5 out of 5

Director: Takashi Miike

I have not seen the original version of this film, so I can only rate this on a Miike level and as a movie itself. This is not strictly a five-star movie in the sense that I want to watch it again tomorrow (although that’s true of many Miike movies), nor in the sense that I’d immediately suggest it to anyone. There are movies richer in subtext than Graveyard of Honor, but this is an amazing example of how well Takashi Miike can construct a film, and an incredibly patient study of a destructive personality. But part of the brilliance here is that this is not a study – it’s not something to learn from, rather something that you just observe. And it is disgusting, and even repellent at times, but it is rare that such an unsympathetic protagonist can carry a movie without it occasionally seeming manipulative. The composition of some shots is simply amazing – I am always shocked, even in Miike’s earlier works, how he seems to have a natural eye for staging and capturing narratively complicated scenes. Of course, the keystone here is lead actor Goro Kishitani, who manages to portray his character with both passiveness and menace, leaving aside easy judgments of his motivations.