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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
Digital Cinema Media's Client Director, Antonio Garcia, reviews Blade of the Immortal from the 61st BFI London Film Festival.
There can't be many things I've achieved in the three-figure mark, but with the legendary Japanese director's latest, Blade Of The Immortal, Takashi Miike has hit his 100th film and he's only 57 - that's the kind of output and energy I could only dream of!
For those unaware of the most productive director in cinema, his broad and varied career as a genre-bending filmmaker has spanned everything from comedy, horror, zombie movies, fantasy, samurai films, crime thrillers, kids films, to even finding time in between to work in TV and theatre.
Never one to conform to any western or Hollywood interests, his most infamous breakout work has always pushed the boundaries in violence and sexual themes creating hyper-real films that have a manga inspired quality to them - he came to real prominence with western audiences with his unforgettable melodramatic-horror-chiller Audition in the late 90's - it's eerily foreboding outlook on looking for love in today's serial dating world still gives me chills to this day.
Over the last decade he's been entrusted with bigger budgets making movies on a more lavish scale so it's quite fitting that for his 100th it's a violent samurai revenge-fantasy-epic based on a famous manga comic book.
As you'd expect with Miike, the story is as bonkers as the action, as a world weary samurai Manji is offered a chance of redemption, being hired as a bodyguard to a young orphaned girl, Rin, seeking revenge against a powerful clan who killed her parents - to makes things more interesting our antihero Manji has been cursed (or blessed depending on your point of view) with the black magic of some immortal bloodworms (yes, worms!) capable of healing wounds and rejoining severed body parts! Pretty useful in the mayhem of shogun-era Japan.
The production and fight scenes are as good as anything Hollywood has to offer, the story races along from one bloody battle to the next with some surprising moments of comedy and tenderness between the two protagonists.
For this Thrill Gala the BFI had flown over Takashi Miike to introduce and answer questions from the audience – via an interpreter he explained his work ethic comes from not wanting to be bored and lazy in between films and that he wanted to make this to prove he doesn't just make violent films!
I couldn’t tell if it was a super dry sense of humour, but it reminded me of why the LFF is such a great way to discover new and varied cinema from around the world – as the gala name suggested, if you haven’t discovered Takashi Miike yet, this would be a great place to jump in for a guaranteed thrill!
Blade of the Immortal is in cinemas on 8 December.