"Tetsuo The Iron Man" was shot with practically no budget, with a lot of dedication, with a lot of hard work and with a lot of talent. "Tetsuo The Iron Man" is the brainchild of Japanese film director Shinya Tsukamoto and it is a brilliant piece of industrial cinema. 60 or so minutes of mind blowing, psychedelic images, moving at 200 miles an hour, it is violent and it is disturbing and it is like nothing you've ever seen before.
There is a man obsessed with metal to the point that he insert various metallic parts on his body. There is another man, an average guy, a salaryman, he has a girlfriend and a small apartment. He's a nobody who's about to become a somebody or rather a something, when he hits the metal fetishist while driving along with his girlfriend. The two dump the body in a nearby forest, then they have sex just a few meters away from the man they thought they killed. The fetishist survives of course, and plots his revenge. Soon after the salaryman begins to notice strange changes to his body. Metal starts to grow all over his body slowly consuming his flesh while at the same time fending of the metal fetishist, who uses mechanical parasites to take control of people to attack our slowly-turning-into-a-man-of-iron protagonist. This, of course, all leads to a one-on-one confrontation between the two and a bizarre but extremely satisfying ending.
Tetsuo is really the essence of Tsukamoto's cinema. It's a demonstration of his trademark style, that he uses, in various degrees, in his latter films. Shot entirely in black and white with most of the time using hand-held camera Tsukamoto keeps you up close and personal with all the carnage going on screen. It's hyper kinetic punch-you-in-the-teeth narrative, doesn't rely on dialogue but on action to tell the story. Visual metaphors play an extremely strong part in understanding the underlying message of the film. The themes of - man becoming machine, man becoming more and more dependent to machines, is beautifully explained through the disturbing special effects, stop motion animation (really, really awesome), make up, through characters or simply through the Japanese industrial landscape. The presence of the sexual element in the film is crucial as it sets the tone for the final confrontation where it becomes obvious that this really isn't about revenge or anything of the sort, it's about this strange relationship between two men/machines. Call it a love story if you would.
The soundtrack composed by Chu Ishikawa is a perfect match for Tetsuo. Raw, violent and destructive industrial music comes together with a raw, violent and destructive industrial movie, to the point you can't really separate the two. You can't listen to the OST without Tetsuo and you can't watch Tetsuo without OST.
Final verdict. This isn't something you watch while drinking beer or eating popcorn or whatever. It's not exactly what you call a comfortable movie and definitely not for the squeamish. Nevertheless as clichéd as it sounds, it is like nothing you've ever seen and in my opinion it is a cinematic masterpiece.
There is a man obsessed with metal to the point that he insert various metallic parts on his body. There is another man, an average guy, a salaryman, he has a girlfriend and a small apartment. He's a nobody who's about to become a somebody or rather a something, when he hits the metal fetishist while driving along with his girlfriend. The two dump the body in a nearby forest, then they have sex just a few meters away from the man they thought they killed. The fetishist survives of course, and plots his revenge. Soon after the salaryman begins to notice strange changes to his body. Metal starts to grow all over his body slowly consuming his flesh while at the same time fending of the metal fetishist, who uses mechanical parasites to take control of people to attack our slowly-turning-into-a-man-of-iron protagonist. This, of course, all leads to a one-on-one confrontation between the two and a bizarre but extremely satisfying ending.
Tetsuo is really the essence of Tsukamoto's cinema. It's a demonstration of his trademark style, that he uses, in various degrees, in his latter films. Shot entirely in black and white with most of the time using hand-held camera Tsukamoto keeps you up close and personal with all the carnage going on screen. It's hyper kinetic punch-you-in-the-teeth narrative, doesn't rely on dialogue but on action to tell the story. Visual metaphors play an extremely strong part in understanding the underlying message of the film. The themes of - man becoming machine, man becoming more and more dependent to machines, is beautifully explained through the disturbing special effects, stop motion animation (really, really awesome), make up, through characters or simply through the Japanese industrial landscape. The presence of the sexual element in the film is crucial as it sets the tone for the final confrontation where it becomes obvious that this really isn't about revenge or anything of the sort, it's about this strange relationship between two men/machines. Call it a love story if you would.
The soundtrack composed by Chu Ishikawa is a perfect match for Tetsuo. Raw, violent and destructive industrial music comes together with a raw, violent and destructive industrial movie, to the point you can't really separate the two. You can't listen to the OST without Tetsuo and you can't watch Tetsuo without OST.
Final verdict. This isn't something you watch while drinking beer or eating popcorn or whatever. It's not exactly what you call a comfortable movie and definitely not for the squeamish. Nevertheless as clichéd as it sounds, it is like nothing you've ever seen and in my opinion it is a cinematic masterpiece.