Another trilogy that was a long time coming, even if one of the films is decidedly not a horror film in the slightest possible definition of the term!
The Taisho Trilogy, part one!
During his time at Nikkatsu, there was always the sense that Seijun Suzkui always wanted the opportunity to really cut loose in a way that the genre programming he was so famously prolific for really wouldn't allow him to be, at least up to a certain point. By the end of his tenure with the studio, one did get the sense that he had effectively done everything he could to skirt around anything his superiors required to be present in their films to be released while also pushing well past the boundaries for something even more distinctive than he had already been doing with his close network of collaborators withing the company. Thus came a string of truly astonishing pictures that could almost barely qualify as the genre films that they were supposed to be with how much they broke past their confines with Suzuki's guiding hand, leading to the likes of
Tokyo Drifter,
Fighting Elegy, and certainly
Branded to Kill that never made it easy to grasp everything they were going for, but their artistic qualities were undeniable and truly unique, leading to generations of filmmakers all over the world to realize that there could be so much more to be done with even the most sturdy formulas to breathe so much life into them. Though famously fired for going too far by the studio's standards and subsequently blacklisted for fighting for his proper compensation and for the right for the film fans to be not be impeded on their appreciation for a filmmaker's works, no one this talented and distinct would let anything short of death stop them from making a comeback.
And what a comeback he had for the world to see, as going fully independent and no longer being bound by genre and convention allowed him to unleash two-and-a-half hour ghost story like no one had ever seen before, no longer shackled by studio walls and spilling out into the natural beauty of the nation, indoors and outside, risking being outright indecipherable with its layers of abstraction that put up barriers for even the most scholarly of viewers as its complexity is truly intimidating. At its core, the story centering on two polar opposites in personality of Aochi, the film's occasional narrator, has his mild manners tested by the more explosive temperament of Nakasogo is an easy enough premise to buy into, as the one-time colleagues keep managing to involve themselves in each other's affairs as their shared bonds over the titular Sarasate composition and in particular the recording Nakasogo owns in which the composer's voice can be heard yet nearly impossible to make just what he actually says. But it's that important detail that powers the film throughout its duration, with half-remembered memories and true temporal distortion surrounding each of the players as their lives ebb and flow, yet never seem truly all that different as time is at a standstill as the focus on the two households practically hides much of any trace of an outside world, beyond the ones contained inside the memories of each of the protagonist's as they themselves can't seem to ever quite recall. Further adding to the mystique is the character of Koine, or is it Sono, as the women that binds both men in their own ways as she herself seems to shift personalities and appearances when it suits her best, adding further to the sense of disorientation as the film deals more and more exclusively with dream logic as it progresses.
And Suzuki lost little of his touch as a director over the period where he wasn't working on anything major for features, with his eye always managing to capture the more unusual shape of the frame, as well as his gift for unexpected theatricality making for some genuinely jaw-dropping "transitions" during conversations that happen in the same frame without losing a single step with how well he's able to communicate the distance without ever having to go that far to relate it. As often was the case with his films, especially towards the end of his Nikkatsu run, you very much had to feel your way through them as the method inside the madness isn't always apparent yet is bubbling just under the surface for you to find, making even the most audacious moments throughout that are classic tricks in his bag all the more fascinating to follow when they're no longer in service of spicing up what would have been ho-hum potboilers before his intervention. This Taisho era piece truly feels like its own world, even with the period affectations that call out its origins, and almost as if Suzuki's own childhood memories of living through the final years of its reign were far more informative than the need to pour hours of research into getting it right by historical standards. Though not strictly a horror film by any standard we use the term, there's little doubt that the sense of supernatural dread that hangs over the film before we do get something more seemingly explicit is a great use of Suzuki's talent to create a palpable atmosphere from even the most modest material, and when that's combined with the richness he's playing around with here, there's a lot to recommend even before the first hour is up, let alone the rest of it.
