most uplifting. In spite of the death and loss, the last remaining character,
with his new love interest, rows out to sea singing an old nursery rhyme. The
gamble of robbing a crime boss could only be thought possible by the ignorance
of youth, yet it is this zeal for the future that sets them apart. There must
be something better around the bend.
Takashi Miike’s Black Society Trilogy does not really offer much in the way of
answers to the questions it poses. But maybe that is okay. The struggle against
alienation and the desire to belong are forces within each of us. Perhaps that
is the reason these films resonate so well with us when we see past the
violence and grittiness. Deep down, Miike seems to say, we all need to care for
something.
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