Bullet Ballet

A loser Japanese salaryman becomes obsessed with firearms after his girlfriend shoots herself, and he ends up involved in a gang of speed freak street punks. This is a pretty challenging movie; it's black & white and shot on handheld cameras making the violence extremely chaotic, the story is very unconventional and the meaning of what happens is somewhat elusive. Shinya Tsukamoto's films are never boring though, if you can stomach the frantic video collages it's pretty enthralling stuff.

As an American, it's interesting to see firearm fetishism as an avant-garde anomaly and taboo, rather than standard par. Of course I love the industrial hum and clang, the strobing montage, and the absurdly exaggerated blood and bruising. Unfortunately it stretches thin during the second half, with unsatisfactory insight into character, connection, or impetus. I know poking the plot logic of a Tsukamoto film may be beside the point, but in this case it does disrupt the aesthetic adrenaline.

I don't have any insights of worth other than to recommend the book The Gun by Fuminori Nakamura which is a much much much subtler version of some of what is going on here.

While trying to form my opinion on this, I'm reminded of the famous Thai custom who when they don't like something do not say "I don't like this", but "I don't know how to eat this.". Let me first say that as an audiovisual experience it's again an impressive feat. But in substance the movie didn't really engage either emotionally nor intellectual. I'm only not sure if Tskukamoto's ideas actually don't amount to much besides a vague notion or that I just don't understand them fully enough.

Much of "Bullet Ballet" leans heavily on Tsukamoto's mastery of style; especially his ineffable creation of tension and mood through lighting, framing, and camera angles and movement. It's most poweful when the thin, bullshit plot stays out of its way, and quickly fades whenever the story takes over.

Tsukamoto continues to hone his obsession of spiritual liberation, with a backdrop of viciousness and depravity to throw us off the scent. There is a poetry to the violent editing style that only Tsukamoto can seem to pull off, and the black and white makes it all the more disorienting and kinetic.

A very stylish form of rambling nonsense with an ounce of commentary on violence and its effect on perpetrators/victims.

Noirvembro 2024 dia 5: Noir asiático. É que depois de Tetsuo todos os filmes do diretor parecem domesticados se comparado a ele, hahaha, mas dá pra fazer a leitura de que é um neo noir mais maluco que o seu noir usual. YTS. Noirvembro 2024 https://boxd.it/A5BUq

Tsukamoto finds a way to separate his mechanical intensity from surface level aesthetics and create a perfect, suicidal love story.

There was a frustrating amount of emphasis on how much of a loser the main character was, but I guess that in a way was a good way to give the film meaning. I wasn't too happy about propagating a message of irreparable failure but it was something different at least. Definitely something for people who hate always seeing the main character triumph over adversity in typical epic and glorious fashion.