Tetsuo: The Iron Man DVD Review

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Starring:
Tomoroh Taguchi as Salaryman
Kei Fujiwara as Woman
Nobu Kanaoka as Woman On Train
Renji Ishibashi as Tramp
Naomasa Musaka as Doctor
Shinya Tsukamoto as Metal Fetishist

“There’s a piece of metal in your brain. You will die if we remove it. Think of it as jewelry.” -Doctor

A man enters a room full of metal parts. He strips off his clothes and digs a knife deep into his leg. He slides a metal tube through his teeth, and then begins to painfully insert the tube into the gash he has made. Slowly, carefully, tenderly, the man wraps the wound up.

His hand snaps back and he screams as he sees maggots crawling all over his flesh.

The man runs wildly through the streets of Japan, without a destination, running for help. He clutches his leg as blood drips from it, forming a trail that follows his panicked run.

Another time, another place. A salaryman stands in front of his mirror, shaving. He idly rubs the electric razor across his face, but pauses as he notices a small blade stuck in his cheek. He tries to pull it out and blood spews from the wound, covering the mirror like pus from an overripe zit.

Thus begins Shinya Tsukamoto’s debut feature, Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Made on the cheap in 1988, the film has gone on to become one of the touchstones of modern Japanese cinema.

On the surface, the film appears to be nothing more than a revenge story, and a poor one, at that. But digging beneath the surface, the film makes some very interesting statements about guilt, alienation in modern society, and fetishism. But is the picture entirely successful?

The answer to that is, unfortunately, no. Like so many early directorial efforts, the film is too dependent on the director’s influences. The film looks like Eraserhead, feels like Videodrome, and steals from both Jan Svankmeyer and H.R. Giger. As previously mentioned, the basic plot is thin and poorly developed. Often, the film feels like nothing more than an extended music video. And plenty of absolutely fascinating ideas and techniques show up in the first half, and then are seemingly abandoned in the second.

And yet, this film is one of the most lauded films in all of Japanese cinema. Tetsuo: The Iron Man has taken on almost mythical quality, especially outside of Japan, where it hasn’t been readily available. Why would this be? Why would a film with so many faults come to be loved by so many?

The reason is that despite all of its faults, all of its cinematic debts, the film is still shockingly, desperately original. Thematically, the film is significantly stronger than a cursory look at the plot might reveal. If the salaryman’s plight is imagined, dreamed, or hallucinated, the rules of conventional plotting fall away, allowing the film a leeway that a more realistic film would not have. And on a purely stylistic level, the film has several facets that mark it as entirely separate from the films that spawned it.

First is the camera work. From the first shot, the camera careens around, not always keeping the subject in view. The camera frequently spins around, turning upside down, bouncing every which way it can. This makes the viewer highly disoriented, as much or more as the salaryman, who cannot fathom what is happening to him. Furthermore, the events of the story careen just as wildly, moving from an apartment to a train station to a parking garage with very little rhyme or reason. An air of oppression hangs over the film. The audience can never find firm footing. They’re not passive observers so much as silent participants in the film’s events.

Secondly, we have the sound mix. Even more so than Eraserhead, the sound here is a character in the film. Most obvious is a scene where the salaryman feeds his girlfriend a meal, but instead of hearing the normal sounds of crunching and swallowing, we hear metallic scrapes and grinding noises. And underneath it all, the salaryman’s increasingly panicked breathing. The sound envelops the viewer, taking them out of normal reality, placing them firmly in the world of the film. And the score, percussive and dissonant, creates a soundscape for this world to exist in. It’s one of the most distinctive and successful aspects of the movie.

