Wild Life

You have to think that the huge international success of his serious drama Eureka has been something of a mixed blessing for Japan's Shinji Aoyama. It has brought him international recognition, yes, but has also led to a good amount of confusion as people dig into his back catalogue expecting more serious arthouse drama. What many don't realize is that the straight forward Eureka is an aberration for Aoyama. Much like his friend and mentor Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Aoyama is a genre film maker at heart. A subversive genre film maker, true, but one steeped in genre convention nonetheless.

Wild Life - an early Aoyama offering being brought to the western world for the first time thanks to Artsmagic's DVD release - is a sly, deadpan crime comedy. The title itself is something of a joke, for the lead character - Sakai Hiroki - has carefully cultivated a life as far away from 'wild' as is humanly possible.

Hiroki is a washed up boxer leading a tightly regimented, solitary life. He lives alone and follows a strict schedule of running, work, two beers at 7 pm sharp, and jigsaw puzzles before bed. He makes his living servicing pachinko machines - unchalleging, dead-end work that Hiroki enjoys purely because it allows him to work alone late at night. Hiroki is an emotional recluse whose sole human connection is Tsuruma, his boss, a surrogate father figure who took him in and taught him the trade when his boxing career came to an end. But all is not as it seems and Hiroki is about to be drawn into a world of mystery and violence ...

The film opens with an ominous monologue hinting at some past violence and we quickly learn that Tsuruma has been targetted by a pair of rival yakuza gangs intent on cornering the pachinko market. Also on the scene are Mizuguchi - a former co-worker of Hiroki's turned small-time con - and Rei, Tsuruma's daughter, whose amorous advances both intrigue and terrify Hiroki. The rigid structure of Hiroki's life is shattered when both Mizuguchi and Tsuruma go missing and Hiroki is cornered by yakuza demanding a mysterious envelope they believe Mizuguchi left with him. What is in the envelope and why do the yakuza want it so badly? How is Tsuruma involved? If Hiroki can't keep himself alive long enough to find out then it's all over for his beloved boss ...

In terms of plot Wild Life is fairly standard fare. What elevates the film above the pack is not the story that Aoyama tells but how he tells it. Wild Life plays out like a memory, in short pieces linked by a peculiar dream-like logic. The story is broken into chapters, each chapter introduced by an interstital title screen, with the chapters themselves broken into multiple threads. While the main body of the film moves steadily forward Aoyama takes regular detours into the past, giving us glimpses of the old relationships between Hiroki, Mizuguchi and Tsuruma. He circles his material relentlessly, shifting perspectives and gradually giving us more pieces of the puzzle as Hiroki himself works things out.

Aoyama's beautifully fluid camera work suits the material and approach perfectly, floating through scenes in near constant motion. He loves to mask entries and exits through camera movements rather than editing: pan one direction there's no one there, pan back and there they are. It's the same technique used in the Sam Raimi produced American Gothic to stress the ubiquity of evil and while Aoyama uses it for different ends here it is no less effective.

Also setting the film apart is Aoyama's subtly building humor. Between the grim opening monologue and Hiroki's unrelentingly deadpan demeanor the film initially appears to take itself seriously but as things progress the humor quotient increases. Hiroki may take himself seriously but Rei certainly does not and their entire relationship is shot through with awkward, silly moments. And then there are the drunken, closeted gay cop in love with Hiroki, Rei's unwanted admirer, and Hiroki's regular reminders to threatening goons that he used to be a boxer - reminders that pay off so well that you wonder how it is that Hiroki ever retired in the first place. The whole thing builds to a ridiculous - in a good way - perspective shot that would be right at home in an Evil Dead flick.

Aoyama's slow building humor allows him to do something very unusual: he gets to have it both ways. The build is slow enough that it never breaks the dramatic tension and Aoyama ends up with a film that works as both a legit, tense crime film and a as parody of the stock crime film conventions. He gets to enjoy the typical genre rules and employ them to good effect while also poking winking fun at them. When you realize that he has also managed to sneak in some solid social commentary on life in post-bubble Japan it becomes clear that Wild Life is a fair bit more than a standard yakuza film.

Beautifully shot, smartly written and slyly funny Wild Life shows that Aoyama has learned Kurosawa's lessons well. Like most of Kurosawa's work Wild Life is a genre film that both subverts and transcends genre.

As for the disc itself the Artsmagic release is something of a mixed bag. It appears that they've used an earlier Japanese transfer for the disc, one that looks to have been mastered off video which leads to some softness in the image and some light bleeds in high contrast shots. Aoyama shoots some truly beautiful film and this is a film that would definitely benefit from a remastering job to clean things up a bit. The extras are limited but solid. You get a twenty minute interview with the director which, while a straightforward talking head affair, is jammed full of interesting bits of information. And as was the case with Artsmagic's earlier Aoyama release, EM Emblaming, Midnight Eye's Jasper Sharp turns in a hugely informative audio commentary. Commentary tracks can range from light and pithy to serious analysis and Sharp's is definitely of the ‘grab a pen and paper and take notes' variety.

When it comes to Aoyama I am still something of a neophyte. Much of his work is still not available outside of Japan and by my count I have now seen a little under half of his films. That half, however, has been more than enough to convince me that Aoyama is a significant talent and Wild Life stands comfortably as my favorite of his works thus far. Very definitely worth a look.