Audition - Holy Jumped Up Jesus!

Movies
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  • SPOILERS. Kind of. That’s for the kind of forum monkeys who non-ironically mark the climax of Titanic in highlighted text. But for anyone who wants to take my word for it, go rent Audition - this is a movie that is best watched without even reading the back of the DVD. Tom Chick, push faggy Y Tu Mama Tambien back down to the bottom of your Netqueue list, cause unlike Beaver Lake, this is worth it!*

Holy crap! Has anyone here seen this?!?! The editors of Video Watchdog - who are basically just souless DVD-spinning cowboys at this point through the desensitization process that results from years of freeze-framing the rape scene in Last House on the Left and comparing it to the 1989 Criterion Laser Disc while scribbling down missing frames numbers frantically in a notebook - basically said that they found it unwatchably disturbing.

But I found this out afterwards - my Dad just put it in without a word one night while I was back for Christmas. After being bored for a while by the saccharine beginning, I was started becoming more and more unsettled by the film, until the end of the movie I was just squirming and saying “Jesus!” and “Where’d that bag come from!?!?!” over and over again.

I rarely mindlessly parrot the launder quotes on the back of the DVD case, but Richard Falcon’s quote from Sight and Sound seems appropriately descriptive of the only movie I’ve seen lately that I’ve felt was more experience than film: “A sadistic breach of contract between film maker and audience of which Hitchcock could only dream.”

The entire plot of the movie is basically a set-up for the horrific climax, which made me sort of think at first that, disturbing as Audition was, it wasn’t much of a movie. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that there is some really interesting stuff going on and the movie took a great deal of talent to make.

Obviously, the latter half of the film can be interpreted as one of two opposing dreams: one in which Aoyama is dreaming about the investigation of his girlfriend’s disappearance, the revelations about her past, and his final torture by way of pins and hacksaws; the other, in which he briefly hallucinates from the pain of that torture that his girlfriend never disappears, and he lives happily ever after.

But there is a lot of weirder stuff going on: even if you believe Aoyama is really being tortured at the end of the film, there is no unquestionable confirmation that Asami’s past is what he is making it out to be, or anything more than another of his hallucinations. Any time Asami mentions being tortured as a girl, she does it within a dream sequence that Aoyama has after first being drugged (?) by Asami - not when the scenes in the film first take place.

All the rest of Asami’s “history” (if you believe Aoyama isn’t dreaming his subsequent investigations) is afforded by very subtly disturbing scenes: a creepy old man at a Ballet School and a bar which Asami said she used to work at where a horrific murder may or may not have occurred a year before, in which Asami may or may not have been involved.

From out of these snippets of information, Aoyama fashions an entire history of psychological horrors for Asami when he is first drugged. But the more I think about it, I realize that, even if I believe that Aoyama is really tortured at the end of the film by Asami, that her motives for doing so are completely unpenetrable. Does Asami really keep a mutilated man in a sack in her apartment as a pet? Was she really tortured by the old man at the ballet school? Is Asami even psychologically disturbed at all?

I find myself still thinking about the film a couple of days letter, and disturbed more by the fact that, even after watching Audition, I can not come to grips with what happens in it. Leaving the reality of the entire film’s events in question makes remembering it something like trying to make internal sense of a surreal nightmare. Since there is no valid interpretation of its interna reality, the entire film remains disturbing and disorienting long after the closing scenes.

I haven’t even mentioned the superb, honest-to-god SUBTLE direction and writing. Seriously, Audition is surprisingly deep. I’d recommend it to anyone I thought could stomach it. Probably one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

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All right, I’m intrigued. I’ll have to go rent this.

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<sticking my fingers in my ears>

I’mnotlisteningI’mnotlisteningI’mnotlistening…lalalalalala…

</sticking my fingers in my ears>

Sorry Dr. Crypt, but I didn’t read your post because I was afraid it might have had spoilers about Y Tu Mama Tambien.

For the record, I’ve been looking for Miike’s Odishon (or, in English, “Audition”) for a while. It’s not on Netflix, but it’s been sitting in my amazon.com wish list. I think I put it there after someone recommended it in connection with that freaky trailer with the evil Japanese blue ghost boy who hides under the sheets. I’ll read your post after I’ve seen it.

