ICHI THE KILLER

[Giacomo Calorio]

I'm wondering if Ichi's character is really the main character or not.
What's Jiji? Is he God? So maybe Ichi should be the Adam and the movie
is the tale of Man, a living being who acts and suffers without knowing why?
Uhm... it seems quite strange for a Japanese director. But I think the
whole movie should be seen in Jiji's perspective, not in Ichi's one.
Kakihara is looking for the Real Sadist, that is the man who makes
people suffer without reason. This is not Ichi, but Jiji. Why Jiji
hypnotise everybody making them collapse against each other? (I mean
Ichi, Kakihara, the chinese girl, the yakuza who sees Jiji as a brawny
man...).


It's just my personal opinion and I'm not so sure about it.

bye

Giacomo Calorio


PMB> I disagree with Fabio.

PMB> Gore, cartoon, excesses, blood: sure, there's all that.
PMB> But I think the spectator has not to be embarassed or confused from that,
PMB> but from the extreme abstraction of the movie itself. This is quite odd.

PMB> It's a film about loss, the desire of love that's pain and masochism
PMB> nowadays, and the impossibility to reach it, the heredity of violence and
PMB> its ineluctability (as seen in Rainy Dog and City of Lost Souls), the
PMB> failure of everyone's role.
PMB> And it's a great film about the futility of violence: when the most powerful
PMB> man in the world is a poor guy that cries and acts in a hypnotic state, and
PMB> the ones that WANT and pretend and live like the thoughest men around (the
PMB> yakuza) are small chickens compared to him, it means that's a world where
PMB> the roles are completely wrong, and pure surface.

PMB> The last 20 minutes are incredibly sad.

PMB> This is not a cartoon, or a splatterfest. It's a sort of an accomplishment
PMB> of Fudoh, and a film that's genetically pessimistic and universally tragic.

PMB> Also, of course, it's technically outstanding: Miike is the proof of how use
PMB> different technical 'tools' with meaning in the sense of the lot, without
PMB> sounding cool or up-to-date or anything to please the young arthouse crowd
PMB> (read, for example, Iway Shunji), and being simultaneously beautifully cool,
PMB> in a very 'right' way.

PMB> Cheers,
PMB> Pier Maria Bocchi