GOZU (Takashi Miike); DVD
$28.00
GOZU (Takashi Miike); DVD
Surreal DVD (2003)
Takashi Miike’s stark, “Yakuza Horror Theatre” presentation Gozu (2003) is an infernal cinematic nightmare of fear and anxiety, played out within a sepia-toned subterranean underworld abstracted to the point of outright parody. Like many of the director’s more personal and idiosyncratic pictures, the plot is largely secondary to the uncomfortable atmosphere and wild sense of spectacle presented on screen, as Miike constructs an absurd and enigmatic story of a loyal Yakuza henchman struggling with issues of homosexuality, guilt and desire when he is required by his boss to “dispose” of his mentally unstable brother in arms. This incredibly personal and moral dilemma – in which the central character must juggle the greater notions of loyalty to his boss and the loyalty to his best-friend and mentor-like figure that he’s obviously quite attracted to – creates a rift within the world of the film that plunges the whole story into suffocating surrealism, horror and the absurd.
