CULTJAPAN!

Gozu is a 2003 cult movie directed by Takashi Miike. Shot on a low budget, Gozu was originally planned for release on DVD but a positive reception at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2003 secured its theatrical release overseas.

Gozu has a reputation for being one of the strangest films ever made, with its ensemble of weird characters and dreamlike storyline.

The script was written by Sakichi Sato, but during the three-week shoot, Miike gave the actors only their characters’ names and occupations. The dialogue and pivotal scenes were improvised, including Ozaki’s memorable rebirth. The result is a film that transcends the yakuza movie genre and becomes a stream of consciousness dreamscape.

Gozu is a unique blend of Miike’s brand of visceral irreverence and tongue-in-cheek surreal humor. A particularly interesting scene is the one in which a shopkeeper’s American wife is talking to Minami. Miike later revealed that the revealing of the cue cards was a spur-of-the-moment decision on his part during filming: The actress couldn’t recite her lines fluently, and rather than re-shooting the scene, Miike simply decided to milk her poor command of Japanese for comedic effect, further adding to the artificiality of the scene by purposely bringing the camera behind the scenes. This instance of breaking the fourth wall demonstrates the playful absurdity of the movie, juxtaposed with sinister, darker undertones.

Structurally, Gozu is a succession of bizarre scenes sandwiched between a storyline involving Minami’s search for his brother Ozaki that is reminiscent of the episodic quests in Greek Mythology. These scenes are often comedic and disturbing, approaching a sort of cartoonish perversity and gross-out humor that is comparable to the films of John Waters. Some memorable scenes from the film include:

Yakuza Attack Dog – At the beginning of a film, Ozaki, after stating, deadpan, that everything he is about to say is a joke, warns his boss that the tiny white lap dog a woman is holding out on the sidewalk is actually a specially trained “yakuza attack dog”. Calmly, deliberately, Ozaki walks outside, whereupon he proceeds to repeatedly slam the pooch into a bloody pulp.

Milk Factory – The Innkeeper milks her breast into little bottles to be sold.

Cow Head – Minami wakes in an inn to find a Minotaur-like creature clad in underwear that licks his face, covering it with gooey saliva.

Laundered Yakuza Skin Suits – Minami find’s Ozaki’s tattooed torso skinned and hung up among other similar “yakuza suits” in the junkyard.

Major Themes and Symbolism in Gozu

Split personality – Pertaining to the homosexual subtext and the movie’s focus on Minami, it is not Ozaki who develops a split personality, but rather, Minami, who undergoes two different kinds of relationships – platonic and intimate – with Ozaki. Nose, Minami’s guide through his hellish journey, has a half white face consistent to this theme.

Reincarnation – Ozaki is not reborn once, but twice in the movie. After Minami learns of Ozaki’s fate in the junkyard, he learns that the people who run it have preserved his skin which he then identifies by the shape of penis. Later, he meets Ozaki as an attractive young woman. Ozaki has shed his masculine exterior to reveal his feminine side, and is thus ‘reborn’ as a woman.

Mythological Allusions – In the movie, a road leads into a river, which Minami almost drives into. At this point, Ozaki appears to have ‘died’. The river can be perceived as the river Styx that the dead cross to reach the underworld, befitting the scenes that follow in which Minami seems to be passing a series of challenges with demonic and supernatural figures including a cross-dressing waiter and a mobster who agrees to help Minami in his search if he can answer a sphinx-like riddle.

Femininity – It is useful to note that Minami encounters Cow Head in the inn owned by the middle-aged innkeeper who urges Minami to drink her milk. The cow and the innkeeper alike are over-nurturing mother figures who try to fill in the gap during the absence of Ozaki, the father figure. Minami resists all this and persists in looking for Ozaki.

Of Gozu, Miike says: “If you were a child and rode on a bike to a place you’ve never been, you’d feel like it’s real but not really real. Gozu is like that. You go to a place you’ve never been but you don’t have to make any sense as to why or how you are there.”

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Gozu“.