In related-ish news, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later is screeing at Sundance this year! Woo-hoo!

 -Tom
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OK, I’ll bite. So what is the movie about then? And what makes it so, well, disturbing? The turture, hallicinations etc? Is it graphically disturbing or wonderful like The Ring?

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It’s graphically AND psychologically disturbing. It’s difficult to try and describe it–you have to see it. The film is by Takashi Miike, who has made a nice career out of making really twisted films. Other Miike films I recommend watching are Fudoh: The New Generation and Dead or Alive (not out on DVD in the US yet).

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[quote="TomChickFor the record, I’ve been looking for Miike’s Odishon (or, in English, “Audition”) for a while. It’s not on Netflix, but it’s been sitting in my amazon.com wish list.[/quote]

Then head to your local Blockbuster, my friend. Atleast in Canada they stock it. It’s the same box my local underground video store has, so I assume it’s not cut, and it’s the same store that I’ve rented all my Miike shit from. I myself watched the Region 3 DVD so, I can’t comment on the US version.

Follow Audition with Visitor Q to keep the good times rollin’…

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Don’t forget some wholesome Ichi The Killer.

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The biggest problem is that most of Miike’s flicks aren’t available as region 1 or 0 DVDs. Ichi the Killer and Dead or Alive are the two that I really want to see but can’t.

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Why on earth Blockbuster had this movies readily available – there were four copies in the New Releases section – and Netflicks doesn’t is beyond me.

Thanks for the recommendation, DrCrypt. Just finished watching it. I wouldn’t really say I, umm, “enjoyed” it. I got seriously queasy. If you haven’t seen it, I’m not sure I’d recommend it wholesale. This is very much a ‘it depends on who you’re talking to’ kind of thing. For instance, I’d advise Derek and DavidCPA to steer clear. :)

On to the spoiler-laden discussion:

I think elements of the reality of the situation are clearly established before Aoyama is drugged: we see her, from an omniscient third person cinematic view, waiting in her apartment by the phone with someone in the bag. It seems clear to me that Asami is a predator, she kidnapped the director from her previous job, who’s been missing for a year, and she has indeed mutilated him and kept him alive. She tossed in his extra body parts when she murdered the owner of The Stone Fish.

But her background and motives are largely imagined by Aoyama in his drugged state. She does reveal the burns on her leg before the drugs kick in and he suddenly finds himself alone in the hotel room. But then he doesn’t see her again until she comes to his house.

Oh, wait, did he ever actually find her apartment? And if he didn’t, how did he imagine it exactly the same way we saw it in the omniscient third person cinematic view? And when we early on see her apartment, doesn’t it cut to a view of his wife on her deathbed?

I guess it is pretty ambiguous. Which is fine by me. It’s also subtle, slow, and ultimately pretty disarming. Of course, if you haven’t seen it and you’re reading this, then much of it has already been ruined for you.

Oh, and now I know a little Japanese: “…dikkidikkidikkidikkidi…”

 -Tom
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Glad you experienced it, Tom. And when I wholesale recommended it earlier in the thread, I didn’t mean to recommend it wholesale - I learned that lesson (surrounded by shuddering geriatrics all lying in an expanding pool of muck made up of various forms of hysterically-evacuated human waste and upon which swimmed the half-submerged fins of vomitted upper plates) when I popped it in during my volunteer night at the local old folk’s home.

That said and biting back any predictable BC tech support analogies, Derek might “enjoy” it because the violence in it is not graphic in the sense that Dawn of the Dead is graphic. I’d say it is more “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” graphic - all of the violence is more-or-less implied, as opposed to illustrated with spurts of gore. Considering what happens at the end of the film, there’s a shocking lack of blood in the movie. If I’ve read Derek right, he’s basically just said he can’t stand gratuitous gore, not violence per se.

Just some brief comments:

I think elements of the reality of the situation are clearly established before Aoyama is drugged: we see her, from an omniscient third person cinematic view, waiting in her apartment by the phone with someone in the bag. It seems clear to me that Asami is a predator, she kidnapped the director from her previous job, who’s been missing for a year, and she has indeed mutilated him and kept him alive. She tossed in his extra body parts when she murdered the owner of The Stone Fish.

