46-okunen no koi

This voyeuristically expressionistic film is set in an unknown future in which Ryuhei Matsuda plays a soft, sad gay bartender imprisoned for his strange and brutal killing of a customer who attacked him, and Masanobu Ando is a Yakuza thug packed to the top with pent-up anger and violence that makes him tight as a drum till he sporadically bursts. The two arrive in a juvenile detention center on the same day and, with nothing in common, they become tangled by yearning, shared visualizations of flight to an imagined world, and a murder of another boy inside the stockade that results in one dead and the other pleading guilty to the carnage. It's a murder mystery of young incarcerated men in lust, seen through surreal composition on sets of darkness and illumination and the simplest trace of detail.

Two detectives try to expose the indictment. "Why did this trigger it?" One of them questions as to why the inmate would lead this course of self-ruin and devastation, seeing a rainbow. "Only he himself knows." In the humankind that judges people under the duplicitous laws prearranged as a result of a perversely archaic edition of religious principles, Miike bares violence in its most honest form, as an instinctive undertaking. It cannot be made clear further than the surface of palpable means of interaction. It's too mysterious and puzzling for anyone beyond of the person perpetrating the action to entirely grasp. Sexual friction and short-tempered violence propel the story to its mind-blowing outcome.

Takashi Miike puts his heart and soul into his fascinating visual actualization of the morally ambiguous story, which is heavily reminiscent of Jean Genet novels like Our Lady of the Flowers. It is avant-garde theater translated onto film, voice-over and screened words as the literal point of view of the investigators. The film is punctuated by wonderful, infectious closing music, and you realize you have just experienced film-making in a unique manner, a conspicuous trance consisting of definite colors alive in the bounds of a vast universe of an unlit void. Thick with striking images like pyramids, a classic sci-fi rocket ship, and an opening dance sequence coming unexpectedly. That's just the tip of the iceberg to all of the creative dexterity Miike affords the viewer.

One may come from this film thinking that it wasn't about the story. That's an understandable way to put it, put it is not quite correct. Really, in order to be a narrative at all, it can only be about the story, but Miike does not betray the sheer weight of the story's content and ideas. Can there have been a simpler depiction of it? The film, essentially, is about existence. It is a concept spanning 4.6 billion years! Miike, who normally makes cynical if not outright self-deprecating microcosmic yakuza and horror movies, has aggregating all of those impressions into a claustrophobic, life-refracting prism of all the world's details and creates a blemish on the face of the world of cinema that audaciously, patiently, calculatedly tackles humankind and the self-worth behind which it hides, self-worth largely created by the belief in God, which this film could be read as implicating doesn't exist. The movie's likely metaphors for evolution and faith have very telling differences in outcome, as the movie's symbolic image of evolution augments and that of religious conviction remains the way it has since the beginning. The movie is only an agent for the viewer to perceive on their terms, however confined to the film's implications. Miike is correct: This is his masterpiece.

When I began to think that Asian cinema reiterates itself and uses the same subjects in the same POV, I met "Big Bang Love, Juvenile A" in Berlinale 2006 and took a deep breath. However I'm one of the fans of Takeshi Miike, the most amazing director in the earth, he again shocked me with beautiful spectacles which reminds me temples of Maya's and interesting ideas about existence. Actually the story is very important in this Miike film. He creates a world from the fantasies of young criminals. Initation rites, fights for supremacy, acts of violence and some of the youths seem to be touched by the golden light of an idealized future (sentence adapted from Berlinale journal). For your consideration, in the beginning of the film there is an amazing dance scene in which a young men both acts and dances... If you're patient, you can solve the mystery of the pilot in the end and you'll feel great...

Beautiful and haunting art-house with a veneer of a prison movie: that is the best description of a movie that is so invested in its self referential imagery that the viewer is either swept away into it or completely alienated. The sets are often minimal, echoing some modern theater and also giving an extra emphasis to the characters as such. Golden light pervades the dreamy scenery of cramped cells, geometrically shaped insides and an odd pyramid and an equally surprising space rocket that can be seen from the roof of the prison.

