To describe the plot of Sogo Ishii’s Burst City (aka Bakuretsu
Toshi) implies that it both has one (it does, at least in a loose sense),
but moreover that it gives a shit about having one or about following it (but
we’re going to give it the old college try, anyway). In a post-apocalyptic Japan, a duo on a
motorcycle (the bike and characters appearing to have been cut from The Road Warrior) show up in a
town. A couple of punk bands play some
songs and essentially perform in their own music videos. Some better-dressed yakuza types plan on
taking over the land the city is on, and their leader likes having rough sex
with a young hooker (seemingly the only one in the stable of a quasi-pimp, who
just so happens to also be a henchman for this gang and in love with the
hooker). There’s some music, some
rioting, and some more music. Honestly,
that’s the best I got.
This is one of those films which
is best looked at with some degree of remove.
It is also one I think I appreciate far, far more than I actually like
as a form of entertainment. Ishii is much more interested in being
kinetic than being coherent, and many of his scenes are filled with
indecipherable, nausea-inducing, handheld shots of swaths of people, lights,
and things blurring past in a flurry of motion.
I believe that the director would like nothing more than for his work to
be resistant to interpretation.
Unfortunately, this is an impossibility, and I will tell you why I
believe this to be the case (those of you with a natural disinclination to care
for my more analytical approach to film may want to go read something else at
this point). My view is that the process
of production (we’ll limit ourselves to films for our purposes here) in and of
itself forces its creators’ perspective onto the finished product, consciously
or unconsciously. Everything from shot
choice to editing style to music selection tells the viewer something from the
producer. It is a form of communication
(direct or indirect) between two parties (or more with things like fan edits
popping up these days) via the intermediary of creative media.
Of course, this engenders
something of a vicious circle, because for as much as a filmmaker may be trying
to communicate an idea, philosophy, what-have-you, the viewer also imprints
his/her viewpoint on the piece. So, even
though a director may use a certain type of shot or lens for a scene, the
viewer may not necessarily read it the same way it was intended. This is not a flaw in the process or an
overreaching for the sake of making a point, per se. As I said, it is communication. If I say to you, “My, it’s a lovely day
today,” you may respond, “It is, isn’t it?” or “Go fuck yourself,” or any other
myriad replies, and my reply to that would naturally vary, and so on and so
on. By that same token, If I showed you
a shot of a person very small in the frame standing in a field that stretches
for miles, you may see that as being indicative of the insignificance of
humanity in an incomprehensibly vast universe, or you may see it as an
indication of the distant, icy, and enigmatic personality of the person, or you
may see it as a moron standing in the middle of a very large field. These ideas are not necessarily mutually
exclusive, though, and the more elastic the visual idiom, the more readings
that can be overlaid on it. And so the
conversation goes. But back to Burst City…
Ishii’s film is all about energy.
It is meant to be experienced, not simply viewed. So you have elements of Post-Apocalyptic
films. You have elements of
Art/Experimental films. You have
elements of Performance films. You have
elements of Teen Rebel films. These
elements sometimes fit nicely side-by-side, and sometimes they don’t. But tying them all together is the idea of
rebellion. Almost everyone in the film
is under the thumb of some type of authority, and they are just waiting for the
lid to blow off, so they can regain some control (though their actual interest
in being someone in control of others is slim to nil). So the members of The Rockers band not only
can’t hold down jobs, but they just don’t care to, because their superiority
comes (at minimum, partly) in the rejection of norms (“We’re much too artistic
and advanced to work for the likes of you”).
Similarly, while squatting at a
dilapidated factory, Future Man and Wild Boy (what I have dubbed the Mad Max style characters, since I
couldn’t find any decent credits listing any characters’ names) are told by the
Hobo Leader, “This place belongs to all of us, understand?”. The division between social strata is clear,
and it reaches its natural conclusion as expected. It also indicates a predilection for groups
of people and the power they inherently possess over individuals. Aside from the extensive use of closeups
(which demonstrates a fetishization of post-industrialization as well as a
fetishization with the human body, both of which are encapsulated by Future Man
and his little buddy), there are very few shots in the film which don’t feature
large groups of people, whether they are acting as a unit or as a chaotic,
human sea of discord.
I don’t know the history of music
videos in Japan, but much of Burst City
feels very much like a collection of clips from the early days of MTV (which
for the younger amongst you actually stands for “Music Television”). Even if Ishii
or anyone else hadn’t seen any of those early videos, they do a remarkable of
capturing the aesthetics and conventions of them. I keep thinking of the second music segment in
the film (following directly on the tail of the first one), which plays out
with the band walking through the streets singing their ditty while bystanders
bob their heads to the beat and even take part in singing along. The more I think about it, the film is
largely reminiscent of the old Friday
Night Video Fights, where two music videos would be shown, viewers could
call in to vote for their favorite (for, I’m sure, a nominal fee), and then the
winner would move on to the next week’s match.
If only Sogo Ishii had thought to do the same thing
(or even gave a shit to, I’m sure), he could have made a mint doing the same
with the bands in this film. Who
knows? Maybe he could have burned the
money during a riot scene in his follow up film.
MVT: The energy of the film
is what everything centers on, but it also proves enervating over a lengthy
runtime. It becomes sensory
overload. The filmmakers may have
discovered a perpetual motion machine, but I don’t think they should have left
it cranked up to maximum for the whole film.
Make Or Break: In the midst
of the chaos and the riots and the violence, there is a little love scene
between two characters in an industrial-set (natch) shower. The emotions between the two feel genuine,
and it’s touching considering the circumstances of the characters. But whether that’s because the scene is so
divergent from everything else in the film or not is difficult to say.
Score: 6.5/10