As you later admit, this doesn’t do much to establish the “reality” of the rest of the film, given Asami’s apartment is identical to Aoyama’s drugged imaginings. Furthermore, both scenes involve a hideously mutated man in a sack - which Aoyama could not possibly have known about either way. Not only that, but the “dreamed” man in the sack is mutilated in a manner that predicts Aoyama’s mutilation to come.

That gives you three options: sloppy film-making, Aoyama’s dream being some form of a psychic premonition, or the entire second half of the film being a nightmare on Aoyama’s proposal night. This becomes even more perplexing when you consider the fact that even Asami’s “history” is only revealed in Aoyama’s dream sequence, and that he might be hallucinatory reimagining earlier scenes in the film in a way that didn’t actually happen, but psychically predict the nature and reasons for the torture to come.

As for the Stone Fish and director who went missing: was there a murder at the Stone Fish? The only way you know about it is via a rehearsed urban legend in a hallway, from a guy who is slightly creepy to begin with. People go missing all the time. And even if this stuff all did happen, who’s to say Asami was involved? If you believe in the “reality” of the film’s climax, there’s no reason to doubt any of this information as being linked integrally with Asami, but as soon as you start thinking about the film as partly or completely taking place in Aoyama’s imagination, it all becomes suspect.

But her background and motives are largely imagined by Aoyama in his drugged state. She does reveal the burns on her leg before the drugs kick in and he suddenly finds himself alone in the hotel room.

Did I miss this? Did she really drug him on the wedding night? That would slightly weigh me in favor of thinking the entire thing is an oneiric case of bacherlor night’s jitters.

And when we early on see her apartment, doesn’t it cut to a view of his wife on her deathbed?

Yeah, and I loved it, because in an American movie, that one completely disarming scene would be repeated every five minutes and accompanied by film shading and cymbal crashes as sort of Hollywood’s method of jabbing you repeatedly in the chest with their knuckle while sneering “Get it! Get it! Get it!”

Oh, and now I know a little Japanese: “…dikkidikkidikkidikkidi…”

I’ve already placed this phrase in my mental lexicon of mid-coital pillow talk the next time I bring home a cute Japanese girl.

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That said and biting back any predictable BC tech support analogies, Derek might “enjoy” it because the violence in it is not graphic in the sense that Dawn of the Dead is graphic.

Actually, the reason I wouldn’t recommend it has nothing to do with the violence. I think it’s the pacing that would lose most people. It’s a slow and cerebral movie.

If you believe in the “reality” of the film’s climax, there’s no reason to doubt any of this information as being linked integrally with Asami, but as soon as you start thinking about the film as partly or completely taking place in Aoyama’s imagination, it all becomes suspect.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I realize it poses some pretty surreal questions about what’s real and what exactly we’re seeing. As I was watching it, it was pretty clear to me and my girlfriend what was hallucination and what was real (my friend who watched the movie with us, however, thought the torture scene was hallucinated). But the real questions come afterwards when you try to piece things together.

(As opposed to a fucking David Lynch movie where the questions are posed throughout the movie and you don’t have any idea what the hell is going on until you sit down afterwards and make a flow chart, and even then you realize he was jerking you around quite a bit anyway.)

Did she really drug him on the wedding night?

She drugs him when they go away for the weekend for the first time, doesn’t she?

He’s talking about what they’re going to do that evening, saying they could go to a museum or a certain restaurant. I’m pretty sure she’s patiently waiting for him to finish his drink (?) and then she strips, gets under the sheets, and pulls them up to show him the burns. Then he descends on her, is violently flipped over, and wakes up alone. I took this to mean she had drugged him for the first time.

Dikkidikkidikkidikkidi…

 -Tom
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That gives you three options: sloppy film-making, Aoyama’s dream being some form of a psychic premonition, or the entire second half of the film being a nightmare on Aoyama’s proposal night. This becomes even more perplexing when you consider the fact that even Asami’s “history” is only revealed in Aoyama’s dream sequence, and that he might be hallucinatory reimagining earlier scenes in the film in a way that didn’t actually happen, but psychically predict the nature and reasons for the torture to come.

