Too many creases to Iron out here... (Tetsuo (DVD))

Member Name: Wolfzilla

Product:	Tetsuo (DVD)
Date:	28/01/09 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well Made, expecially when the tight budget is taken into account

Disadvantages: Content is terrible

Tetsuo is a movie I have meant to get around to seeing for a long time. It's been much touted by generally everyone who has seen it as everything from live action anime, live action Akira to the Japanese Eraserhead. Given my liking for Godzilla and Martial Arts movies, I oft find myself reading about Asian films, and one that always comes for praise is this ultra-low budget Black and White film from director Shinya Tsukamoto.

Trying to talk about the plot of the movie will be tough, generally because their isn't much to talk about. A Japanese Metal Fetishist(Shinya Tsukamoto - Ichi the Killer) inserts a rusty pipe into a gaping leg wound, and while in pain is knocked down by a Taxi Driver(Tomorowo Taguchi - Gamera 2:The Advent of Legion). The taxi driver starts to go through physical changes, as metal parts start to sprout from him and he is chased from the subway by a girl with a clawed metal hand(Nobu Kanaoka - Tokyo Fist).
He is also having odd dreams about his girlfriend(Kei Fujiwara - Organ) sporting a huge drainpipe phallus sodomising him. Their real life relationship takes a turn for the worse as his phallus turns into a huge drill-bit mid intercourse, and he starts to degenerate further into some sort of mechanical monster. Then, the fetishist reappears, more than a little annoyed about being knocked down, and itching for a scrap...

At least thats about as much as I got, the movie is essentially a 65 minute series of peculiar images and situations sort of welded together in a way that makes very little sense. While Im sure the art crowd will love it's off-the wall nature, and a lot of people herald it as a classic. Personally I wasn't much impressed at all by it's flippantly disjointed nature and lack of any attempt at characterisation. There is very little dialogue spoken, but strangely I don't even think that's where the biggest problem lies, it's more with Tsukamoto's constant attempts to (unsucessfully in my case) shock viewers with as many scenes of random outrageousness as possible. While he does make some nice use of Sam Raimi style camera, as he pioneered in the Evil Dead, but on the whole I just found the film boring. There is a message buried in it somewhere, about how society is heading, people turning into machines and such, but its conveyed in such a ridiculous manner that the most positive reaction this movie can even hope to extract from the viewer is laughter. People often make a lot of the gore in the movie, but personally I didn't think it was all that bad. The scene of the fetishist installing the pipe into his leg was pretty gruesome, less due to the visuals of it, and actually more down to the way Tsukamoto plays it.
The climatic battle between the two machine/men is also pretty uninspiring. Lots of sped up first person camera and the same type of sped up movement of the characters while they don't actually move their feet.

The performances, what little there are of them, are generally of a high standard. All the actors generally do well with the tiny scraps of character they are given, which doesn't really say much, but nobody's acting offended me, and on the whole I guess this means their performances were decent, with as little character as their roles had, Im not sure even a collection of the world's best actors could have done anything productive. As Im often blurting out, Im not keen on the whole reviewing subtitled actors performances, but given each character has about 7 lines each, I don't feel so bad about this judgement.

The film is shot to a pounding techno soundtrack that suits the movie perfectly. At least if you listened to the soundtrack and watched the movie sans sound you would feel this, but I feel the music is used at the wrong times. The really pounding stuff should have been used for the dramatic scenes, whereas it occasionally just plays during some of the random scenes. In the few instances that the soundtrack is used wisely, the results are superb.

Considering that the movie was made on a shoestring budget, the special effects in Tetsuo are surprisingly good. All the transformation effects look pretty damn realistic, with the only fault coming from the fact the design of what the characters turn into is garbage. Had a proper design been implemented with these effects, they really could have been on to a winner, instead, all Im left with is a feeling that if Tsukamoto ever gives up on directing, he could do a decent job in special effects.

On the whole, I really do not see where people are drawing all of these glowing recommendations of Tetsuo from. Admittedley, Im not at all a fan of David Lynch, and a lot of people are keen to liken this to his work, but I just don't really see where people were drawing any sort of entertainment from. I once read a review that stated that this was more a superb student film than the cult classic it's made out to be, and I wholley agree with this view. Tsukamoto can clearly make films, his effects,camera work and general production values are superb, especially when the low budget is taken into account, however, this doesn't make for a particularly enjoyable experience, and not a film Im too proud to have paid a decent amount of money for on DVD.

It's the well done production that saves Tetsuo from getting a minimal score, however, it caused me a lot of grief if I should recommend it or not. While I feel the film's qualities are an excellent example to people of how a minimal budget, if used properly, can look very good, the actual content of the film itself really isn't worth it unless maybe David Lynch fans want to check it out in order to see how they feel it compares. So, I don't regret having seen Tetsuo, I just kind of wish I hadn't paid for the privelidge. I settled on dishing out a 'No', basically because I have absolutely no motivation to ever watch Tetsuo again. While I have said this about films and still gave them a recommendation, they all had at least one thing to inspire me to watch them again, Tetsuo simply doesn't.

Summary: Only for fans of the very weird, and those looking to see how to make a good amateur movie.