How can anyone who knows who Takashi Miike is resist with the enticing banner font on the top of the DVD case saying that Miike considers this his "masterpiece"? Miike has already shown his versatility and has quite a cult following, so this movie pretty much sells itself without need to look at the back and figure out what it's about.
And that's a good thing in this case because it's gorgeous. Miike has basically gone back to the era of German Expressionism and turned it into a Phantasmagoria of color and set-design. Reality is thrown out the window in favor of a poetic narrative on "65 billion year love", or, what happens when two gay lovers in a juvenile detention center want to choose their own escape--do they take the rocket (scientific escape into space) or climb the temple (religious escape into heaven)?
Of course, I'm way oversimplifying things, here. For the most part the philosophy isn't very profound, but I stress the poetics of it. The film's pastiche and the film's movement is what matters more than the dialog and the action. A moment where a ray of sun pierces through a human body, a scene where inmates lean up against nonexistent walls (with little of the pretentiousness of Dogville, by the way) have powerful emotional effects.
So, Miike's masterpiece? Well, I do think he has a lot to live up to, considering the uncanny ending of Ichi the Killer. However, this is certainly a very effective film, and one that stands out as entirely unique in his oeuvre. For more stuff like this, look more for Happiness of the Katakuris than "Family 2".
--PolarisDiB
And that's a good thing in this case because it's gorgeous. Miike has basically gone back to the era of German Expressionism and turned it into a Phantasmagoria of color and set-design. Reality is thrown out the window in favor of a poetic narrative on "65 billion year love", or, what happens when two gay lovers in a juvenile detention center want to choose their own escape--do they take the rocket (scientific escape into space) or climb the temple (religious escape into heaven)?
Of course, I'm way oversimplifying things, here. For the most part the philosophy isn't very profound, but I stress the poetics of it. The film's pastiche and the film's movement is what matters more than the dialog and the action. A moment where a ray of sun pierces through a human body, a scene where inmates lean up against nonexistent walls (with little of the pretentiousness of Dogville, by the way) have powerful emotional effects.
So, Miike's masterpiece? Well, I do think he has a lot to live up to, considering the uncanny ending of Ichi the Killer. However, this is certainly a very effective film, and one that stands out as entirely unique in his oeuvre. For more stuff like this, look more for Happiness of the Katakuris than "Family 2".
--PolarisDiB