I have to confess up front that an aspect of this movie is always going to fly right over my head. Guns aren't my thing, neither are they a pet issue for me. They have iconic power in the West. The rest of the world sees the West as gun-crazed. I can scarcely imagine what iconic meaning guns must have in Japan where private ownership is illegal.
Whatever that might be, a gun cannot be obtained in Tokyo without going to a great deal of trouble. Goda (Shinya Tsukamoto) badly wants one. Not just any gun, but the same model that ended his girlfriend's life. If he can wrap his hand around its grip, Goda hopes, maybe he'll be able to wrap his head around her suicide.
Goda's mind is in a spiral. What was she doing with a gun?? Was she involved in criminal activity? Drugs? Why did she kill herself? She must have led another life, had another side of herself that he never knew about, that she never trusted him with. Now he can never ask her about it.
There is one person who might give him insight. Not long ago Goda saved a young woman from apparent suicide, a street punk named Chisato. She wasn't overly grateful, judging by the teeth marks she left in him.
Chisato belongs to a restless street gang that gets its kicks and its money from shaking down salarymen like Goda, the symbol of a society they despise, when they're not rumbling with rival gangs. They're low on the totem pole of urban crime, but none of them really care as it's mostly just passing the time. Facing their own futures, most of them are secretly making their ways into that domesticated life. Secretly, because it shames them with their peers.
Chisato isn't like them. Chisato sees no future that doesn't terrify her. Where the others plan out their lives, Chisato joins the violence night after night waiting for oblivion.
Once a gun enters the mix, everything changes. They're all headed for a collision.
Filmed in stark black and white with a handheld camera that emphasizes restlessness, Tsukamoto finds a Tokyo his movies have never shown before – the real one. It's an exciting place, especially at night mixing it up at street level. Tokyo Fist was shot with an artist's eye, Bullet Ballet trades that for a documentarian immediacy. So too does the director continue to find new departure points for his past concerns.
Violence is swift, unglamorized., and emotionally gutpunching – knowing his life is about to end, one youth is on the phone. “Mom”, he says with heartbreaking regret, “I'm not coming home.” the next moment his head has a hole in it.
Chisato could be the spiritual relation to Hizuru of Tokyo Fist except that she lacks Hizuru's spark of life. She belongs neither to nor with anyone, the gang being wallpaper to her bored existence. Goda is just another distraction until he persists in invading on her awareness and that of the gang. He's a mystery, and in him she begins to see a reflection of herself that gang life no longer offers. Goda, in fact, is sinking to her level of alienation from life.
Meanwhile, the gang's alpha male, Goto, comes into possession of the much-sought-after weapon. At first, it's an easy tool to resort to and threatens to change the balance of power between rival gangs, a fact not unnoticed by their Yakuza elders. Soon enough “shit gets real” and the power of the gun unmans Goto.
There's no message to be found. Tsukamoto isn't interested in guns as a political issue any more than I am. What Bullet Ballet is instead is a potent meditation on generational experience and depression. Chisato is compellingly played by the beautiful and sexy Kirina Mano, with pixie haircut, tight leather miniskirt, and street-ugly Doc Martens. It's not an easy role, and she essays it with mercurial shifts of ennui, and cynical amusement giving way to wonder and vulnerability. In a repeated gesture that becomes a motif, she stands with her arms out, unguarded (one could say Christlike). She stands over the edge of a subway platform with her arms stretched out as it rushes past at her back - “I'm open to the death this might bring”. Later she will strike the same pose during a gang brawl when about to be struck with a weapon (“I'm open to your blows”. The final shots of the film will see her “open” once again, running the streets of Tokyo, and it will mean something completely different.
Tsukamoto further questions the modern urbanite life as he's done with previous films. Goda shared a life with a woman he didn't realize until too late that he didn't fully know. Later, another stranger asks him to marry her for legal residency – once married she'll go her way unless he wishes occasional sex as payment. No intimacy required, no human bonds sought.
To date, this was Tsukamoto's most mature and sophisticated work, his best and my third personal favorite. It gets my highest recommendation.
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