To understand this movie requires background that Keiji Muto is not an actor, but a world famous wrestler. It is basically a stunt, and why so many scenes are basically the premise: what if this wrestler is doing things. You can almost hear them laughing behind the camera at his antics. When I learned who this guy is, I liked the movie a lot more.
It is both Somai's most baffling film and his most surreal vision. Another way to understand it is the neo-noir drifter genre; in American films, from The Man with No Name trilogy, to Rambo, or in Japanese films, the Samurai films.
He is a mountain man who enters Tokyo mixing up in the criminal underworld. The film calls him King Kong. We constantly see him in the context of buildings. He is always manhandling people left and right. Kids tug at hum, pull him, kick him. He grabs women asking to marry, and their reactions are genuine, they do not know they're being filmed.
Those scenes breaking the fourth wall are completely fascinating. Not only do the extras look right at the camera but it is framed in a way where we are forced to look at the extra reacting, smiling, watching the filming during those long takes. Somehow it doesn't effect the illusion whatsoever. It seems to excite the performers too. I think the extras breaking the fourth wall reflect its themes about a character who does not belong so is constantly stared at, laughed at, gawked at. I have never seen that before in a film. It is Somai's inner cinema anarchist tendency we see a lot in PP Rider.
His movie is comically shallow, but it's honest. This is how his counterpoint is this opera singer. The woman version of a barebones mountain man is going to be: sensitive, artistic, graceful opera singer. Where do we see this? In Popeye the Sailor Man. This level and frequency this film operates in is really like a ten year old wrote this.
The point when he shaves it is a striking transformation. Suddenly I totally understood the movie on a gut level. Now the mountain man means business.
Before then, the scene he returns to nature and lives as a mountain man again. The hero returning to nature to ready himself for the final battle, this is a fundamental story beat in the heroes journey. The movie, like him, takes detours into odd tangents, but never lies.
What I appreciate most about Somai is that he gets these actors, usually actresses, and gives them the floor. People who dream of being in films want to be understood by the camera like in his films. He always leaves nothing left of them, while creating some kind of monument to them. At the end, I am left with a hundred questions, but surrender this movie is a gift. The guy, he is loveable, the movie could not exist without him. It is a big and glorious vision that is rough around the edges, you can nitpick it to death, or surrender to the greatness.
