Killing 2018

"I want to be able to kill"

Tsukamoto's power and potency as a filmmaker is no more evident than it is in 2018's Killing. While this refined cinematic work may be a far cry from the so-called "punk" aesthetic that governed his early works, there are obvious stylistic and thematic connections one can trace from his earliest films to this most recent outing. He loves his closeups, heavy breathing, unusual camera placement, and ambiguous images. He captures movement with an absolute allergy to being immobile. One might think he is incapable of holding the camera still, his signature evident in this rapid shaking of the frame when characters are in motion.

In Killing, the sword is as much a prosthetic as Tetsuo's bizarre bodily protuberances or Denchu-Kozo's titular electricity pole. Our protagonist, Tsuzuki, has a lot in common with the Metal Fetishist or Hikari as a disaffected and sexually challenged young man.

Were it not for the film's conclusion, I would have been convinced that Tsukamoto had learned some restraint in his late period, contrasting his maximalist filmmaking of his earlier period. But, there's nothing wrong with maximalism.

The movie unfolds a significant and grandiose story in the confines of a small farming village. The struggle here is one between two absolute ideologies — the proverbial unstoppable force and immovable object. In this case, though, Tsuzuki's commitment to not killing is a commitment that comes from what he believes to be some sort of fundamental deficiency. The immovable object is not a moral stance, but a symptom — one that Sawamura attempts to dislodge.

Overall, this is an extremely impressive film and brings together the familiar idiom of the samurai film and Tsukamoto's distinctive artistic sensibilities.