Editor's Note: If you "don't want to sleep" or "can't sleep," read on.
There may be a literary film here, and there may be a horror film here. I don't know if you'll fall asleep or if you'll be scared even more out of bed.
"Japanese audiences just love to watch violent genres and straightforward movies." The final chapter of the "Extremely Evil Non-Taoist" series, "Extremely Evil Non-Dao 3", which was released in Japan on the weekend of October 7-8 last year, attracted 250,000 views and grossed 352 million yen in the two days of release.
Takeshi Kitano not only tasted the good taste of box office victory, but also had a cool sense of shooting. "I just love to make violent movies. In the past, when shooting violence, people said that I couldn't shoot anything but violence, so I stopped for a while. But I wasn't happy at all. Photographing these things tiring me. ”
It's hard to say whether "Takeshi Kitano on Both Sides," "Long Live the Director," and "Achilles and the Turtle" really make Takeshi Kitano tired, but the "Extremely Evil Trilogy" of Shinji's 1970s "Battle without Mercy" series certainly gives him a feeling of being good enough to fly.
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At the most flying moment, he and his companion Ichikawa (Nantomo Omori) swept through the assembly site of the HanabishiKai with a machine gun, single-handedly bloodied the largest Extreme Dao family in Kansai, and finally committed suicide by drinking bullets, playing his game to the end as an outsider.
The Japanese translation of "Extremely Evil And Non-Tao" is "all evil people". As the name suggests, in the three films depicting the faces of the underworld beings, violence and war are "unkind", and every person in the road is an "evil person".
But after watching three films, you will find that this is inaccurate. In addition to Takeshi Kitano himself, the leader of the Ōtomo Group (directly under the second-level organization Ikemoto Group), the second-in-command of the Murase Group of the second-level organization, Kimura (Nakano Hideshi), the second-in-command of the second-level organization Murase, and Kimura's two younger brothers, Shima (Kenta Kiritani) and Ono (Hirofumi Shini), are the molds of the word "righteousness" in Kitano Takeshi's previous gangster works. With "loyalty" alone as the criterion, they tend to be positive.
Therefore, the "Extremely Evil" series is not a complete subversion of the loyalty ethics and brotherhood that Kitano Takeshi has repeatedly praised, as well as the samurai spirit that dates back to a longer time, but to put these things into a whole new era and create the ultimate pain that cannot be achieved by violence.
Born in Takeshi Kitano, Adachi-ku, Tokyo, his elders were basically gangsters. Although his father was a craftsman, he also got tattoos and "did the same thing as the underworld." If you want to go out of Adachi-ku and mix with people, or learn a craft, or join the underworld, there is almost no other way. At that time, kitano's friends almost all joined the gang, but no one climbed to a high position, and half of the friends of the year had died. Fortunately, his mother firmly believed that "education cuts poverty", and her children received higher education and broke away from the shackles of the birth class.
In the future, Whether Kitano Takeshi dropped out of school to become a manga artist in Asakusa, became a variety show host, or began to work as a director at the age of 42 to make gangster films, gangster experience is the theme he has the most handy.
From Takeshi Kitano's childhood, to his international fame for gangster films, to today, the japanese gangster form has changed dramatically.
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Japanese gangsters originated in the Edo period. The Tokugawa shogunate's policy of cutting down the domain led to the decline of the samurai class, and the scattering of ronin and rangers became the basic factors of modern Japanese gangsters.
極道 (Japanese: 極道/ごくどう Gokudō), commonly known as ヤクザ Yakuza, refers to a person or group engaged in violent or organized criminal activities in Japanese society. The common name "ヤクザ" is said to be one of the worst combinations "Yakujiu3" (ヤク) from the Japanese card game Hanaza (play one says "おいょかぶ"). Or it refers to the "servant seat" (ヤクザ), the unit that arbitrates disputes in the township, because the jianghu people are always in dispute. Others say that the underworld is high-profile, like the Kabuki actor "Servant" (やくしゃ), which is transliterated.
During the Edo period, the vendors around the shrine temple fair were called "Yaya" (dedicated to Shinnō the Great, Amaterasu Daijin), and the casino operators were called "Hiroto" (Bongkei Kasuga Kwon- and Hachiman Dai-bodhisattva), and the gods worshipped were different. In the prototype of the underworld organization, the ritual activities still have the shadow of the past "house" and "bo disciple".
They call themselves "Renxia Groups," while the Japanese government and police call them "violent groups." The inability of government departments after World War II led to the rapid expansion of the gang organization. They were partly equivalent to civil defenders of order, and some groups even held volunteer positions in disaster relief in their early years.
Despite restrictions on violent groups (such as banks can't lend them, listed companies can't have any capital and business dealings with them, etc.), Japan is still the only country in the world where gangs are legalized. According to the 1991 Law on The Countermeasures against Violent Groups, violent groups are "groups that carry out anti-social activities in the context of violence and for the purpose of pecuniary gain". Legal violent groups must apply to the Government for formation, known as "designated violent groups".
In the 1960s, these underworld organizations continued to expand by competing for territory, organizing prostitution, racing horses, running shipping and art companies, and the Japanese underworld, with "chivalrous" as the core spirit, gradually evolved into a profit-seeking violent group.
