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Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike

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Tom Mes, Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike (Fab, 2003)

Western audiences labored in blissful ignorance of the career of Takashi Miike for years. American and European extreme gore fans started noticing him with the release of Dead or Alive; the rest of the world snapped to attention when film festivals started showing such definitive Miike films as Rainy Dog, Audition, and Ichi the Killer. By now, Miike is Japanese culture's most recognizable export. However, we've gone from being completely ignorant to categorizing the director as a guy who does nothing but extreme gore (despite the brilliant The Happiness of the Katakuris, a twisted, and relatively gore-free, musical from 2001). Tom Mes, a dedicated film festival-goer and Miike fan, aims to show us there's more to the guy than promotional vomit bags (which were handed out to those attending the premiere of Ichi the Killer at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival).

In the bulk of the book, Mes takes the reader through Miike's prolific oeuvre (to give you an idea of just how prolific, since Mes stopped documenting to publish, with Deadly Outlaw: Rekka, released in mid-2002, Miike has released ten films as of this writing), tracing the various themes to be found in the director's work. Rest assured, Mes is not a fanboy; he casts a rather critical eye over a number of Miike's films. The effect is for the reader to want even more to see a number of Miike's films not yet available outside Asia, for the most part (Ley Lines draws the most praise, for example, of any film in the oeuvre, with The Bird People in China, Rainy Dog, and The Guys from Paradise also getting a lot of positive play; of them, only Rainy Dog is available in the west, and that only in Britain, according to IMDB). The book is rounded out with Miike's filming diary for Ichi the Killer, a long interview Mes conducted with Miike in 2002, and some biographical info on the man.

Needless to say, this book is a must for fans of Miike's movies, and is well worth the steep price it commands. Those who consider Miike an amusement might also do well to dip in and take a look at the structures that underlie the outrageousness Miike depicts on film. Definitely a book worth having for even the most casual fan. ****

Tom Mes has put together an outstanding overview of Takashi Miike's oeuvre. American audiences tend to consider Miike a fairly young director, but his career began well before "Audition" reached the USA. Somehow, Mes was able to view nearly all of Miike's films, including his V Cinema movies which are unavailable in the states. The complete filmography is worth the price of the book by itself.

Mes begins by outlining common themes found in much of Miike's work and gives some thorough biographical information. The remainder of the book is devoted mostly to describing each film. There is some analysis and Mes usually highlights the thematic material, but most of the sections are descriptive above all else. You may not find what you're looking for if you're hoping for a detailed analytical study. Mes comes close to that with a few films (such as Ichi the Killer and Audition), but if he were to go into vast detail with each film, the book would be huge.

The important thing is, this is the only decent English language study of the work of this very important Japanese filmmaker. If you enjoy Takashi Miike's films, pick up this book. It's an essential Miike resource.

Finally! Someone has the guts to take this great filmmaker seriously. No one has a problem if you take Imamura, Oshima, even Kitano seriously, but for some reason Miike only gets written about as being "wild and crazy". Taking him seriously is like sacrilige to some people. In fact, the most "wild and crazy" thing you can do right now is take Miike's films as seriously as this book does. By doing so, Tom Mes stays much closer to the spirit of Miike's work than many of the director's supposed admirers can imagine.
'Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike' is only dull and humourless for those whose idea of a film critic is someone who cracks a few jokes about Sonny Chiba and Riki Takeuchi's hairstyle. Let me tell you: long after Miike's so-called fans have moved on to their next "wild and crazy" flavour of the month, Tom Mes's book will still be the authoritative text that gives a great director his due.

Tom Mes of the website MidnightEye, delivers an informative book that deals with Miike background and many of his films. This is neither a fluff promotional book for Miike or dry academic read. I found it to be the perfect blend of information, interest, and criticism.

The Good: For Asian cinema fans, this book is an absolute must, strictly because it covers EVERY title in Takashi Miike's prolific career. This is the only resource you'll find for all of his 50+ films. It also includes Miike's 'Ichi the Killer' production diary, which is both hysterical and insightful.

The Bad: Film critic/writer Tom Mes is dull and humorless when it comes to his critiques of each title. He plods on like a boring film professor, nit-picking his was through plot and subtext. For the most part, he understands Miike's films and themes...but his stilted observations seem to suck all the joy out of them. In the end, this book feels more like a technical exercise than a celebration of a gleefully illogical and colorful filmmaker.

One of the major stumbling blocks for enthusiasts of Japanese cinema in the west is the difficulty one finds in viewing the material. The major directors of Japanese cinema (Naruse, Kurosawa, Ozu, Oshima, Mizoguchi et al) are well represented. But a director like Takashi Miike, despite his strong cult following in the west, has still only had a small fraction of his prolific output distributed here. It becomes difficult therefore to construct patterns in his cinema or progressions of style and content. However this book goes some way to repairing the distribution limbo of his films, although nothing can replace seeing the films themselves.

Author Tom Mes dispenses with theories of genre and the intricacies of auteur theory (which would no doubt be to the directors approval) and chooses, via textual analysis, to map out the thematic universe that Miike has constructed in his films. Naturally this suggests authorship of some kind, and Mes acknowledges Miike as an artist without getting carried away rhetorically. The thematic network is mapped out in chronological terms, meaning one can read it straight through, or dip in, for reference purposes. Miike has largely worked in an industrial context in which is films are pre-written, pre-budgeted and sometimes pre-cast, but despite this, Mes argues that Miike is still able to weave personal concerns into the generically divergent material.

Subsequently the chapter on themes is indispensable and Mes goes on to identify rootlessness, the outcast, the search for happiness, nostalgia, the family unit and violence as the recurring themes in his work. It is true that these motifs re-occur in a remarkable number of his films, and this goes hand in hand with a distinctive visual style that places great emphasis on montage sequences, interesting colour palettes, and a penchant for staggering visual exaggeration. The director also uses a repertoire of actors and technicians, and one begins to see the indelible print of an author. Fortunately this book is not a defence of Miike's ultra-violent and transgressive cinema, and doesn't attempt to raise Miike's cultural standing. Mes, along with Jasper Sharp runs the website Midnight Eye, which is devoted to New Japanese Cinema, and along with this book is the first port of call on the amazing cinematic world of Takashi Miike.

I will say upfront that I have not read the entire book. I'd say at the time of this writing, I've read about half of it. I do feel the need though to comment on this book's absolutely stunning design and overall thoroughness of the content, so please don't disregard this review without reading the rest.

For starters, the book is simply beautiful. The quality of the book is top-notch and strongly bound, with a beautiful cover and high resolution pictures in both color and black and white.

The reason I've only read about half of it is because while I am familiar with several of Miike's films (Ichi the Killer, Audition, Gozu, etc.), I haven't seen many of the films that are discussed in great detail in the book. Rather than spoil the films for myself, I have chosen not to read the essays on these films until I have seen them.

As for what I have read, it's all really good stuff. Interviews, essays on the films that are very well written and interesting and even excerpts of Miike's production diary for Ichi the Killer, translated from Japanese for our reading pleasure. Takashi Miike goes from being an enigmatic figure to a more complicated, exciting and important person in the world of today's cinema.

What impressed me the most about this book is the author's obvious appreciation for the subject and the fact that you can tell that some serious work went into making this must-own, exhaustively researched reference guide. Tom Mes deserves kudos for a job well done.

Recommended for fans of Japanese cinema and a must-own for appreciators of Miike's oeuvre. I think all we need now is a book of this caliber to be completed for Takeshi Kitano.

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