Actually, I tend to think that whatever else may be imagined, the abuse of Asami is a given. I saw this just last night (after having borrowed it from a friend more than a month ago) and I remember being unsettled by some slight editing jumps during their dinner conversation. I figured it was me being sleepy or the DVD until the later stuff in the movie where Asami details her past and all that info fits right into the parts between the cuts.[/list]

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I saw this just last night (after having borrowed it from a friend more than a month ago) and I remember being unsettled by some slight editing jumps during their dinner conversation. I figured it was me being sleepy or the DVD until the later stuff in the movie where Asami details her past and all that info fits right into the parts between the cuts.

Those dinner conversation cuts were weird, weren’t they? The camera would make these dramatic shifts, from completely disparate angles and distances. Now that I recall that scene, it was pretty gratuitious in a movie that otherwise used extended still shots.

Robert, you’re saying the later abuse revelations during the dinners (IIRC, there were two distinct restaurant locations) fit in between these cuts? Man, that would be cool.

Maybe I should sit through this movie again.

 -Tom
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Yes, Tom, I am saying exactly that. It was the subtitles that really made it obvious to me–I’ve got this weird memory thing where I can memorize/remember written stuff really fast so I was actually anticipating certain lines.

Of course I also have this other weird memory thing where everything I remember has a donkey in it too, but I digress…

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That was me, btw.

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Good observation, Robert. I don’t have any problem believing Asami was abused, in the capacity that I believe anything in Audition for more than a few minutes. After all, she does show Aoyama her burn scars in bed before, generally speaking, the reality schism in the film really starts.

But, again, there are real reasons to doubt whether or not the tortures that she went through are the same ones Aoyama imagines for her. Or, even if they are, whether that necessarily translates into Asami = razor wire girl.

I mean, hey, what the hell is going on with those scene jumps tha you mentioned? Either Takeshi Miike is “cheating” (with-holding valuable information about Asami that all the other characters have in order to give the ending its ooomph) or, regardless of shuffling, there are some real reasons to doubt those “revelations”. Aoyama only reveals them to the audience during his dream sequence - a sequence where he already reimagines previous scenes differently from the way they happened (for example, his dinner with Asami at the restaraunt, where his dead wife is sitting at the next table).

Ultimately, the fact that they are shuffled there, among so many other non-sensical hallucinations, leaves the same questions open as before. Did Asami really reveal these things about her past to Aoyama at that conversation? It seems odd he’d tolerate that and continue to persue her, considering Aoyama’s true attraction to Asami is based on a sort of meticulous Barbie-Doll innocence. But even if she did, does that really make the finale any more likely to believe? There are a lot of other discrepancies there, including the one where Aoyama actually wakes up mid-torture session, and only returns to it once he lays back down and goes to sleep.

Tom, if you watch it again, let us know any further thoughts. I’d love to watch it again, but it isn’t available in Ireland.

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I rented it, but I may actually be leaning towards buying this one. There’s a commentary track on the DVD that I’d love to hear.

I think it’s possible that all of the revelations about Asami’s past are completely imagined by Aoyama, many of them retroactively as he’s being tortured. The two burn marks she shows him (which really aren’t that drastic) are the impetus for much of his imagined backstory. The more I think about it, the more I’m leaning towards interpreting this as a movie about a guy who falls prey to a sadistic predatory femme fatale and in the course of being tortured, he builds up a fiction about her motives.

So are any of Miike’s other movies worth tracking down? Should I look for this Iichi the Killer thing someone mentioned?

 -Tom
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Don’t bother with the commentary - Takeshi Miike seems to have almost no insight into the film that he made. I watched it when I was almost half a sleep, but I remember coming out of it rubbing my eyes and saying, “He directed THAT?”

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any other that Takeshi Miike directed, but I’ll recommend “Battle Royale” here while I have a chance - Lord of the Flies as envisioned by John Woo and supervised by a gruff, knife-flinging Beat Takeshi.

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Tom–

Ichi the Killer isn’t available as a Region 1 disc yet. In fact, most of Miike’s stuff isn’t. Visitor Q, Fudoh and The City of Lost Souls are all that’s available right now.

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Ichi The Killer is a hyperactive superhero fantasy disguised as an obscenely-violent yakuza movie. I’m friends with crazy aZns who import movies to play on their region-free DVD players.

I haven’t seen Visitor Q, but I heard good things about it.