After entering the 1970s, the popular "Renxia films" of the 1960s (the content of which mostly used the confrontation of the etheric knife and pistol to highlight the contradiction between traditional morality and industrial modernization) declined. The bloody brawl of the rising gangsters ended the romantic fantasies of classical Renxia films, and the "real-life gangster films" that showed the japanese gangster fights in a highly realistic way became the mainstream of gangster films in the 70s. Both loyal and cruel and greedy in the old days, Fukasaku Shinji finally made the "War without Mercy" series based on the famous "Hiroshima Protests" in the 1960s.
Takeshi Kitano's "Extremely Evil Non-Dao" series is clearly indicated as a tribute to "War without Mercy".
Today, the morality of maintaining gangsters has been replaced by rules for commercial operations, and the amount of money handed in by the boss is the key to determining the position. If the old qualified leader fails to pay the prescribed amount, he will also be dismissed.
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The "Extremely Evil And Not Tao" trilogy takes place in such an era of "liturgical collapse". Takeshi Kitano plays Otomo, in the first part is the loyal old-school "Yakuza", the second part kills back as an avenger after the banishment, and in the third part, he chooses to self-exile, but still can't resist the impulse of revenge and destruction to stir up the situation again, and finally commits suicide to thank the benefactor.
In addition to the difference in background, another difference between "Extremely Evil" and Kitano Takeshi's previous works is that it is interlocked, the plot is very complicated, and there is almost no usual childish and clumsy atmosphere.
The trilogy follows the iron-blooded rules of the adult world entirely. The first part depicts the plot of the Yamanokai president Kanuchi (Soichiro Kitamura) to provoke his immediate subordinate Ikemoto (Hayabusa Kunimura) to challenge his brother Murase (Renji Ishibashi) to usurp his territory, but in fact wants to destroy both factions. As a third-level cadre, Otomo became a pawn, and all his men and horses were annihilated by the regiment. In the second part, Ōtomo is "resurrected" in prison, and joins forces with his enemy Kimura in the previous episode to fight against the Sannokai, destroy the old Ishihara of "Shimokame", and kill the lord's Hara Wakato Kato (Yukazu Miura). In the third part, Ōtomo is scattered on Jeju Island under the protection of his friend Mr. Jang (Kaneda Toshio), but because his subordinates are killed by Hanata (Taki Masanori), the rising star of the Hanabi Society, he runs to Japan and severely injures the Hanabi Society.
There are many characters in the three films, the plot development is rapid and meticulous, and the physical violence and verbal violence are full of blank space, so that the audience is reluctant to look away for a minute.
The romantic feelings of the gangsters have been purged by the modernist spirit of money supremacy, and the old-school "Yakuza" like Otomo has no place in the system.
The spirit of children's play and brotherhood in previous works such as "Big Guy" and "Sonata" sink into thin lines in "Extremely Evil", looming in the smoke of "struggle".
Takeshi Kitano uses this trilogy to show the audience where the fierce "Kitano Takeshi" in previous films came from. The metamorphosis of an old-school "Yakuza" who adheres to the rules.
Otomo's attitude in the film, starting from Shirase (Masaya Kato) in "The Big Guy", "If you have to die, then die", rebounds more and more strongly in the events. When he gradually saw that the rules of the old days were no longer there, then there was no need to linger on the extreme world, or even on this life, and it was enough to destroy it with a bang.
In the third part, Otomo's revenge is very small - only to kill a small subordinate, but he makes the revenge object pay the greatest price. One of the people who died at the hands of Otomo was not portrayed as a villain, but a small person who had survived the prison and swore to continue to serve the organization with gratitude. He is not far from his former day friend, and both are characters who still uphold the spirit of traditional extreme Taoism. But Otomo took up a gun and killed indiscriminately, which was equivalent to killing his former self.
What is Kitano Takeshi's view of life and death? He has said in interviews in recent years: "Why do we have to live? Why are we dying? What is the concept of death? What defines death? For us, there are still many unknown worlds. ”
Let his brother die, and he himself did not live, and the attitude of Takeshi Kitano to die in the previous film continued to be implemented in the "Extremely Evil And Not Way" trilogy. Since you can't see through life and death, it doesn't matter if you die. Even the destruction of good things will not be saddened, because in the end everyone will inevitably die together.
This attitude, which was "the Tao" in the past, is inappropriate today. But "outlaws" in different times and in different societies invariably have a lasting attraction to good people.
Compared with the repeated praise of "soldiers die for confidants" in Du Qifeng's films, Kitano Takeshi's definition of "confidant" is more inclined to non-interest, non-ambition, and non-spiritual fit, and what needs to be met is only childlike sexual and spiritual harmony.
The characters played by Takeshi Kitano are also often in a state of aimless survival. Born without knowing why, dying without knowing why, although what is encountered is a disaster without delusion, if it is not encountered, it will not be able to do anything good. Therefore, in the end, when the character breaks the game and dies, there will be no sadness of "ambition is not rewarded" in the Chinese tradition, and there will only be the pure sadness of jade fragments projected onto his heart.
Takeshi Kitano likes to use the pendulum as a metaphor for his own creation, one is a comedy, there must be a tragedy, in order to balance. The pendulum has no freedom, but being able to die like Otomo is the greatest freedom that movies can give.