A Tentative Review of...Pistol Opera (2001)

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Dir. Seijun Suzuki

Japan

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Regardless of my opinion on Pistol Opera, in terms of visual look, it shows a wise master of enfant terrible filmmaking, fired from a studio who would make unconventional films for making one that went too far, looking at the upstarts that were appearing from Japan at the start of the Millennium and showing them what pure, unadulterated craftsmanship at its most abstract was. A quasi-sequel to his famous film Branded To Kill (1967), which the Nikkatsu Company blacklisted him for, its follows the No. 3 assassin Stray Cat as she goes about in a Guild of Assassins and the No. 1 assassin Hundred Eyes who is eliminating everyone beneath them on mass in the rankings. Combining avant garde performance art, theatre, pop art, manga, euro-guro influence and numerous other aesthetic styles too many to count, Pistol Opera despite its obvious low budget is still the creation of a director who creates distinct films in every frame, where every detail is potent visually when noticed. With a comic book world, with assassins including a wheelchair bound man, and an awkwardly Japanese speaking and knife welding American called Painless Doctor, this maximalist style, despite the fact that many of the scenes, in real locations and sets, are sparse and very theatrical in dressage, is a standout example of production work. I have not seen many of Suzuki’s films, but Branded To Kill and (especially) Kagero-za (aka. Heat-Haze Theatre) (1981) showed decades before this film how talented he is as a director who worked in intentionally abstract worlds onto themselves.

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Unfortunately...I wonder if this will change after a second viewing, the layout of the film known already allowing me to put the pieces together properly and loving the movie, as at this point the content of Pistol Opera is vague and lacks the consistency of its visual design. It is a dense, experimental film which, while having a clear narrative through line, does not conform to conventions of narrative, plotting and character progression. It is comparable to Jean-Luc Godard’s Film socialisme (2010), both vastly different films with different purposes, but both of them are intentionally undermining and playing with the form of film, barrages of images and moments in a stream of consciousness that may connect to the whole work but may instead be designed to be absorbed by its own. Films like this are always, always, difficult at first, and will divide one until one rewatches it to see if anything ‘clicks’ in either direction on the film, but on this viewing it can be argued that Suzuki may have stretched the material a bit too far. Even as pulp welded to experimental cinema, it doesn’t completely work technically. Images can have clear meanings but whether the audience can follow him, regardless of their background, is another matter. Take for example the climax – in a museum of terror full of gruesome paintings (like Goya’s portrait of the god Saturn eating his own children), a mushroom cloud image and choreographed moments with half naked, painted white men that reminded me of the film Jigoku (1960) and its portrait of Hell recreated in a funhouse that had a children’s adventure playground built within the structure as well. What do moments like this mean even if they were aesthetic flourishes designed to affect you on the surface only? This is the issue for me with Pistol Opera in that rather than be dense in concepts, or casual with it abstractness, which can be seen in anything from Luis Buñuel’s The Phantom of Liberty (1974) to the Looney Tunes shorts of Chuck Jones, it presents every moment in an arch way that suggests it is all significant in a certain way. On a first viewing, when you are being as patient as much as possible with its tone and pace, it is exasperating when viewing a film completely fresh and not finding something that fully intrigues you aside from a confused reaction to it. Is this a fallacy on the viewer’s part, or should a film, no matter how unconventional it is, grab any viewer into it by the end without need of a rewatch to clarify if you like it or not? Kagero-za, while having a more elaborate narrative and drama, was just as abstract as this film was when I viewed it a few years ago and it grabbed me on its first viewing immediately by the end credits. It presents to one the issue that patience without understand a film fully is needed but the frustration of the original viewing, and the potential that you may find it to be a bad film by a 50/50 chance on the second viewing, is still a lingering problem that cannot be ignored.

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Pistol Opera, even if I do fall in love with it eventually, is clearly over-indulgent in its length if there is one thing I can say clearly without hesitation. At two hours, the conflict I had with grasping this content, new to my eyes, ears and brain, was heightened by it being two hours long rather than a condensed, ninety minute blast to the skull. It is a very quiet film despite its content, in pace and style, so quiet in pace it still feels like the stereotypical work made by an director in their older years and so quiet in terms of sound and music most of the length that you have to view this film in as silent an environment as possible. The slow pace’s paradoxical place, sleeping alongside, the vivid surrealism and toy guns probably causes more difficulty in trying to grasp the film, more so, as I openly admit, as I thought I would be going into a heart racing explosion of colour and madness from an older director wanting to out-pace the likes of Takashi Miike. Instead it’s leisurely while still being about assassins straight from a Golgo 13 anime if it was crossed with a fashion shot. That is something that needs a lot of patience even if the potential future could lead to me having this film in my top 100 films of all time. That this film is seemingly trying to avoid its plot completely, with long moments of characters moving onscreen to a monologue, in another place with Caucasian Westerners looking at the speaking person sat on top a car, about their love of flags from childhood, and it is drastically different from even Godard at his most obscure in that he at least is blunt and straight-to-the-point with his ideas.

From http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pistolopera5.jpg

The issue now, as stated, is what a second viewing, a third viewing even, will do to Pistol Opera and its relationship to me. All I can say now is that, after it ended, I was disappointed, but writing this I keep thinking of moments out of context, and within it, that actually worked even when I was bored viewing them. I intend to rewatch Pistol Opera again at some point this year, and if I have a differing opinion on it that time, then I will write a second review to replace this one. See this as the thoughts of a first viewing of a film as it is written as, what happens when you find yourself divide by a movie and are stuck in that awful period before another viewing when possible will allow you to finally decide what your opinion on a film actually is totally.

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