It's a dense film throughout its entirety, one that may drive more away than attract with its unyielding sense of artistic drive that can flirt with being truly impenetrable, but it's doubtless that one isn't at least able to appreciate that Suzuki put everything he had into creating the kind of film that no longer had to be shackled by anything other than his own imagination. As a longtime Suzuki fan myself, diving right into the deep end in my final days of high school by buying
Branded to Kill blindly with the hopes of seeing something I hadn't seen before (and was it ever), putting at least this film for as long as I did does make me feel like a much bigger dummy than trying to grasp absolutely everything that the film is all about, as I would at least have the excuse of cultural barriers preventing a 1:1 connection as it would for others. I do suspect though that even the most educated critics of the film out there, who have forgotten more about film than I'll ever know, would also admit that there's a level of inscrutability that remained with Suzuki through his passing in 2017, and I'd also say that even he wasn't terribly interested in having it all be so clear in the first place. Letting yourself get washed over by the film is clearly the intention, and as you find yourself floating among all its seeming debris that may eventually collide and merge into a greater whole, don't be too surprised if you find yourself "getting it" the more you let go of having to understand everything about it. Extraordinary in almost every sense of the term that can be applied, and very much worth the belated viewing and then some.
The Taisho Trilogy, part two!
Releasing a mere year after
Zigeunerweisen, it's tempting to think that Suzuki would have been content to do just more of that, but for a man that made 40 films in the span of 12 years and managed to not repeat himself all that often in spite of the constraints imposed on him, one would be quite wrong in their assertion that he didn't have an entirely brand new set of tricks ready to go with his follow-up. Leaning far more heavily into the theatrical aspect, this more explicitly ghostly Taisho tale finds our hero (played by superstar Yusaku Matsuda) as he finds himself utterly bewitched by a strange woman that proves to be nothing he expected her to be. Is she the woman of his dreams, or an apparition of another man's wife, or perhaps something else altogether? Answers do surprisingly show up before the end, but they seldom matter as Suzuki dives even deeper into the realm of pure sense in an another epic that seems to take place way outside anything that could ever be considered conventional reality, even as it makes more and more nods to the changing times and modernization of the era than his previous film did. In grounding the film, he found a way to make it even more surreal by the time it concludes.
With its more indoor-set locations, Suzuki creates a kind of reality that undoubtedly owes much to the stage, fitting for a protagonist whose occupation is that of a playwright, making great use of the stagey nature of the sets to catch you off guard with the abstraction that can ensue. Though it's still not quite a proper horror film in that sense, the way everything plays out ascends to even more jarringly abstract heights, as the episodic approach to Matsuzaki's journey to find the woman of his dreams offers up plenty of opportunity to make extremely hard lefts in right-turn lanes. Boasting a larger cast as well for the journey, there are points where one might be wondering just what the film is getting as with the seemingly unrelated interludes, only for the crucial element of those scenes to figure prominently later on in creating the growing nightmare that's playing before our eyes as we sink deeper and deeper into this new kind of abyss. And arming itself with a set of false climaxes that do feel like that the story is coming to a head at several points does well to grow the sense of dread that hangs over all of the principals as we realize just how deep the rabbit hole gets, with embers and flames intensifying as we go further down.
And once we reach the bottom, we're treated to a stunning extended climax that breaks the walls down even further as the stage itself becomes the new stage, revealing the story of one lost soul that finds itself splitting into two as our leads look on in confusion and horror as any and all semblance of their normal life comes crashing down as they can no longer see the way back to where they once came from. Here, Suzuki is perhaps at the height of his expressionistic powers as the children's play gets interrupted by the growing need for our heroes to get answers at long last, only for both worlds to be merged on a permanent basis and having it quite literally fall down all around them as they now sift through any wreckage to find any pieces to put back together again. But even home is no longer home again, with graphic tapestries replacing the natural sights, putting them in a kind of hell that no one could have imagined as they look at their own fates and collapse into a heap of nerves as they laugh at the sheer absurdity of the horrors that await them as their games come to an end at long last.
