Sukiyaki Western Django

You want to hear a funny story about Takashi Miike?

Once upon a time, when I was a naive young movie snob, I had never heard of Takashi Miike. I was happy. I lived in a little house in a little town, across the street from my best friend, Dave. One Sunday, as I puttered around, looking for something to do, my friend crossed the street for a visit. "I can't stay," he said, "but I brought you something." He handed me a dvd he had burned. "Kristin and I watched it. I think it's...artistic." Then he left, and I looked down at the dvd in my hand, at the handwritten title: Audition.

When people hear this story, people who have seen Audition, they are amazed that Dave and I are still friends. They question my judgment. Sometimes they question whether I should still be friends with Kristin, since she could probably have known, and warned me.

Later that day, after I had watched the movie, Anna came to visit, and I remember her look of concern when she saw my face. "Are you okay?" she asked. Well, no, not really.

Audition might not be the scariest movie I have ever seen, but it definitely belongs on a short list of the most disturbing. Audition sneaks up on you (I can only speculate, but I suspect this would be true even if you knew its reputation beforehand), because the story is so ordinary, and then suddenly, without warning, extraordinary.

I don't really mean to talk about Audition, but the truth is that having seen a few (maybe half a dozen) of his myriad films, I still always think of Audition as the Miike yard stick, because Audition does so well what it sets out to do, which is cause anxiety.

Sukiyaki Western Django does not aim to disturb. It belongs somewhere in the family of genre-exploding films, playing on the themes of B-westerns, but very much in the Tarantino mold* (as opposed to, say, the Kurasawa mold, or the Coen bros). This sort of film (Kill Bill, Death Proof), smirkingly points out that what we are dealing with is a traditional form, and leaves it at that. After watching these movies, a person doesn't come away with the sense that something has been said about that tradition (in this case, the western). If you love westerns, it is probably entertaining enough to recognize the homages and roll with the formula, and allow the movie to make up in style what it lacks in substance.

I guess Sukiyaki Western Django does what it sets out to do. I'm just not sure that what it sets out to do is all that interesting.

*and with his participation, including a quite hard to watch recurring cameo