f1shf00d

I finally got to see Audtion (Japanese horror shown at a Sundance festival)-- this has received many glowing reviews, especially for its scenes of torture. So I expected blood and gore, etc. So let me address the torture sequence: the indoor and nighttime portions of the film are grainy (bad transfer?), dark, and mostly red. There appears to be almost no blood (there is the sound of sawing) even though she (the beautiful crazy girl) is sawing a man's foot off. Most of the scene shows the girl bending over her victim pushing acupuncture needles into him while repeating in a little girl voice, "kittykittykitty" seemingly to give a sound effect to the needle going in. She leans into the camera as she describes pushing needles into his eyes, but we never see the action, only the needles sticking out of his face after. The scene is frightening but nothing you can't handle on a small screen. I expected much blood due to some of the reviews (kind of like Funny Games, again with no blood but reviewed as violent)--some movies have a real "yuk" factor, but this one was okay, on a smallish TV, in the daytime.....your mileage may vary....as a funny, tragic "romantic comedy" for the first half of the film, this movie hits so many right notes dealing with man/woman relationships, but then is gets tragic as we see images from the woman's point of view, so that the earlier part of the movie seems much less romantic....

Static Cling

Moving to Movie Talk.

palebluedot

I don't necessarily think anyone here said it was ultra gory. I guess what freaked me out about it was imigining myself in his position...someone sticking a huge needle in my tounge to inject me with something to paralyze my body...then sticking 6" needles into my stomach and under my eyes and then sitting down on top of them. Then using a wire saw to cut off one of my feet and then getting halfway through the other one....but hey...that's just me.

I thought the gore was pretty well done personally.

MrN

I thought it was even more scary because we didn't see the gore. The foot tossed aside and laying there was enough for me - I was ready to chomp my fingernails off.

This film wasn't about gore or 'the "yuk" factor' - there's plenty of slasher films for that. I'm still trying to figure out the dreams and what the story is trying to say. Think I'll go search some old threads.

sundog

The torture scenes are unsettling rather than frightening. I see a similarity to the way David Cronenberg twists/mutilates human forms. There's just an eerie unrealness to it that tells (most of) us "this is wrong."

And to go a little off topic, I caught a screening of Miike's Visitor Q and it essentially blows Audition out of the water in terms of grotesqueness. It's about a Japanese family where all normal insecurities and flaws are amplified to the point of surreal. Surprisingly there's moments of digust mixed in with poignancy and even sweetness. I've only seen two of Miike's films (Audition & Visitor Q). But just from those two (their perverse, exaggerated view on contempory Japan) I see some nice parallels to the works of Spanish master Luis Buñuel.

Supermallet

I've yet to see Audition, but I did see a screening of Miike's Ichi The Killer, which was over the top and outrageous with its gore. Almost all the gore had the audience laughing. Even the bits that made you cringe were so over the top that by the end of the sequence you were cracking up. That film was definitely tongue in cheek, but the ending confused me no end. This isn't surprising, since my friend was confused the whole way through. I had it all figured out, until the end, which is pretty subjective. Still, the confusion did not diminish my enjoyment at all, the whole thing was quite masterfully done. They had copies of Audition for sale at the screening, but I was gonna rent it, since I doubt I'd watch it over and over.

Oh yeah, and the music by The Boredoms in Ichi was great.

Trigger

Hey, if you guys are new to asian cinema and like violence and gore - let me know and I'll suggest some other good flicks.

DVD Smurf

I puked during the feeding scene. I could not handle that she was puking in the dog bowl and then fed then man in the bag her own vomit. I had to gag myself, nevertheless, a very good film.

maxfisher

I just saw Audition last night and thought I'd bump this thread to see if anyone was up for some discussion. Considering some of the stuff given away in above posts, I'm not bothering with spoiler tags.

Ok, I thought the movie had an interesting premise. I also thought the film was well acted and pretty engaging for the most part, especially the first hour. The build up of tension was done at an ominously slow pace, which was refreshing for a change. Despite these positives, as the end credits rolled, I found myself absolutely despising the movie.

My problem was not the torture. The torture, I think, could've worked pretty well had it been more a part of the story. My biggest problem was the leap into the surreal that the director decided to take off and on for the last half hour of the movie. It felt entirely too much like a cheap way out.

Why does the director want us to question whether or not Asami decapitated her stepfather? Why does he want us to question the identity of the two fingered, no tongued puke eater? Why flash back and forth as to whether the torture is reality or a dream? Does he even want us to question these things or was he simply trying to put together a creepy-cool sequence with no thoughts to making it fit within the plot already established by the movie. I'm not one who needs plot-points spoon fed to me, but this movie went way overboard in making sure it's horror was ambiguous. After spending an hour making the audience want to know what's really going on, it's as if the director simply shrugs his shoulders and says "hell, I couldn't figure out a good ending to my story, but doesn't this make you squirm."

When the movie ended I was absolutely positive that there must have been something I missed, something to shed at least the tiniest amount of light on what truly happened within the plot. I brought up the interview with the director that was included on the dvd. They asked him about what he was going for with the film and he said something to the effect of, "I like to make a 60 minute movie with a plot that draws the audience in and then add on an unrelated crazy ending that would be literally impossible to see coming." At that point I hit stop and popped the disk out, the only positive I could concentrate on being the fact that I had rented it and not bought it.

