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Finally saw this, under less-than-ideal circumstances--heavily cut (117 minutes), on a damaged DVD that kept me from accessing some of the middle chapters: but frankly, I don't think I was missin' much. As Videodrome said, it has its moments, but overall it was simply tiring.
I found Ichi lacking in heart (if not entrails). Whereas Audition was visceral, powered by outrage and deep, primal fear, Ichi seemed, from beginning to end, a protracted, remorseless goof. An entertainment, yeah, but primarily for the filmmaker himself. A virtuosic put-on, like the worst sort of clever-clever avant-garde film.
It was marginally interesting as a take on the psychosexual underpinnings of the Batman/Joker relationship, even that seemed dull and obvious: certainly it's been done better elsewhere.
In the film's favor: loved the dizzying, everywhere-all-at-once rush of the closing credits. And the music was fantastic--superbly unsettling.
And there was a visual thing I dug: Miike used a lot of different film stocks and exposures here, but the main narrative thread had a saturate, under-lit look that, coupled with the framing and the grim industrial sets, gave it the feel of a 1970s exploitation film--low-budget and slightly dank. To quote MST3K: "Every frame of this movie looks like someone's last known photograph." |
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