Seeing punk/metal band The Cooters in Oxford, attending a Mormon baptism in West Point, keeping the Sabbath Day holy – these activities prevented me from hitting the movie theater over the weekend.
I could have reviewed “The Final Destination” or “Halloween II,” but I haven’t seen the predecessors of either. I could have written a piece on “Taking Woodstock,” but I’m not sure if I want to see Ang Lee’s take on the 1969 American rock festival … hell, I’m not sure if I want to even hear the word “Woodstock” again.
This is why I’m writing about violent humor and voyeurism, two of my favorite things in film. Of course, I only like them when they’re done right, which takes us to the two movies that I recommend tracking down: “Ichi the Killer” and “The Piano Teacher.” The former uses torture and rape to deconstruct Japanese gangster [Yakuza] flicks, and the latter allows us to observe the baffling sexuality of a piano teacher.
I remember almost turning “Ichi the Killer” off during the first viewing. Director Takashi Miike zips through a convoluted plot – which makes sense if you accept the movie’s demented rulebook – so keeping up with the story is more of a challenge than dealing with the torture, rape and death (for me anyway). A little misdirection didn’t help, either. The DVD cover of “Ichi” features a face I assumed belonged to Ichi. Well, the face belongs to Kakihara, another main character. While watching the first hour of the film, I kept thinking Kakihara was somehow Ichi even though everyone was calling him Kakihara.
“Ichi” is fun for two reasons. First, its numerous acts of sadism and masochism are over the top and silly, serving as a hilarious critique of brutal Japanese gangster films. Second, if you take the movie at face value, the story works. Almost everyone in the film is a violent pervert, but if you accept the characters for what they are and suspend moral judgments, their motivations make sense in every scene. I can’t help but laugh when the masochistic Kakihara wants people to kick his ass or when Ichi kills a roomful of people because he believes they bullied him in high school. It’s just a funny story.
Unfortunately, some people have missed the comedy in “Ichi,” and sometimes “Ichi” can be found on a greatest horror movies list alongside other films you’re supposed to laugh at. (“Scream” and “American Psycho” are not horror movies. Are you people scared of farts, too? Geez.)
Moving on to “The Piano Teacher” and voyeurism, it would be prudent to go over the two main definitions of “voyeur.” According to dictionary.com, a voyeur is (1) “a person who derives sexual gratification from observing the naked bodies or sexual acts of others, especially from a secret vantage point” or (2) “an obsessive observer of sordid or sensational objects.”
What the hell does this have to do with watching a movie? It all goes back to suspense master Alfred Hitchcock’s idea of audience members as voyeurs. In other words, Hitchcock would set up the camera in secret vantage points so that we, as voyeurs, could draw pleasure from watching lurid stuff. Of course, pornographic filmmakers had already thought of audience members as voyeurs, but Hitchcock utilized the idea for more artistic purposes.
His penultimate film, “Frenzy,” played with voyeurism in the strangest way. In “Frenzy,” we’re following a killer and an unsuspecting woman upstairs, only for the camera to leave the two as they enter a room. In one shot, the camera backs all the way downstairs and out the front door and into the street. Hitchcock is torturing the audience by taking it further and further away from the kill.
“The Piano Teacher” is aptly compared to Hitchcock. The camera takes us to the best hiding places where we can fully view the depravity of a French woman. But director Michael Haneke isn’t attempting to arouse us with an erotic thriller. Instead, he makes us question our voyeurism, as he showcases – with an unflinching camera – the piano teacher performing a series of disturbing sexual acts.
“The Piano Teacher” engraved horrible images on my mind that I will never part with. Such is the disease of voyeurism.
(By the way, Blockbuster has the DVD case to “The Piano Teacher” on the foreign shelf but recently informed me that the disc hasn’t been returned in a long time, meaning it isn’t coming back. So I guess you can look at the case in Blockbuster and wonder.)