I looked on imdb and it seemed most of the "rave" reviews said basically the same thing.... really slow movie followed by a genius gore ending. I guess I felt exactly the opposite: interesting suspenseful movie followed by an unnecessary foray into contradictory dream sequences punctuated with a torture scene provided merely as an attempt to shock viewers into appreciation. If anyone else has a view different than one of these, I'd be interested in hearing it.

rabbit77

I have nothing to retort to any of the above posts, but I'd like to say that the creepiest scene in the whole film was when Eihi smiled after finally getting the call.

RichC2

I disagree with the views on the movies thus far, and think it was a really well made movie on a whole.



As for Ichi: The Killer (Hillarious, hillarious movie)


-Rich

maxfisher

RichC2, since you started using spoilers, I'll move into spoiler mode for now. In regards to your interpretation:

RichC2

This is actually true to an extent, as it didn't fully make sense to me either at times.



That being said, it could just be me wanting to have a reason for the movie to make total sense - a common habit of mine. For all I know it could have been complete rubbish in the director's mind, but I guess what works in some people's mind works. I dunno. This all being said, I respect Takashi Miike's work, but don't know if there is as large a meaning behind 'em as me and many others would probably like to believe.

That being said, I have only seen this movie on R3 DVD and the subtitles were, well, rather lacking.

-Rich

bobertkay99

First off, to the person who said the torture scene was all a dream, Im sorry but you must be spoiled by all those sitcoms that copout and say it was all a dream ala Bob Newhart. It's obvious that the scenes that occur a moment before he hits the floor and right after he gets drugged is a dream sequence. He's piecing all the info he's gathered together and building a history and solution to the questions and situations he's encountered. The man in the bag is imagined, or is he? Asami sawing her uncle's head off is imagined, or is it? The Dream sequence are the only ambiguous elements of the films. The torture scene was delibratey shot in the manner it was(slow, quiet, simple)to assure the audience that, in the context of the film, this is really happening to him.

tasha88

I thought most of the bad stuff was real, and the happier parts were what the guy imagined. Does this make me a pessimist?

MrN

The dream was just a way for him to escape a situation where he was paralyzed with no hope.

RichC2

*shrugs* I personally enjoy thinking it all really happend, gives me a better satisfaction, it just didn't seem that way. Though it could be because I saw Mulholland Drive a few days after seeing Audition.

Ah well, guess it wasn't a theory laiden as I hoped. That being said, I missed seeing the movie with actual english subtitles last night (Was on Sundance after M), which sucks, but ah well.

sundog

Interesting to see the Lynch comparisons. I think Miike is much more surreal. And by that I mean what Miike does is much more nonsensical than Lynch's fare. Despite the odd images Lynch gives enormous weight to the abnormalities in his film world. To his credit he slyly builds an intricate latticework where each image relates or comments on another.

What I see in Miike (from 2 of his films, Audition and Visitor Q) is a much more playful demeanor. He seems much more willing to let in an odd element or contradiction to just jostle the audience, or lightly add another layer to the film as a whole. And any attempt at explanation is thwarted because that's the essence of surrealism.

What I'm getting at is that it doesn't matter what's a dream and what isn't in Audition. Miike makes the girl a real being, but also a manifestation of the man's guilt. It can be both ways (and even more) and is much more interesting than pigeonholing it into dream or reality.

And as I stated above, Miike comes closer to Luis Buñuel than David Lynch. In both of Miike's films I've seen I was surprised by how well defined the characters became, despite their weird worlds. Buñuel was a master at adding dimension to his characters, they were still the centers of films. Lynch more or less just creates ideas of characters. But then Lynch just turns up juice everywhere else.

TheTalkingFish

I think we should all remember that this movie is based on a book. If the ending is a cheap way out I think the blame should be put on the author and not Miike. Of course I have never read the book so I can't know this for sure.
In the interview on the region 1 disk Miike said he wanted to end the film with

I totally respect maxfisher's opinion though. Anyone who's Username is based on a character in Rushmore is cool in my book!


-Fish

Patman

All I gotta say is that you should never watch this film late at night, and then go to sleep. I had some wacked out dreams of my own last night.

After thinking about the film, I think I'm inclined to go with MrN's take on the film: a lot of it was a man's fervent desire to fill-in-the-blanks of the mysterious girl who does these crazy, torturous, things to him, and when his pain centers finally get the best of him, his minds tricks him into thinking it's just a dream gone awry. If Aoyama, the father, didn't see it first hand in the film, you have to assume it's just his mind filling in the blanks of Asami's homelife/past.

You have to admit that when you fall in lust/love with a new person, your mind does go off in strange ways to imagine what that person is like, where they live, what they do, what they like, etc. Then your mind envisions what it'd be like to have that person in your life, and sometimes, the mind gets ahead of reality. This is that film that explores the darker sides of getting intertwined with a facade of "innocence" that hides a pain that can only be satiated with more pain.

joltaddict

I finally got to watch this. Ungodly good.