Japan Cuts ’17: Zigeunerweisen

Is there a better way to start a film than by playing a vintage ten-inch phonograph record? No, there isn’t. That is how Seijun Suzuki commenced his great comeback masterpiece, but to make it even better, he has his characters discuss how an audible bit of conversation on the classic Pablo de Sarasate recording was initially considered a flaw but was eventually recognized as what made the record so special. That disc will play a fateful but hard to explain role in Suzuki’s digitally remastered Zigeunerweisen (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film in New York.

All the cultural tensions of the Taishō Period (1912-1926) can be found in Aochi and Nakasago, former professors at the military academy, who have gone in very different directions. Aochi (tellingly a professor of German) adopted western suits and lives a life of middle class respectability. Nakasago still wears traditional garb and lives a wild (almost feral) semi-nomadic existence. The ex-colleagues reunite when Aochi happens along just in time to save Nakasago from a lynch mob convinced he murdered the lover he led astray.

He probably did it. He certainly admits it readily enough when he and Aochi stop to enjoy some sake at a geisha bar. Rather boorishly, Nakasago insists a recently bereaved geisha perform for them. Yet, both men will be strangely moved by grieving O-Ine as she performs her hostess duties. Aochi will go back to his modernized, luxury-indulging wife Shuko and Nakasago will follow a blind trio of beggars who sing songs so ribald they would make Missy Elliott blush. When they next meet, Nakasago has married Sono, a woman from a proper family, who is a dead-ringer for O-Ine.

It is highly debatable whether Aochi and Nakasago were ever truly friends, but their fates are certainly linked and to some extent, each has the other’s number. There are people in life you just can’t shake, for better or for worse—in the case of Nakasago, it is most likely for the worse. Of course, the doppelganger duo of Sono and O-Ine is also deeply archetypal. Zigeunerweisen is frequently surreal and it eventually evolves into a literally haunted genre film, but there is something universally relatable about its core I-am-not-my-brother-from-another-mother’s-keeper relationship.

Yoshio Harada gets to storm and rage as Nakasago, but it is Toshiya Fujita who injects all the bile and arsenic as the tightly wound Aochi. Frankly, it is fascinating to watch them dance around each other as they observe the rituals of friendship. Naoko Otani also covers a great deal of ground as the forceful, seductive, and ultimately spooky doubles, Sono and O-Ine. Michiyo Okusu is also something else and then some as the privileged Shuko.

Zigeunerweisen is truly a masterwork, precisely because it is so slippery and hard to pin down, yet still so disconcertingly eerie. The Taishō setting adds further layers of irony and foreboding. After all, the Aochis would inherit the nation from the Nakasagos, but we know where that would lead. Very highly recommended, Zigeunerweisen screens this afternoon (7/23) at the Japan Society, as part of the concluding day of this year’s Japan Cuts.

Fight Fest: Butterfly, Butterfly, Kill Kill Kill!

Before he was infamously fired by the Nikkatsu studio, director Seijun Suzuki brought an avant-garde auteur’s sensibility to the Japanese yakuza B-movie. While in today’s world, Suzuki can be considered an ironic godfather of Miike and Tarantino, in 1967 his films just seemed weird, particularly his masterwork, Branded to Kill. Now some forty years after Suzuki’s story of a rice-sniffing assassin irrevocably severed his studio ties, Patrick Harrison has adapted Branded for the stage as Butterfly, Butterfly, Kill Kill Kill! in a Depth Charge production now running at the Brick Theater as part of Fight Fest—a theatrical festival dedicated to the art of fight choreography.

As a yakuza story, there is indeed a fair amount of fighting and gunplay in BBKKK, but there is relatively little blood. However, the cast still makes quite a mess during the production (though to be fair, they try to clean up after themselves). Hanada, the yakuza’s Number Three ranked assassin, has a bizarre rice fetish. His wife Mami is a nymphomaniac. End result: an awful lot of rice ends up strewn across the stage.

If Branded’s story seemed a bit strange on film, it is downright trippy on stage. Essentially, Hanada gets tangled up with femme fatale Misako, who hires him for an impossible job. Hanada finds himself taking out a number of his competitors, but the mysterious Number One seems to have the drop on him. Of course, it is all just a vehicle for some on-stage lunacy that satirizes pretentious performance art theater as much as it lampoons yakuza conventions.

Incorporating all sorts of visual gags, and some very hip music, including free bass and drum improvisations from Dave Harrington and Samer Ghadry, BBKKK is definitely entertaining in a subversive “gee they’re actually doing this on-stage” kind of way. Devotees of the original Suzuki source material should also appreciate the clever ways in which Harrison incorporates signature elements of the film into the stage production, like a five minute flying bullet slo-mo sequence and the use of a vintage film projector showing clips of the seductive Misako in jeopardy.

The entire cast is undeniably energetic and suitably uninhibited as they reanimate Suzuki’s distinctive gangster opus. Harrison shows a particular comedic flair as Hanada and his direction keeps the madness well paced and relatively orderly. As Mami, Alexandra Hellquist also deserves credit for her fearless work in some of BBKKK’s most outrageous scenes, like a hilariously crazed rice-fueled simulated sex scene.

Though BBKKK has a somewhat short running time (announced at thirty-five minutes but a bit longer Wednesday night), it is clear a lot of inspiration went into its production. Adam Scott Mazer and Ian Picco’s fight direction is certainly appropriate to the festival while staying true to the eccentric spirit of the show. Harrington’s music, both pre-recorded and improvised, sounds great throughout, while Nancy Kwon’s film design adds the perfect retro-surreal look. For those who enjoy chaos and carnage on-stage (and what’s not to like about that?) BBKKK is a lot of fun. It runs again during Fight Fest this Saturday (12/12) and Sunday (12/13).

(Photo credit MAKE Studio-Marty Coleman)