One of the more thrilling film experiences I had in the last ten years took
place in my small apartment in Taiwan sometime during 1997. Flipping the
channels, I came across a Japanese film right at the beginning, just as the Toei
studio mark of waves crashing on rocks appeared. However, the sound of waves was replaced by a screeching tone. This segued to a sequence which puts you on a
subway train gazing at a slight, attractive, yet hard-faced young woman with long black hair. Two men in suits make a surreptitious attempt to apprehend her. Without missing a beat she slashes one of them across the face with a knife and flees. Just as she's getting off the train, the other man handcuffs her to himself as the subway doors close, she's on the platform while he remains on the
train. With three slashes of her knife she severs his arm and swings it in the air furiously, then freeze frame: music plays and the credits roll. The maniacal, surreal tone rendered by this outlandish violent act is underlined by the subsequent montage when we see her running through the streets of Tokyo with
the severed arm swinging by her side. The arm almost becomes a dreamlike abstraction, is it indeed a disembodied limb or is it a boneless ham fresh from the market? We have thus been ushered into a realm of hyperbole and rage.
Via Metafilter
No comments:
Post a Comment