Visitor Q has a lot to say about the relationships between family members, be it when the mother injects herself with heroin after the beatings at the hand of her son, instead of facing up to her responsibilities and doing something about it, or when the dad gets over-familiar with his daughter by way of rescuing his failing career.
He talks also about journalistic codes of conduct, as the dad stands smiling whilst his son is being forced to take a shit by the bullies on the other end of the camera lens. There's something else going on there, something about the artificiality of life through the lens, if you like, how the dad has no emotional contact to the events he is capturing, seeing it only as "great footage".
Which is especially ironic given that the subject of his documentary is how he feels about his son being bullied.
It mirrors that other classic of extreme satire, Man Bites Dog, most notably in a sequence wherein one character maps out bits to dismember from a corpse, whilst another chap captures it all on video, like it were a Blue Peter project or something.
And here's one we made earlier, motherfucker.
Whether or not you "get" it, I guess, depends upon your tolerance for the kinds of mayhem depicted. Even nudity tends to put me off a film, and yet here I am, thoroughly fascinated and laughing out loud at a flick what has reporters being raped with their microphones or people sawing a kids head open with a kitchen knife.
It talks about hypocrisy, and like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it seeks to subvert the notion of the family as the ultimate achievement for civilised society. Here, family members beat each other, fuck each other and help each other get their willies prised from rigor-mortis stricken corpses, and the "love" that is expressed in the films conclusion is simply a result of rewriting the accepted etiquette for familiar bonding and getting right back to the animalistic desire to feed on one another.
Holy shit, man. What a fucked up barrel of malcontents.
And what a fucking brilliant slice of demented, Bunuel-esque satire.
Good work, Takashi Miike
The Duke resides at Mondo Irlando
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments
1 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Hi folks.
Please note;
I've been informed of a controversy arising from the Works De Duke, involving not only his fantasticly incisive critique of Popular Culture, but also the time-stamp on mine posting. The reason the posting-time appears much later than anyone elses who might post at the same time, ie, this one says 17:40 or whatever when if others posted now it might say 13:00, is because most contributors to the site are American, and i am over here in the UK, so my time stamp is right by me, but maybe not by someone in, say, Wisconsin or Zimbabwe. This has absoloutely no effect on posting as far as i can see, and if someone were to post in the video section now, it would push mine down even if the time was "earlier". So, i apologise for any confusion, although the thought that The Duke might be technologically gifted enough to have even considered such a diabolical cheat on purpose does, indeed, fill me with orgasmic pride.
Thanks folks.
By the way, this review sucks, The Duke, i mean seriously.
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Amendment to above comment - I just notice now that it does indeed make a difference to the posts afterwards. I will amend the time-stamp on my MT Client thingy to US Time (someone suggest a region?). This will be implemented as of my next post. I honestly didn't know this was having an effect. Thanks to Eric for letting me know
3 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Just doing a time-check, folks