Needless to say, I found myself bowled over by the boldness that Suzuki put on display here as everything comes to a head for a jaw-dropping conclusion that takes no prisoners. It's a film that does, on one level, make more immediate sense than the more abstract leaning of the previous film, yet it somehow manages to raise more disturbing questions that it leaves you to answer for yourself, making for a most disquieting experience you will have to grapple with little to no help. The fever pitch this manages to reach is both the logical conclusion to everything that came before, and also an audio-visual overload like few others out there, making its case for being as terrifying as any purer horror film out there. Suzuki knocked it out of the park yet again, as the on-screen collapse is so visceral and vivid that it might have you checking your own walls to make sure they don't fall to reveal the stage behind them.
The Taisho Trilogy, part three!
Unsurprisingly, this is the one that had the absolute least to do with being a horror film at all, as Suzuki takes the opportunity to do his idea of a biopic on the famous poet/artist Yumeji Takehisa, but seeing as it is a part of the trilogy and we had already gone through the first two films in their entirety, there was no reason not to leave it unfinished. And hey, it's got a lot of creepy stuffed crows in it, so there's that going for it! There is, though, a definite obsession with death itself that pervades the film as Yumeji mortal fear is dying before his time is up, an irony not lost on Suzuki as the real life Yumeji did die relatively young with several life goal unfulfilled. Through his treatment, Yumeji winds up a kind of rock star for the Taisho era, a fact made more explicit by casting former rocker Kenji Sawada (an always welcome presence in any film he's appeared in), one that enjoys notoriety he's cultivated while also being deeply concerned about the recurring dream he has about being shot to death in a duel with another man he has yet to identify or perhaps meet at all. Suzuki doesn't so much dial down his approach as he adapts them to suit the more mortal tale he's telling here, as the many women in Yumeji's life form what feels like the whole of his existence as each of them bring with them a perspective that informs both his personality and his work.
Straightforward as the progression of the story comes across in comparison to the previous installments of the trilogy, it is nevertheless rooted in the same kind of extreme theatrical presentation as those films, with each episode playing out with a feverish intensity as Yumeji scrambles around for the next big shot of inspiration for his his works while trying to stay ahead of the proverbial reaper. His latest find, a seeming widow, seems to hold the key for both his next great work as well as a hint as to what might be haunting his own dreams, as the film does well to make the hanging obsession he has for the widow be nice driving force for him as he juggles the other women in his life. Though hardly the first film of Suzuki's with a feminist streak, the tapestry that they weave as the key to Yumeji's life is hard to deny, and the film does it without robbing them of their agency and independence as they're all treated as equals, as they become impossible to separate from the works themselves. The other side of the coin lies in what happens when Yumeji's recurring is at long last given flesh, with trilogy regular Yoshio Harada making for a nice dastardly presence as a villain of a kind.
Comparatively speaking, the film's linear progression isn't as fit for the kind of dreamlike quality the previous installments possessed as they didn't feel any compulsion to fit into conventional reality, but that doesn't mean that Suzuki doesn't manage to tell a rather compelling story here in an unconventional way all the same. With Yumeji's artwork weighing heavily on his mind, even going as far as physically manifesting themselves when we least expect them to, Suzuki's appreciation for the artist at work was clearly a subject after his own heart and allowed him to convey some of his own processes in finding an analogue in a great artist that helped to close out that era. The visual flourishes are all in plentiful supply here, and despite the sense of impending mortality throughout, combining those touches with something of a more slice-of-life vibe actually works in its favor for a film that's much more pleasant than you might expect. A cozy conclusion to a strong thematic trilogy, and though Suzuki's health would prevent him from doing too many more films after this one, it's hard not to imagine how satisfied he was with how these all came out.
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