Youth of the Beast (1963)

I loved Tokyo Drifter (1966), and have been hoping to inject some more Seijun Suzuki into my life.

And guess what? The Criterion Channel has a Suzuki collection, called The Chaos of Cool. It is one of my favorite features of Criterion's streaming service: they curate a collection of a filmmaker's works and present them for your viewing pleasure. For someone like me, who likes to dive into a director's work, it's nice to have a selection of keystone works to pick and choose from.

And so, after a pretty taxing week, I decided to kick off my spring break with some swingin' yakuza madness.

I. What Is It?

This is the story of an ex-cop infiltrating two yakuza clans and pitting them against each other on a quest for revenge. No longer bound by the strictures of the law, he will go to any length to avenge the murder of a mentor and friend.

II. Realism is For Squares

Suzuki clearly doesn't have time for things like realism or nuance. His actors strut through frame with animated swagger and form their faces into emotional grotesqueries, when they aren't stone-faced statues of cool, leaking cigarette smoke nonchalantly out of pursed lips. Suzuki doesn't so much make movies as he crafts jazzy, photorealistic anime. The suits are crisp, and color-coordinated; the scenes are splashed with bursts of primary colors; the frames are artistically composed, and the action choreographed so that the figures strike compelling tableaus. Suzuki transfuses cool into the DNA of his films.

But he never takes himself too seriously. I mean, the rival yakuza clans have their climactic rumble by... jousting with their cars. They... they just zip around each other in the mud, with gunmen hanging out the windows spraying bullets indiscriminately. It's fucking absurd. And I laughed heartily. But I think you laugh WITH Suzuki, not at him, and that's a key difference.

Realism is for squares, and this movie is too fucking cool to bother with it.

You're either onboard for that, or you aren't.

III. Thrums With a Kind of Impatient Fury

Suzuki starts the movie, and very rarely takes his foot off the gas pedal. The film is a cool 92 minutes. He enhances the inherent scrappiness of his storytelling by editing the film with a kind of furious vim. Cuts come fast and furious. When it works, the film hums with life, but there are times where it feels sloppy and rushed. It IS, however, all Suzuki. His style is sometimes abrasive, always unique, and ultimately consistent.

I'm starting to feel like Seijun Suzuki is Akira Kurosawa's crazy cinematic brother: you may not always feel his vibe, but one cannot deny his creative savvy.

IV. Great Faces

Suzuki peoples his frames with compelling faces. Jo Shishido snarls like a stuff-cheeked hyper-violent cherub. And both of the yakuza clans come replete with cartoonish visages and a wide range of unique looks. Each actor seems to have a specific archetypical home expression, which allows them to remain distinct characters in Suzuki's exaggerated yakuza fever dream of sharp suits, cigarette haze, razor-brimmed fedoras and inky sunglasses.

V. A Mad Dog

Jo (Shishido) is not an undercover cop. He's a disgraced cop. This allows him to dig into proper villainy without the moral out of being on the side of the angels. He is a proper criminal, which lends his revenge mission a harder edge: he can't call for backup, and there is not easy exit. He's in the game, and he succeeds or he dies. At times, his savagery makes him difficult to root for, but I appreciate the hard noir edge of utilizing a mad dog as the hero of the piece. The stakes are high, and there is an air of desperation. It heightens the drama, and I liked it.

VI. Should You See It?

If you can find his work, I definitely recommend giving Suzuki a whirl. Youth of the Beast is not as confident as Tokyo Drifter (1966), but you can see where Suzuki is going. This movie is a ridiculous romp, and it is a lot of fun if you're here for it. You can find it in a collection on The Criterion Channel.

Miscellany

- This movie features the first use of a stylistic flair that Suzuki would go on to use in other films: he starts the film in black and white, and smash cuts to vibrant technicolor for the rest of the film. It is widely considered the first time Suzuki broke out of the mold and started defining his own style.