In
1980s Japan, Akira Suei was part Hugh Hefner and part Larry Flynt. His skin magazine
Photo Age had “real” “counter-culture”
articles, as well as the other stuff. However, Suei doesn’t seem to be
especially interested in either kind of reading material. This just seems to be
what he does in Masanori Tominaga’s Dynamite
Graffiti (trailer
here),
which screens as the opening night selection of the 2018 New York Asian Film Festival.
Based
on Suei’s autobiographical writings, Dynamite
tells his story mostly chronologically, but through the prism of his mother’s
tragic suicide. She and her lover were shunned by their provincial mining town because
they had both been institutionalized for tuberculosis. After carrying on a
scandalously passionate affair, they decided to blow themselves to smithereens
with dynamite. For the rest of the film, Suei lives in her shadow as the “son
of the woman who…” It is never clear what he makes of his mother or her
suicide, but she is by far the film’s most sympathetic character.
Presumably,
the incident rather disturbs his father as well. Nevertheless, they are stuck
together for a while. They live hand-to-mouth, but somehow, Suei manages to
enroll in graphic design courses for a few semesters. He paints some sandwich boards
for a strip club and follows where that work takes him.
The
film was probably built around the early scenes in which the guileless acting
Suei tries to placate the sour-faced Puritanical police captain inspecting the
latest issue of Photo Age like it is
a bit of smelliness stuck on his shoe. These recurring gags are absurdly funny,
but they just seem to trail off without resolution, like a SNL skit.
For
all its excesses, The People vs. Larry
Flint clearly suggests its central character really believed in the 1st
Amendment and truly enjoyed naughty pictures. In contrast, Suei doesn’t seem to
have any real passions. He just drifts through the episodic film, treating his
long-suffering wife dismissively and recklessly pursuing a not-particularly-interested
co-worker. By the way, the behavior depicted in this film definitely constitutes
sexual harassment—just for the record. There’s the counter-culture’s values in
action.
It
is just baffling what Tominaga expected viewers to take away from all this. Tasuku
Emoto is often quite droll as Suei, but it is a performance designed to be cold
and inscrutable. Machiko Ono is absolutely heartbreaking as the tragic mother,
as is Toko Miura, playing the lover, whose body and spirit Suei literally
breaks. Fans will also be amused to see jazz musician Naruyoshi Kikuchi
portraying in/famous photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Kikuchi also penned the
distinctively angular, but still swinging score, which is probably what Dynamite will be primarily remembered
for years from now.
Dynamite Graffiti is problematic in
many ways, but its subject matter is sure to appeal cult movie fans. It has the
same kind of colorful period details that elevated Boogie Nights, but it never even invites viewers to make an emotional
investment. There are moments of outrageous ribald comedy, but it really just
convinces us pornographers are just obnoxious jerkweeds. Dynamite Graffiti isn’t recommended as a film, but it will probably
be demonized by the virtue-signalers any second now, so if you want to know
what it is really like before the Pavlovian dogs tear into it, check it out
this Friday (6/29), as the opening night film of this year’s NYAFF.