Finally, we have Tsukamoto’s vision of metal and man merging. The Iron Man is the salaryman, the man hit by the car, and eventually, the whole world. While David Cronenberg has long explored the themes of metamorphosis and modern technology blending with humanity organically, Tsukamoto takes it one step further. The Japan depicted in Tetsuo is full of metal tubing, wire, and other metallic paraphernalia. At one point in the film, we see a vision of the future, where mankind is eaten away by a living metal hybrid, and the solar system itself is made of metal. Tsukamoto himself plays a character entitled “Metal Fetishist,” but it stands to reason that Tsukamoto as a director, not just a character, is acting as the metal fetishist. Take the scene quoted at the top of this review. A doctor speaks to Tsukamoto’s character (this is shown as a memory, projected onto a TV). He doesn’t seem concerned that this man has a piece of metal jutting out of his head. In fact, he seems excited (with perhaps just a little dread). He asks, “What kind of mad genius did that?” Tsukamoto gladly embraces the role of mad genius, imbuing the film with the same excitement (and dread) that the doctor feels.

Whether or not the film was entirely successful, the impact of the film is undeniable. Tsukamoto is an obvious influence on Takashi Miike, even appearing in Miike’s Ichi The Killer. His work can be seen influencing directors such as Hideo Nakata (director of The Ring and Dark Water) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (director of Cure and Kairo), as well as American directors such as Darren Aronofsky (Pi and Requiem For A Dream) to Chris Cunningham (director of music videos for artists such as Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, and Bjork). In the end, Tetsuo: The Iron Man does overcome its faults. Even if it’s not entirely successful in everything it attempts, it leaves indelible images in the mind of the viewer, and makes the audience think. Tetsuo is less a film in the conventional sense, and more an experience. Good or bad, it’s one worth having.

This is easily the best I have ever seen Tetsuo: The Iron Man look. That being said, the film was shot on cheap, 16mm black and white film. It will never look polished or clean. But for what it is, this DVD transfer is excellent. The blacks are deep and true, and there’s no dust on the print. The film handles dark scenes and blown out scenes with equal aplomb. And the stop-motion animation looks fantastic. Just keep in mind while watching the film that if it looks grainy, dirty, and poorly shot, it’s supposed to look that way.

Tartan has provided three mixes, a stereo mix (listed as “Dual Mono” on the box), a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, and a DTS 5.1 mix. The only difference between the stereo and surround mixes is that the score appears on the surrounds in the 5.1 mixes. There is no directionality to the sound mix, it’s essentially a stereo mix with a surround score. Of the three, the DTS sounds the best. It’s the clearest, letting you hear the subtleties that went into the sound design. The Dolby Digital mix is noticeably muddier, and the stereo mix is muddier still. The disc does not contain the film’s original true mono mix.

While not barebones, the disc does not take advantage of Tetsuo’s legendary status. We get brief film notes by Justin Bowyer, a filmography for Tsukamoto, Nobu Kanaoka, and Tomoroh Taguchi, and several trailers for Tsukamoto’s other films, including his latest, Vital. One thing to note about these trailers is that they’re not theatrical trailers. Rather, they’re three to four minutes of the film in question, with a “Coming Soon” card placed at the end. An interesting alternative to showing the conventional theatrical trailers. The Tsukamoto interview listed in the press release appears nowhere on the disc (taking advantage of the “Special Features are subject to change" clause in the release). The opportunity to give this influential and important film the full-fledged special edition it deserves was not taken with this disc. Hopefully Tartan will revisit it in the near future.

Film style: A (Despite its obvious influences, it is still highly original)
Film Content: A- (Themes)/B- (Plot)
Picture: A (Best the film has looked, but it’s still a low-budget film, and it shows)
Sound: B (It could have used a more integrated surround mix)
Extras: D+

If you’re a fan of modern Japanese cinema, or adventurous, experimental cinema in general, then Tetsuo: The Iron Man is a must-see. You may love it, you may hate it, but you need to see it. And this is the way to watch it. High quality picture and sound make this the definitive Tetsuo viewing experience. An unfortunate dearth of extras mean that this disc may be more worthwhile as a rental than a purchase for newcomers to the film. For Tsukamoto fans, you can finally retire your Image disc in favor of this one.