MIFF 2008 (Sukiyaki Western Django)

SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO, Takashi Miike, 2007

The opening of this film begins with a tableau vivant, making great use of a painted backdrop and saturated colour lighting, of a cameo’ed Quentin Tarantino as the narrator of a highly stylized gunfight. The largely incomprehensible dialogue of this scene continues into the space of the rest of the film alongside its dry humour.

The beginning of Sukiyaki creates a backdrop that is uncannily similar to that seen in Tracey Moffatt’s Night Cries (1989) or her quintessential photographic series Something More (1989). The unexpected association became stronger when the plot latter featured a very unlikely didgeridoo. It is an association that is not unexpected in the anything-goes quotation of this film. To the initiated, the first half of the plot was a clear elaboration of Leone’s A Fistfull of Dollars (one of my favourites) merged into the Japanese traditions of samurai and street gangster films and every genre film in between.

Thoroughly within the tendencies of post modern film, the whole text was a collision of the eccentric: the dialogue was a tangle of colloquial western phrases in stunted accents, the characters unique and overt, the costuming anachronistic enough to be couture, the blood dramatic (as Mr. Miike will tend to do). A joyous mess held together by genre codes and slapstick humour.

Colour was used to great effect; the rival gangs hunting gold in a small mountain town were differentiated by red and white costumes of unexpected textures and tones. These bodies were set against the sepia background of the town which merged the architecture of the western pioneer town with that of the oriental temple. For such a visually interesting film, the piece suffered a little from poor film stock, which rather than evoking a classic western feel, just felt a cheap and under focused.

One aspect of the film that really interested me was excess of symbols that were alchemical. While I think that most were unintentional, it would certainly make for an interesting analysis.