3 out of 5

Directed by: Takashi Miike

As usual, Tom Mes has the more insightful info here, but I’ll do my best with my unedumacated approach.  ‘Lesson of the Evil,’ for ‘Audition’ Miike fans, might bear some carryover interest for its slow, step-by-step pacing and eventual release into violence.  For Miike hounds who’ve sought about all the ‘Audition’ before and afters from the director’s packed oeuvre, there’s much to appreciate here, and tell-tale signs of Miike’s style.  For the casual viewer, ‘Lesson’ might seem a bit too straight-forward to justify its concluding section; the movie sits back and watches what unfolds without much judgment, the clinical approach reminding me a bit of the ‘Mesrine’ two-parter (though ‘Lesson’ is a much more fully considered film, in my opinion) or as an interesting juxtaposition to Takashi’s excellent ‘Graveyard of Honor’ remake in that, in both cases, we’re observing insanity, but ‘applied’ by its characters much differently.  ‘Lesson’ opens with a familiar Takashi technique: dialogue overlapping between short scenes that aren’t given much context.  Miike has been using this for years and yet it never leaves me dry: he’s always able to construct these moments in a way that immediately grounds us in the film, and the effect remains the same here – without knowing what we’re watching, we sense something impending; we feel a coldness from the color palette.  Some elements settle down – a school, high-school aged children, a charismatic teacher – and things slide into what may be our focus – teachers trying to combat rampant cheating in the school – except we know those early flashes we saw must be about something else… and eventually they are, and eventually we’re watching a very blunt, extended, fantastic series of shootings from which the camera doesn’t flinch, and about which there’s no sense of commentary or wit.  As Mes points out, there’s some fascinating context to consider with this movie, especially given the completely-at-odds-with-the-rest-of-the-film middle surrealist portion that serves as the film’s only moment of, perhaps, black and bleak comedy, but from a basic composition perspective, ‘Lesson of the Evil’ is an incredibly measured work that urges you from safety to a complete lack of safety with incredible professionalism and a perfectly poised camera-eye.  As a movie, it’s slow, and Miike has his characters toy a bit with psychology, but as usual with the director, what happens and what’s said isn’t necessarily designed to spur thought.  So it’s slow, and perhaps empty.  But whether you consider its intention or design through the lens of Takashi’s career, as a ‘film’ Lesson of the Evil is quite a unique view, bucking a lot of narrative norms – consider how many ‘heroes’ are brought in and then dismissed – without it ever seeming too obviously designed or manipulative.