Shinya Tsukamoto, who wrote, directed and starred in this nightmarish meditation on self destruction, pain, and anger shows us a Tokyo inhabited solely by thugs, broken men, and speed freaks whose only purpose is to prey upon one another. Like the increasingly obsessive behavior and general derangement that Goda (Tsukamoto) slides quickly into following his lover’s suicide, the city exists only to consume itself, a spawning ground of cancerous hate and violence where there is no love, no trust, and no hope.
In fact, after Goda transforms himself from masochistic maniac in search of some vague revenge against not only the gang he holds responsible for his girlfriend’s death, but also against himself for his utter lack of comprehension as to why she killed herself, to a hero who tries to protect the very same gang from a hitman, once it’s over, the only response that he and the girl in the gang he’s helping are able to express is to literally run away from one another as fast as they can.
In Goda’s world, amidst all the horrors the inhabitants perpetrate against one another, the scariest thing of all is emotional attachment. A fear of intimacy and how to handle those feelings runs throughout the film and Bullet Ballet remains steeped in unrelenting alienation from beginning to end. Luckily, I live in America which too freaking free to have problems like this!
Goda works in the business world making commercials, seemingly unaffected by the hellish vision of Tokyo the movie portrays until he returns home one night after drinking to find that his girlfriend has committed suicide.
They had been together for ten years, had never married or had children and despite Goda’s recollections and assertions that that was how she wanted things, the movie takes every opportunity to lay the blame at his feet.
From the comments the police investigators make about it, to the sermon from one of the thugs beating him up, and most obviously from the punishment he inflicts on himself, he is indicted as the most monstrous type of city dweller – a self-centered slug oblivious to the pain of those closest to him.
Struggling to come to grips with what has happened, Goda is unable to express the range of powerful emotions roiling inside in a healthy manner and ends up intent on destroying everything he can.
His existence now hinges solely on obtaining a gun, the type used by his dead girl in her suicide, and exterminating the gang she was somehow mixed up with.
Apparently in Japan, they have stricter gun laws than we do in the United States (i.e. they have gun laws) because the lengths that Goda goes to lay his hands on his piece are quite substantial and take him into the heart of the most inhuman parts of Tokyo.
Switching packages on train platforms, having pieces of the gun made here and there, and trawling the Internet for tips on how to illegally make a gun are all part of Goda’s journey that further removes him from a normal existence.
The first part of the film is the most accessible despite it being the most disturbing. The stark black and white photography, the studiously jittery camera work, and the rapid fire editing effortlessly evoke the sense of unreality that Tsukamoto wants us to see Tokyo existing in. This isn’t a city so much as the apocalyptic landscape of a man’s mind, warped into a dream-like state by both outside forces and his own fallibilities.
Dull rage is all that Goda is at this point, seeking to kill and not caring if he himself is killed in the process since every bit of what he once was is already dead. Or he may just be sad that his girlfriend is dead. I’m not Japanese, so who knows?
The second part of the film though sees a subtler shift in tone as Chisato, the female member of the gang reaches out to him for help once she gets into trouble. She’s barely able to get the words out before Goda says he’ll do it. How does this fit into Tsukamoto’s cold, inhuman universe? How the hell should I know? It’s Tsukamoto’s bad dream! Do I look like his analyst?
Perhaps in this crazy screwed up world, a crazy screwed up guy will grasp at whatever bit of humanity yet remains within him. Maybe he sees a kindred spirit in the elfin, drug-addled Chisato because they both have bite marks on their hands.
Or Goda could still be looking for a purpose once he figures out that wiping out all existence doesn’t fulfill the empty spot inside himself. But this is precisely what happens when you live in a repressed society that doesn’t glorify violence and allow unfettered access to weapons like the United States.
In the U.S., Goda wouldn’t be so obsessed with getting a gun because he could just walk down to the local pawnshop and buy one, thus surpassing the seamy underbelly of the streets that draws Goda into its twisted mentality.
Though it could be said that the film loses its way as it makes that right turn from “guy going nuts” plot to “guy helping out girl” plot, this unpredictability plays into Tsukamoto’s vision of Tokyo as a dream-like place (one of the characters even explicitly says this about Tokyo) where anything is possible and where battle lines are as amorphous and unreal as everything else.
Only when Goda eagerly accepts his role as just another piece of human meat to be added to this stew of urban despair is he able to find meaning, if only momentarily, as once it’s finished he ends up right where he started – alone.
Tsukamoto presents the modern city as a tapestry of apocalyptic images, each successive one further forging its citizens into dehumanized parodies of themselves until they’re reduced to solely physical presences, mindlessly running and crying in the aftermath of what their modern world has turned them into. That we are the architects of this nightmare world only makes it all the more unsettling and the movie that much more hypnotic.
There’s not much fun to be had in Tsukamoto’s dream world, but it’s an arresting display of how even in the nastiest city imaginable, the worst squalor is in your own mind.
© 2011 MonsterHunter
