Suzuki’s Pistol Opera

We’ve discussed Youth of the Beast elsewhere and also over there, and from what I’ve read that’s the film where Seijun Suzuki blasted out of the action genre expected by his studio bosses and into some hyperstylized visual poetry assonant but not consonant with a tough-guy crime thriller. Or, put plainly, it has all the markings of a crime movie but feels like a species entirely alien.

And his films got stranger from there. I just watched the fairly-recent Pistol Opera which seems wholly unconcerned with narrative coherence, instead riffing on gorgeous, gorgeous, silly and stark images. To call this a crime film will steer people wrong; instead, imagine a pop-art reiteration of everything a crime movie might have, including quasi-professional assassin guilds, rivalries between top-ranked killers, and lots of tough-guy and tough-dame patter. It’s glorious to watch, even though I couldn’t pretend to know how one would “make sense” of the film.

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