Gozu

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Gozu
Directed by Takashi Miike
Produced by Kana Koido
Harumi Sone
Written by Sakichi Satô
Starring Hideki Sone
Sho Aikawa
Music by Kôji Endô
Cinematography Kazunari Tanaka
Editing by Yasushi Shimamura
Release date(s) Flag of Japan July 12, 2003
Running time 130 min.
Country Japan
Language Japanese
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Gozu (極道恐怖大劇場　牛頭　ＧＯＺＵ Gokudō kyōfu dai-gekijō: Gozu?, literally: Cow's Head) is a Japanese cult film directed by Takashi Miike. Shot on a low budget, Gozu was originally planned for release on DVD but its positive reception at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2003 secured its theatrical release overseas.

Gozu has a reputation for being one of the strangest Japanese films ever filmed, with its ensemble of weird characters and dreamlike storyline approximating the work of the surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel. Of the film, Miike says: "If you were a child and rode on a bike to a place you've never been, you'd feel like it's real but not really real. Gozu is like that. You go to a place you've never been but you don't have to make any sense as to why or how you are there."

Contents

[edit] Style

Improvised "American Wife Scene" from Gozu.
Improvised "American Wife Scene" from Gozu.

The script was written by Sakichi Sato, but during the three-week shoot, Miike gave the actors only their characters' names and occupations. The dialogue and pivotal scenes were improvised, including Ozaki's memorable rebirth. The result is a film that transcends the yakuza movie genre and becomes a stream of consciousness dreamscape.

Gozu is a unique blend of Miike’s brand of visceral irreverence and tongue-in-cheek surreal humor. A particularly interesting scene is the one in which a shopkeeper’s American wife is talking to Minami. Miike later revealed that the revealing of the cue cards was a spur-of-the-moment decision on his part during filming: The actress couldn't recite her lines fluently, and rather than re-shooting the scene, Miike simply decided to milk her poor command of Japanese for comedic effect, further adding to the artificiality of the scene by purposely bringing the camera behind the scenes. This instance of breaking the fourth wall demonstrates the playful absurdity of the movie, juxtaposed with sinister, darker undertones.

[edit] Plot and Sequences

A Dream Sequence from the film.
A Dream Sequence from the film.

Structurally, Gozu is a succession of bizarre scenes sandwiched between a storyline involving Minami’s search for his brother Ozaki that is reminiscent of the episodic quests in Greek Mythology. These scenes are often comedic and disturbing, approaching a sort of cartoonish perversity and gross-out humor that is comparable to the films of John Waters. Some memorable outtakes from the film include:

Yakuza Attack Dog – At the beginning of a film, Ozaki, after stating, deadpan, that everything he is about to say is a joke, warns his boss that the tiny white lap dog a woman is holding out on the sidewalk is actually a specially trained "yakuza attack dog". Calmly, deliberately, Ozaki walks outside, whereupon he proceeds to repeatedly slam the pooch into a bloody pulp.

Milk Factory - The Innkeeper milks her breast into little bottles to be sold. This scene is similar to the infamous lactation scene in another Miike film, Visitor Q.

Cow Head - Minami wakes in an inn to find a Minotaur-like creature clad in underwear that licks his face, covering it with gooey saliva.

Laundered Yakuza Skin Suits - Minami find’s Ozaki’s tattooed torso skinned and hung up among other similar "yakuza suits" in the junkyard.

Soup Ladle – A yakuza boss utilizes a culinary instrument for anal stimulation.

[edit] Themes and symbolism

Homosexuality - Gozu is filled with psychosexual imagery and contains a heavily Freudian subtext. The storyline can be perceived as the allegorical journey of a repressed homosexual, Minami, coming to terms with his attraction to Ozaki amidst an atmosphere of masculine patriarchy. Unable to transgress the male honor codes of the Yakuza, Minami is torn between his respect and sexual attraction for Ozaki, who is a mentor and father figure to him. Unable to accept his homosexuality at first, Minami substitutes Ozaki as a woman and is able to satisfy his sexual urges. After Ozaki’s rebirth, the female Ozaki appears to have shriveled up. With the male Ozaki now present, this other side of his personality no longer seems sexually appealing to Minami. The atypically cheerful ending (“we put her in water and she returned back to normal”) seems to allude that Ozaki’s feminine and masculine side are finally able to coexist: he is able to play the role as both Minami’s mentor and lover.

Split personality – Pertaining to the homosexual subtext and the movie’s focus on Minami, it is not Ozaki who develops a split personality, but rather, Minami, who undergoes two different kinds of relationships - platonic and intimate – with Ozaki. Nose, Minami’s guide through his hellish journey, has a half white face consistent to this theme.

Reincarnation – Ozaki is not reborn once, but twice in the movie. After Minami learns of Ozaki’s fate in the junkyard, he learns that the people who run it have preserved his skin which he then identifies by the shape of penis. Later, he meets Ozaki as an attractive young woman. Ozaki has shed his masculine exterior to reveal his feminine side, and is thus ‘reborn’ as a woman.

Many of Miike’s films (e.g. Dead or Alive 2: Birds, Dead or Alive: Final, IZO, The Happiness of the Katakuris) contain imagery alluding to rebirth. However, in the context of Gozu, the rebirth of Ozaki represents a mental state, as opposed to Izo, which uses this imagery in a grander, existential scheme of things.

Mythological Allusions - In the movie, a road leads into a river, which Minami almost drives into. At this point, Ozaki appears to have ‘died’. The river can be perceived as the river Styx that the dead cross to reach the underworld, befitting the scenes that follow in which Minami seems to be passing a series of challenges with demonic and supernatural figures including a cross-dressing waiter and a mobster who agrees to help Minami in his search if he can answer a sphinx-like riddle.

Femininity – It is useful to note that Minami encounters Cow Head in the inn owned by the middle-aged innkeeper who urges Minami to drink her milk. The cow and the innkeeper alike are over-nurturing mother figures who try to fill in the gap during the absence of Ozaki, the father figure. Minami resists all this and persists in looking for Ozaki.

On the significance of the cow head, Miike also offers the explanation: "The Japanese are a little strange when it comes to religion, wedding ceremonies are Shintoist and deaths Buddhist. In one of these traditions, there is a character known as Gozu who exists between evil and the human world. He's the assistant of evil."

[edit] Cast

Actor Role
Hideki Sone Minami
Sho Aikawa Ozaki
Kimika Yoshino Female Ozaki
Shohei Hino Nose
Keiko Tomita Innkeeper
Harumi Sone Innkeeper's Brother
Renji Ishibashi Boss

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • Sakichi Sato, who wrote the screenplay, also appears in the movie as a bra-wearing waiter. Sakichi Sato also plays the ‘Charlie Brown’ character in Kill Bill.
  • The producers of Gozu originally approached Miike with a more conventional yakuza story. But as the budget was so low, Miike had the freedom to do whatever he wanted.
  • In an attempt to come up with something more spontaneous and outlandish, Miike gave Sato only a week to write a new script without any time to reflect and second-guess himself.

[edit] External links