Warning: Contains spoilers and gory details
As a fan of the Asian extreme genre, I was surprised that I didn't enjoy Takashi Miike's groundbreaking horror film Audition, his first and most famous of films, as much as I expected to.
With that said, my not liking the film doesn't have much to do with its failure to live up to the genre's expectations - its ability to shock and disgust audiences was not lost on me, and the infamously climatic scene near the end was enough to render me speechless for at least a couple minutes (and momentarily queasy for another ten).
What struck me most about the film, however, was not the full-fledged violence in all its glory (as only Miike could bring to the screen) but the curious in-balance that occurred between the first half of the movie, in which our two main characters are introduced and carefully drawn out, and the latter half of the movie, which collapsed all characterization that had previously been built up in favor of slasher-film techniques.
The gratuitous torture scenes, while effective in making the audience squirm (so much in fact, that its exhibition at the Rotterdam Film Festival had a record number of walk-outs, including one viewer who fainted and needed immediate medical attention), were more showy than substantial and ended up defining the film rather than supplementing it. If I wanted pure violence, I would have watched a slasher flick instead.
My main problem with purely slasher flicks is that they have one purpose and one purpose only: to put it crudely, they proceed to visually rape the mind over the span of ninety or so minutes. Some people might get a kick out of that, and I'm not one to judge people's eccentricities, god forbid, but that's not what I'm looking for when I watch movies - not even the scary ones. Slasher flicks don't require strong characters or an effective plot-line because the whole point of the genre is to highlight a series of visually commanding (and usually disgusting) images for the viewer's benefit. It's pure Hollywood tradition - the bigger the guns (i.e. the more gruesome images you can muster), the more effective your film will be, skill and subtlety not included. Slasher flicks don't require a great screen-writer. Hell, they don't even need a good director. All they really need is a lot of realistic special effects, innovative torture devices designed specifically for scenes, and (I presume) a lot of blood and screaming actors. Needless to say, the modern cinema spectacle is not my cup of tea.
Is Audition a slasher flick? No. At least, it didn't start off as one. The plot follows the widower Aoyoma, a slightly dim-witted but decent man, who finds unmarried life too lonely for his tastes and is persuaded to hold an "audition" to find a new woman to marry. During the audition, a young, shy woman with a tender voice and poignant story (she loves ballet, but can no longer dance to an injury) immediately catches his eye and they begin a relationship that seems promising at first but of course (as the viewer knows from the get-go), turns into the stuff of nightmares - concluding with the famous torture scene, where she *SPOILER* proceeds to amputate his leg with a piano wire, among other equally grisly stuff. (And yes, they show everything.)
A lot of critics have called this a twisted feminist critique of what happens to bad men in a world where women are repeatedly mistreated and objectified, but I see some gaping problems with this assertion. The first is that I'm thoroughly sick of this genre. The whole dilemma featuring sweet little girls who secretly harbor a desire to hurt men and will stop at nothing to get their revenge has never appealed to me. In movies like that, I usually end up feeling more disgusted by the girl's behavior than that of the man. This is not because I'm anti-feminist (although the term is way too loaded for me to get into in this post) or because I necessarily disagree with the fact that in many ways, we still live in a patriarchal society where men hold most of the power.
Political convictions aside, I have just never found the female protagonist in those sorts of film likable, or even believable. Period. They're usually so self-righteous, so up-in-your-face about what they're setting out to "fix," that anything they do becomes downright annoying rather than enlightening. Case in point: Ellen Page's character in Hard Candy, a film with a similar direction as Audition. A fourteen-year-old girl sets out to punish a pedophile/pervert. Why? Because she can. Because she possesses the innocent charm of a smart but ultimately misguided girl. Honestly, she was just a prick who talked too much. By the time the film was half over, I wanted to see her under the razor rather than Patrick Wilson.
The whole power reversal regarding gender dynamics is an intriguing topic to filmmakers, I'm sure (A man torturing a woman? Boring. But a woman torturing a man - oh wow, it's never been done before AND it's a social taboo, so how can anyone resist?), but it doesn't automatically translate to a good movie - just like extreme violence doesn't necessarily make a good Asian extreme flick (although it does seem hard to find one without the other).
I actually liked the character of Aoyoma. I liked the relationship he had with his son, and to me his loneliness seemed so prominent, his intrigue with Asami (aka crazy psycho girl) so genuine that I wanted to cut him some slack. The audition wasn't even his idea. Okay, so maybe he should have had the balls to actually find his own girls to date, but I mean, the guy was cut off from the social world for a good amount of time before he decided to suddenly jump back in; does he really deserve to lose a foot for his (somewhat honest and a little stupid) mistake?
My point is, why build up Aoyoma's character just to tear him down? If Miike wanted a film where the woman demands retribution for the terrible treatment she has been subject to, why direct it at someone who doesn't even deserve it? Maybe the violent scenes would have been more effective if I didn't actually care about the victim but to me, they just seemed irrational and conflicted with the overall integrity of the film.
The line that killed it for me was when Asami, dressed in her half-nurse, half-butcher style outfit and ready to commence her amputation wire tactics, says with malice, "All you men are the same. You tell girls you love them, but you only want sex." Um, no. Sorry girl, but that doesn't fly. You're the one who took off all your clothes and climbed into bed when he wanted to go out and see the park or something. What exactly does that prove? Obviously Asami is a very disturbed character, with a very dark past involving some very bad men, but I thought her character was too neatly cliched - ironically, her being so extreme and unreasonable made it impossible for her to step out of that immediate archetype of formerly-innocent-girl-turned-evil. Maybe I wasn't supposed to feel sympathy for her, but I don't think I was supposed to hate her either. She didn't creep me out; she just pissed me off. Is that what feminism is? Women who hate men so much that they become inhuman? For a distinctly "feminist" film, the protagonist seems to be giving women everywhere a bad name.
All in all, Audition was not a very innovative film. The violence was shocking and horrifying, sure, but it wasn't satisfying. The climax is the only reason to watch the film (if only because Miike dares to go places that even violent masters like Peckinpah and Woo avoid), but there's not much else that makes it stand out.
For a film by Miike that's just as grisly but features character dynamics that aren't predictable or stifling, watch Ichi the Killer instead.
