Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Review: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

That was a bit weird. I expected as much but the sexual stuff is definitely odd. Of course, when you see a lot of Japanese films particularly the underground genre ones, that shouldn't be a big surprise either. I still have to say I liked the film because it's extremely unique. I'm not a fan of shaky cam but this director just has his own special style that I think works. It's very high energy and you can see the passion behind it like the whole thing is about to explode with the main character's madness. It's really a crazy art-house kinda film I would say. There is even stop motion with the actors to make the robots, or I should call them more androids I guess since they seem to be part human and part machine, run extremely fast through their environments. It's obviously quite unlike anything the West has produced as far as these kind of robot movies. It feels very gritty and grimy, more akin to the ugly conditions of early factories and the industrial revolution than modern technological advancements (and that was clearly the filmmaker's intent with the opening shots of industrial ruin). Cyberpunk is the word my stupid brain failed to recall. I can't think of too many cyberpunk movies that really fit that term so well and actually won me over but this is one for sure. The closest thing this reminds me of is Hardware but that movie was more of a disappointment to me although I probably saw it when I was too young to appreciate its eccentricities (the design of the robot's ugly unwieldy body still bothers me... Cameron spoiled me with the T-800's incredible endoskeleton).