Bullet Ballet Review
Shinya Tsukamoto is always and forever going to be known primarily as the director of the intense and intensely strange Tetsuo: The Iron Man. It is a situation that must be both a blessing and a curse for the man. On the one hand he has instant name recognition and instant credibility, but on the other he has progressed so far from the days of his metallic creation that he must feel somewhat restricted by his reputation. Case in point: 1998’s Bullet Ballet. That this film has lain neglected for so long is simply shocking. It is, without question, a masterpiece that would have jetted any other director to immediate international acclaim on the art house circuit but it played just far enough against type for Tsukamoto that it was allowed to slide into obscurity.
Tsukamoto stars as Goda, a director of television commercials who we first meet as he sits in a bar, half drunk after a day at work, listening to his long term live-in girlfriend sing him a tuneless song over his cell phone. Goda staggers home, initially ignoring the ambulances and police cars arrayed around his apartment block until he learns that they are there for his girlfriend who committed suicide by shooting herself sometime after Goda hung up. The shock is immediate. Though he holds himself together at work for some time Goda rapidly slips into an intense state of depression and becomes increasingly obsessive about how his girlfriend got a gun in the first place – no mean feat in a country where fire arms are strictly controlled. It quickly becomes clear that Goda’s ultimate aim is to secure a gun for himself so that he can join his lover in death. Goda’s suicide plan is side tracked when he falls in with a group of street thugs who initially view him as nothing more than an easy mark to torment and rob but whose lives eventually become entwined with his when he intervenes to save a young female member of the gang with a death wish equally the match of his own.
The ‘aimless youth film’ is pretty much a genre unto itself in Japan with well known titles such as Battle Royale, Bright Future and Blue Spring representing only a small portion of the country’s aimless youth output. You could make the argument that Bullet Ballet falls into the genre – the street thugs sequences, particularly the sub-plot revolving around Goto, certainly carry all the hallmarks of the genre – but Tsukamoto takes it a step further. Most films of the type simply ask what the future holds in a world where the youth have no hope and no dreams. By introducing the older Goda into that culture Tsukamoto takes a step – a fairly bleak step – towards answering that question: you get a world where the adults have no hope and no dreams, a world based around simple survival.
Bullet Ballet is easily Tsukamoto’s most linear and straightforward film. It is also the film where he first learned to balance his experimental leanings with true emotional resonance. Written at a time when he was very depressed himself Tsukamoto has here written his first fully fleshed out characters, this is the first film where his characters have functioned as fully fleshed people rather than symbols and images. It gives the film an emotional heft that was often lacking in his earlier work and also lays the groundwork for later efforts such as the dazzling Snake of June and Vital. Known purely as a visual and cerebral director up until this point – I’m disregarding the campy director-for-hire Hiroku the Goblin which, while fun, I don’t really consider a true Tsukamoto film – Bullet Ballet brings in some actual flesh and blood to balance out the visuals. And, oh, the visuals. Shot in a kinetic hand-held style in high contrast black and white Bullet Ballet is nothing short of stunning to look at. Every shot is flawlessly framed and perfectly executed. It is visual art in motion, with every scene – every single scene – staged so well that you could literally pull individual frames at random from the film and create yourself a series of stunning art prints. This thing is just gorgeous to look at.
In my own personal ranking of Tsukamoto’s films Bullet Ballet sits in a tie with Vital, just behind the incredible Snake of June. All three films are dazzling pieces of work, films that would be career-defining for most film makers but I can’t shake the feeling that Tsukamoto hasn’t peaked yet. There is more to come. But, in the meantime, Bullet Ballet is compelling stuff, the work of a master just coming into his own, and absolutely essential viewing.
