Andromedia (Takashi Miike) & The Blackout (Abel Ferrara)

Andromedia | Takashi Miike, 1998
The Blackout | Abel Ferrara, 1997

Gone from reality, alive on screen; love and loss, the past into the present.

London Film Festival 2017 | Blade of the Immortal, 120 BPM

London Film Festival 2017 | #2

“I’ve seen ages come and go.” In Takashi Miike’s Blade of the Immortal, men live forever and grudges do too. Children avenge their parents. Brothers avenge their sisters. And men take revenge on the grandchildren of those who wronged their grandparents. An unending cycle of violence that reverberates through generations. Rin, a young girl whose parents are killed by a marauding clan of violent swordsmen, searches for a supposedly immortal warrior, Manji, to help her in her quest to avenge them. Eternal life is a curse. He can only dwell on his endless history: the murder of his sister and the hundred men he killed to avenge her. He’s the past, the present, and the future; an undying symbol of a stagnant age of eye-for-an-eye violence, the damage of which can only be viewed in retrospect and is doomed to ceaselessly repeat itself. And so it does. These swordsmen, attempting to overwrite all traditional values in Japan with their modern philosophies and destroy anyone who stands in their way, believe in fighting one on one, presenting a succession of tiring and tiresome enemies for Manji to overcome, his immortality rendering them all meaningless. There are no consequences for him. There’s no mortality. No winning, no losing. Just the gruelling and endless trudge of battle as a vessel for a young girl’s revenge, and a longing for a death that can never come. And when an opportunity for revenge arises, she’s not the only one seeking it — so then what? Ages come and go. Nothing changes. The only conclusion for a society governed by a code of vengeance is total annihilation. A pile of bodies. A river of blood.

In Robin Campillo’s 120 Beats Per Minute, the Seine is blood-red and flows endlessly through Paris. The AIDS epidemic is at its peak, and activist group ACT UP are fighting for greater societal, political and medical understanding and investment in the disease, its causes, and the urgent need for treatment. Campillo, a self-proclaimed “ACT UP militant” in the 1990s, takes us to the heart of the organisation, showing us everything. The weekly meetings held in a nondescript lecture hall, in which any orders of business relating to the group, be it the media reaction to past acts, the planning of future ones, developing slogans to best communicate their messages, or testimonials to members who have died, are discussed, heard, debated and analysed in detail. The actions themselves, like storming the offices of a pharmaceutical company to cover the walls in fake blood, performing at pride festivals, and handing out condoms and safe-sex leaflets in schools. And people’s lives: living, loving, being in love, and the devastating impact of this disease on these lives and on all the lives we don’t see. People are dying from this epidemic and nobody with the power to do anything about it seems to care. “Our friends are dying. We don’t want to die too.” An urgent and vital fight for life. It’s too late for some but they fight anyway. Life is worth fighting for. “Parade my body through the streets.” A man dies and his ashes are wielded as a political weapon. Make them notice. Make them care. Be visible. Fight for life and the river will run blue again. We’re dancing. We’re alive.

Ace Attorney | Takashi Miike, 2012

This review was originally published on my Tumblr just over a year ago. I read it again recently and was reminded of why I love Takashi Miike so much, a director I've fallen out of love with to some degree over the past year or so. In celebration of this remembrance, I thought I'd republish a slightly edited version of the review here.
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During the first court case in Takashi Miike’s Ace Attorney, the witness testimony is visualised: Miike recreates an interpretation of a crime and presents it as a truth, as it would be perceived in the context of a courtroom - the suspect is shown committing the crime. Then, the defence lawyer finds the flaws and contradictions in the story (a lamp that couldn’t have been where the witness says it was, a wall blocking sight-lines from the hotel room opposite, a clock modelled after Rodin’s The Thinker that couldn't possibly be mistaken for a clock), and the visual testimony is updated accordingly, systematically eliminating all traces of doubt and proving the inaccuracy of the original narrative. Is the witness lying, or has their memory distorted the truth? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that their story has been proven wrong, and the defendant can no longer be considered a suspect.

With Ace Attorney, Miike exploits the idea that visual accounts are inherently more truthful than verbal or written ones to plant a seed of doubt in everything he tells (or shows) us, forcing us and the characters to disregard conjecture and opinion to rely solely on irrefutable evidence when developing our own theories on the crime. This conflict between fact and assumption dominates the film, as defence attorney Phoenix Wright fights a series of uphill battles to prove that his client, rival attorney and former classmate Miles Edgeworth, is not a murderer, even as the supposedly concrete evidence stacks up against him.

Due to the record-high number of crimes being committed, the court system is under severe strain, and has been retrofitted for maximum excitement and efficiency: fought in open court, the prosecution and the defence are given just three days to prove one way or the other whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty before the judge delivers a verdict. Tickets are sold for each trial, and there are no empty seats; hologram boards displaying evidence can be thrown around the courtroom; and huge confetti canons are set off to celebrate the verdict. Attorneys are superstars, fighting off crowds of reporters when entering and leaving the courthouse. This is criminal justice as a spectator sport, favouring speed over diligence and profits over verdicts. Miike enhances the crowd-pleasing side of the process further by positioning the witness stand in the centre of the courtroom, shooting characters head-on with an enthralled audience dominating the background. This contrast suggests the spectators are as important, if not more so, than the fairness of the process, which, considering the excitement surrounding each case, would understandably create a situation of bias - one character, who assumes the defence is “on the criminal’s side,” explicitly states the reason she fabricated her testimony was due to her excitement at being a witness in a murder case.

But, in spite of all the chaos, every lie told in the film is exposed by the frantic investigations of Phoenix Wright. A couple take a self-timed photo together in front of a lake. As the photo is taken they hear a loud noise behind them, and as they check the photo they see what looks like a giant tentacle crashing into the water. The picture is picked up by the media, creating a sensation, and hundreds of people flock to the lake in the hope of seeing the monster - a monster later revealed to be the flailing, deflating arm of a giant, punctured samurai balloon. Images can be deceiving. Fact trumps assumption.