Hacker Cinema
Izo
イゾー
2004 · Film · 128 min
Directed by Takashi Miike
Izo is an assassin in the service of a Tosa lord and Imperial supporter. After killing dozens of the Shogun's men, Izo is captured and crucified. Instead of being extinguished, his rage propels him through the space-time continuum to present-day Tokyo. Here Izo transforms himself into a new, improved killing machine.
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2 comments on Hacker News
That was my understanding. Censorship got seriously going during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. And it got strengthened after Japan's surrender in WWII.
And it wasn't just sex that got censored. It became illegal to criticize the occupation government, object to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, complain about Japan's loss of the war, etc, etc.
As I understand it, that's what the 50s monster movies were about. The monsters were metaphors for the nuclear and firestorm attacks on civilian populations.
Those laws no longer exist. And so Miike gets into those issues in a few films. "Izo", for example, begins with an extended fast-motion contemplation of WWII, ending with the nuclear attacks. But "Izo" is more generally about the absurdity of nationalism, and how it's used by the powerful to control the masses. Indeed, it takes on all forms of authoritarianism, including religion.
Indeed, nations define and sustain themselves through their enemies. And, to perhaps belabor the point, that serves all nations in conflict. Or at least, it serves their ruling elites. Who are fundamentally all kleptocrats.
There's a sequence in Takashi Miike's "Izo" that's very reminiscent of that Goebbels quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKG6eOSwSa4 Izo was a samurai/assassin who was crucified in 1865, and the film is an extended (and extremely bloody) meditation on social manipulation.