ZIPANG |
| Kaizo Hayashi’s "Zipang"
"Zipang". Director: Kaizo Hayashi. Cast: Masahiro Takashima, Narumi Yasuda, Mikijiro Taira, Hiraku Wanibuchi, Kipp Hamilton, Haruro Nakajima & Shu Ken. Japan 1992. Hyashi film is a classic sword-and-sorcery epic told with a distinctly eastern flair, anyone that grew up watching the likes of "Monkey" and "The Water Margin" as well as more traditional western fare such as "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad", "Jason and the Argonauts" and "King Solomon’s Mines" not to mention "Big Trouble in Little China" will fall for this films anachronistic charms. Female bounty hunter Yuri the Pistol (Yasuda) fights off an army of her colleagues to win the right to hunt down Jigoku (Takashima), but instead end up falling for the loveable rogue. Together they roam the land along with Yuri's sidekick younger brother, Jigoku's loyal servant, the mandatory dwarf, the sometimes mandatory bespectacled brains of the operation, the not so mandatory dog-faced boy and the completely un-mandatory puppet pygmy-elephant thing. When a particularly bad Indiana Jones impersonation land a golden sword in our heros' hands all hell breaks loose, as Hanzo the Shogun's ninja emissary, a monosyllabic warrior (Ken), and god himself (Taira) all attempt to wrest it from him, believing it to be the key to Zipang, the legendary land of gold mentioned in the diaries of that arch rogue Marco Polo. The world of Hayashi's third and most ambitious picture is a bizarre mix of ancient legend and modern technology, where samurai swordsmen face pistol wielding bounty hunters and bazookas wipe out hoard of ninjas, all brought vividly to life by veteran set designer Takeo Kimura, whose credits stretch back to the '50s. Hayashi plunders all manner of sources for his epic, not just Japanese history and legend but also Hollywood adventure serials of the '30s and the films of Steven Spielberg, with scenes parodying both "Raider's of the Lost Ark" and "Jaws". In the midst of a battle against a hoard of ninjas Jigoku suddenly finds himself up against Cyrano de Bergerac. Takashima puts in a star making performance as the ever charming Jigokugokurakumaru (to give him his full name), infusing this master swordsman, a point proven by his quick dispatching of de Bergerac, with the pre-requisite roguish charm, an essential for a character that carries around a set of swords, like golf clubs, selecting the correct one for each opponent. Yasuda overcomes a ludicrous haircut to put in a strong performance as the traditionally spunky love-interest; ably giving as good as she gets, particularly in a bitch-slapping scene with the god's female warrior. Taira hams it up mercilessly with such lines as ‘What is love?’ Ken excels as the ancient warrior and Wanibuchi is suitably solemn as his star-crossed lover. While the rest of the cast breath life cookie cutter roles, with the sad exception of the puppet pygmy-elephant thing who is so poorly animated that it distracts from the action, fortunately however Hayashi seems to have realised this and it disappears fairly early on and doesn't turn up again until the end credits. As Hayashi's over-ambitious narrative progresses it twists and turns with relatively little regard for logic or story integrity, jumping from one character to another, piling cliché upon cliché to the point of surrealism, never before has the familiar seemed so alien, and yet familiar it is. This tale of a emperor elevated to godhood by his people, who favours gold above human love, can be seen not just as a Swiftian satire upon Japanese society, a fact seemingly confirmed by the Shogun's final words 'Of Course. Zipang is right here. It was this land of mine all along', but also upon modern society as a whole. Sit back and enjoy the ride, but don't think about it too hard, that way lies madness. |