| To say Survive Style 5+
is a difficult film to analyze would be a gross
understatement. To say that the picture is unlike
anything one has ever seen before also couldn’t
be closer to the truth. To that point, it’s
hard to say what Gen Sekiguchi’s original
intent was for the production, but he certainly
fashioned a memorable and incredibly bizarre final
product. As a conventional film, Survive Style
5+ fails miserably, but as the insane and
off the wall trip that Sekiguchi was likely trying
to convey, the movie passes with flying colors.
Yes, the story is kind of a mess, and the characters,
while memorable, aren’t all that multilayered
in the least; however, Survive Style 5+
is more about the presentation than anything else,
boasting some amazing sequences and set designs
while also featuring a very fitting musical score.
For a quick summation of the plot,
the movie opens with a man named Ishigaki giving
a lone burial of his wife as he watches over the
corpse. After witnessing her nose twitch, he leaps
into the pit and begins to mercilessly smash her
face in with his shovel, before burying the remains
and heading home. However, he enters his kitchen
only to find his wife already there, as the pair
then begin to try and kill one another through
out the house. Time and time again, the husband
manages to succeed each night only to have her
be resurrected shortly there after. This life
and death struggle slowly begins to intertwine
with that of a commercial designer named Yuko,
and her dissatisfied relationship with a hypnotist,
as an English hit man is called in. It’s
not long before the bodies begin to drop left
and right, until the husband approaches the hit
man himself about taking care of his own wife.
All the while, a normal family is caught in the
mix as their father is hypnotized into believing
himself to be a bird, while a trio of thieves
manages to stumble in-between the ensuing conflicts.
If the overall plot of the film
seems incredibly convoluted and bizarre, that’s
only because it is. Not only that, but I’ve
hardly even scratched the surface of everything
the movie has to offer, although the production
tends to be more about style over substance in
the long run. To the film’s credit, Sekiguchi
and writer Taku Tada certainly do a good job of
constructing interesting scenarios for their characters
to inhabit. The first half of the movie is a real
blast, in fact, as one is introduced to the odd
universe of Survive Style 5+. Unfortunately,
the direction and writing have trouble moving
the picture along after the setup is established,
as the pacing starts to linger while the plot
and gags begin to run astray. To that point, there
is some odd dead space near the end, while the
entire thief part of the plot ends up not mattering
at all, and could have easily been cut out without
affecting the story. In fact, the real problem
with the plot is simply that there is a huge number
of different stories taking place that never really
connect to make the entire thing seem cohesive.
The real front runner angle is Ishigaki’s
battle with his wife, which takes center stage
to the point where cuts to the other characters
start to feel tiresome as one would rather watch
the much more interesting conflict occurring.
Consequently, the movie really has no true climax,
as the most exciting moment of the film takes
place only 24 minutes in as we first see Ishigaki’s
wife, Mimi, begin to leap into the air and jump
off walls in a over the top martial arts-style
fashion as she tries to kill her husband.
In terms of character development,
well that’s a difficult thing to gauge as
there really isn’t any, or much of an attempt
at it either for that matter. Survive Style
5+ is far more interested in introducing
more characters, even quick quirky ones like the
kindergarten teacher who picks apart her classes
portraits, then it is in developing any of the
cast its got. That’s not to say there aren’t
memorable faces in the film, as there certainly
are with Tadanobu Asano’s Ishigaki character,
Reika
Hashimoto’s super violent Mimi and Vinnie
Jones’ English speaking hit man. However,
this has more to do with their outlandishness
then anything developed about them by the writing.
Each of them has quirks that come through consistently,
some of which pay off well with great comical
moments. The best example of this is Jones constantly
asking everyone around him ‘What is your
function in life?’ before going berserk
and stabbing them. Unfortunately, others, like
Yoko the commercial planner (portrayed by Kyoko
Koizumi), have running gags that kind of peter
off in terms of humor, like her twitching eyes
and visualization of commercials related to the
events around her. The movie’s gigantic
cast of main characters, almost a dozen, manages
to overshadow the lackluster development though,
as one’s senses are constantly being bombarded
by the ensuing insanity of the Survive Style world.
To not spoil a whole lot, which is a real rarity
in my reviews, the relationship between Ishigaki
and his wife also changes dramatically through
out the course of the movie, which is something
to watch for and ends up working even if the transition
is abrupt.
This leads into the acting displayed
in the movie which, I’m afraid, could have
been much better. To that point, most of the cast,
including familiars like Sonny Chiba, give rather
weak or mediocre performances that would seem
to reflect more on the focus of director Sekiguchi
than any one cast member. However, I was rather
impressed by both Tadanobu Asano, hard not to
be given the difficult role he had to portray,
and to a lesser extent Hiroshi
Abe, who ends up playing a rather minimal
character in the grand scheme of things once the
bodies start hitting the floor.
Still, despite its numerous faults,
Survive Style 5+ is still a highly enjoyable
production. The cinematography and set design
are handled extraordinary well here, for example,
as diverse camera angles are used appropriately
and to good effect while the surroundings are
very eye catching and absorbing, seeming like
they would be right at home in a Tim Burton film.
In fact, some of the sets are really fantastic,
such as the 1970’s style Ishigaki household
and hypnotist Tiger Aoyama’s almost playpen-like
love making room. This plays a key role in the
film, as it takes the viewer through five different
stories, but it’s able to root the audience
in which part they are watching using the diverse
set styles established in each.
What really carries the movie,
though, is its sense of humor, and its impeccable
tendency to never let the viewer see the punch
line coming. Some of the gags are really fantastic,
such as the pair of school girls seen fleetingly
during Yoko’s story as one relates increasingly
horrible accidents (a crow attack, nearly being
raped) and the other keeps talking with a casual
tone as she enters things in her cell phone. The
English hit man’s translator also leads
to some humorous moments, as does the assassination
for hire organization that he runs.
In regards to the musical score,
it’s fitting for the picture, and very reminiscent
of something from a Quentin Tarantino film in
terms of the selection and how it utilizes some
stock music. A bulk of the music is conducted
by James Shimoji, who shows some incredible range
with his eerie “Deep Forest” theme,
which is played during Mimi’s burial at
the start, to the upbeat “Feast music”
used not much later in the movie. Shimoji’s
main title is also very nicely done, and fits
its stylistic introduction to a T. The rest of
the music is mostly comprised of songs, almost
all of which are in English and range from Jess
Harnell’s “Something More Than Life”
to Darryl Phinnessee’s rendering of the
“First Noel”. Surprisingly, most of
this fits seamlessly into the picture itself,
even if the soundtrack, as a stand alone listening
experience, is very jarring.
In conclusion, Survive Style
5+ is an experience unlike almost any other,
but it’s certainly not for everyone. There
is something very alluring about the movie though,
while trying to explain the feature to nearly
anyone else will likely cause one to be exasperated
as they draw a blank on how to summarize this
unique production. Personally, I love this movie
for its first 40 or so minutes, and while the
end gets a little weak, the opening is so brilliant
into itself that it nearly makes up for it. Of
course, since first watching it, I have also had
the chance to see Tetsuya Nakashima’s Kamikaze
Girls (2004), which I felt captured this
same level of off the wall humor with more consistency
in the laughs while also developing the cast of
characters (no easy feat given the style of the
movie). In turn, my feelings toward this movie
were tarnished a little, but Nakashima’s
film plays out like a much more PG-13 oriented
rhomb then the more R rated humor found in Survive
Style, which might be a turn on or off for some
depending.
|
(3.5/5)