Japanese film-maker Tetsuya Nakashima’s films are laced with hyper-stylized aesthetics and intense editing to give us some kind of visceral punch, even when we can’t fully fathom the events unfolding on-screen. His previous films “Kamikaze Girls” (2004) and “Memories of Mastsuko” (2006) concocted drastic and crazy developments in the narrative, although our empathy for the central characters never wavered. With “Confession” (the director’s best film), Nakashima’s exuberance & vigor was channeled into a more refined, slow-burning narrative. However, in “The World of Kanako” (2014), the Japanese director once again takes the pedal-to-metal narrative approach and amplifies his pulpy sensibilities to give us an atypical revenge drama. Hysteric cuts, extreme violence and nihilistic attitude could be encountered at every turn and so once can’t tolerate the film, if they are averted by any one of those elements.
The protagonist in “The World of Kanako” Akikazu (Koji Yakusho) reminds us of Harvey Keitel’s “Bad Lieutenant” character, who
bludgeons and growls at anybody on his path. He is an ex-detective, whose mind
is driven by alcohol and drugs. Akikazu’s wife (Asuka Kurosawa) has divorced
him after beating her secret lover to pulp. The film starts with gruesome
murders of three youngsters in a supermarket and the man who reported the
murders was Akikazu. Considering the former detective’s putrefied mind, he is
also considered as a suspect. Later, Akikazu’s ex-wife calls him in despair,
telling about the disappearance of their teenage daughter Kanako (Nana Komatsu). Akikazu doesn’t even remember how his daughter’s face and have no
good memories about her. We also know that his humanity has been totally
compromised, but still the old detective instinct drives him like a rabid dog
to go search for Kanako. Akikazu’s quest takes us through rancid criminal
underworld, but what we really learn is what an empty-shelled, monstrous pair,
the father and daughter could be.
In an interview, director Nakashima states “the human
feelings of hate and love are not always so far apart”. That statement is often
reflected through Nakashima’s characters. The buried emotion of love makes his
characters to act in different hateful ways. “Confessions” sharply explored how
the rejection of love leads to unbridled hate and how love could drive us to do
despicable things. In “Kanako”, the words ‘love’ and ‘kill’ are repeatedly
juxtaposed to showcase the cycle of love and hate. Like fellow Japanese
film-maker Sion Sono, Nakashima often offers an acidic take on moral decaying
of modern Japan. The narrative delves into the emotionless nature of an older
generation alongside the progressive sociopath tendencies of younger
generation. In “Kamikaze Girls”, Momoko recites “Humans are born alone, live
alone and die alone”, a statement from a 17 year old girl who never had a
meaningful human interaction in her life. In “Memories of Matsuko”, the
protagonist remembers how as a little girl she would make ‘funny face’, since
that is the only thing that made her emotionally rigid father to smile. Matsuko
makes the same ‘funny face’ as an adult to her scum of a boyfriend and gets
beatings.
In “Kanako” too, there are recurrent references to
emotionless parents, placed at both ends of socioeconomic spectrum. Akikazu
comes across a dirty, drug addict mother, who don’t know her son’s whereabouts
and he also encounters a wealthy hit-man, who doesn’t care a bit about the wailing of his little boy. This casual parental negligence itself is exhibited
as some sort of drug, plaguing the contemporary Japanese society. Narrative
wise, “Kanako” seems like re-shuffling of the events written in “Confessions”.
Revenge, bullying, dangerously manipulative teenager, innocent angst-ridden boy
and over caring mother are few of the strands that may thematically connect
both these films. But, unlike “Confession”, “Kanako” is less restrained in
terms of story telling and hyper-stylized in terms of visuals. The aggressive
editing and time jumps in Nakashima’s previous film helped to add a profound
depth to the characters, whereas in this film the motley imagery makes the
characters a bit ludicrous. The story of bullied boy (played by Hiroya Shimizu)
takes up a large chunk of the plot to gradually reveal us the duality of
Kanako, but the boy’s character is written in a way that never makes us
empathize with his plight.
Nevertheless, the biggest flaw that keeps away “Kanako” from
reaching the greatness of “Confessions” is the wantonly nihilistic attitude.
The portrayal of criminal underworld verges on exploitation and the unrelenting
violence in those sequences numbs our sense to a point, where the inherent
social commentary is obliterated. We could certainly understand the Nakashima’s
visual nods to Seijun Suzuki’s “Branded to Kill” & “Tokyo Drifter”, but the
cheerful sense of moral abandon, prevalent in the scene, shies away from adding
any depth to the proceedings. The existential musings and post-modernist
approach of Nakashima would have been benefited more by a Lynchian approach. The
absence of law officials could be understood as the director’s way of
intensifying the moral decay nature of the society, but the snickering, lolly-pop chewing detective embodies the cartoonish characteristics which makes
the societal remarks little blunt or pointless. Still, if the movies don’t go
totally off rails, it is due to wild performance of Yakusho. He plays the
ultimate bastard character who exhibits a vulnerability and sadness, even when
his misogyny and disaffection goes into unnerving territory. Komatsu as the
sociopath teen offers a grounded performance, although everything around her
is so over-the-top.
“The World of Kanako” (118 minutes) relentlessly assaults
viewer’s psyche to offer a meaningful as well as dizzying movie experience. It
is the kind of distressing film that declares oblivion as human’s only fate.
Trailer
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