At the surface the movie is a crime investigation in which two policemen try to unravel the events behind the murder of an inmate since the confession of the presumed killer does not seem to match reality. But that is an excuse for a lavishly artistic movie to structure itself around a plot that gives coherence to the surreal approach so that overall it does not veer into fantasy. Which is not to say that this is a linear movie because it most definitely is not. Flashbacks mingle with fantasy and the feeling of displaced narrative is inherent to the nihilism of the content.

Ryuhei Matsuda's performance adds much to the not quite overt sensuality of it all. Emotions are stifled, dialogues are left open ended, interpretations are left hanging in the air and ultimately unanswered. And that seems to be the heart of this movie: solving the crime does not advance a psychological answer to the problem of human interaction or lack thereof. Kazuki is something of a social outcast and Arioshi's obsession with him the only bridge to any kind of human contact. The sexual tension adds another level to the already pressing claustrophobia.

In the end, not even the re-visitation of some lines of dialogue that provide a context is able of truly answering anything. The viewer is left to make some sense of what happened and to fill in the gaps, an attempt that may very well be absolutely impossible. After all, the movie is fragmented in essence, deliberately so. A telling scene is when a shaft of sunlight pierces through Arioshi as an arrow and blood seeps out. Like the movie it is somewhat factual and yet full of meanings that need be projected unto it: a literal metaphor.

Takashi Miike (the director) has said that Big Bang Love, Juvenile A or 4.6 Billion Years of Love is best viewed when in a state of "absent-mindedness" and that is just as easily absorbed and taken in if you happen to be nodding off during its running time. And he may just be right. I have now watched this film three times and fell asleep halfway through on the last two. And I typically try not to do that. This is not because the film is boring but rather due to the lyrical and dreamlike quality the film possesses. It has the ability to lull and carry the viewer away into a meditative trance. So I'm going to go on record right now and say how hard it is difficult to write a review of the amazing film that Miike has crafted.

For those who have never heard of Takashi Miike or the creative, compelling and controversial features that he produces at an astonishing rate (up to 15 a year), this may not be the best place to start. Big Bang… stands out in Miike's canon/ oeuvre as one of his most experimental and eloquent, and that's saying something. This is a unique film. Most of us will have never seen anything like it. I have a feeling that it is not for everyone. Some will find it utterly incomprehensible, others will find it astonishingly beautiful, and still some will simply not know what to make of it.

The plot (what little there is) focuses on the budding relationship of two male inmates in a prison in the middle of a vast, empty nowhere. Both men are murderers who, though complete opposites, form a bond of love that transcends the physical realm, the sexual realm and even the realm of time. Which sounds totally pretentious, but trust me, it's not. It's… emotionally honest. And did I mention how gorgeous this thing is to look at? It somehow creates the impression of drawings being put into words. It's not driven by narrative; it is more a montage of images in steady succession to form an ethereal atmosphere. Something important always seems about to happen, but on its own unexpected terms. Miike, in the brilliant and flashy (but not the kind of flashy that distracts from the meaning of the movie, but enhances it) brushstrokes of a true auteur, attempts to paint the landscape of the human heart with strikingly vivid colours.

So, while I haven't really explained anything or gotten my true feelings about Big Bang Love, Juvenile A or 4.6 Billion Years of Love across, you now know about this film and it's director, and maybe you'll see, love and treasure this film or one of Miike's other greats (such as Audition, The Bird People of China, Visitor Q, Dead or Alive, Izo, or the much vaunted Ichi the Killer). Take a risk!

This movie was shown within the gay film- week in my town and I must say, that I now have to widen my film horizon further. This film got everything: A great story, good motives, brilliant colors, great powerful actors and an awful lot of brilliant stylistic ideas. The story of Jun and Shiro two murderers, who meet in prison is not only told through words but through metaphors and pictures as well. Bit by bit and picture by picture you follow the development of their relationship and grow to understand it and them. For me it was a new experience of how stories can be told. Brutal in its realism and beautiful in its way of being told! I can do nothing more than highly recommend this movie to you.