Agitator: The Cinema Of Takashi Miike

Rating:
Summary: As bold and daring as any of Miike's films
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A great Takashi Miike resource...but...
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A must for Miike fans.
Review: 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. ****