Images
Maybe '13 Assassins' is the mortal agony and death rattle of a Japanese film industry that has abandoned its creative talent.
Takashi Miike
Visually, I want to try everything. But I believe that every shot of my films really expresses what I think about the story and the character. The most important thing is the story, not the images.
Pleasure can also be a mirror of the anxiety we feel in everyday life, it can have a message inside.
I'm not good at anything else. I just don't have a talent for anything other than filmmaking. Luckily, it's worked out.
I don't choose to make low-budget films. But that is the reality of surviving in the Japanese film industry. However, the trade off is, since we're working on small budgets, we have freedom. You can't buy this freedom with money. With this freedom, I think there are an infinite number of possibilities.
I don't slot actors into the image of a character that's already built. I build characters by listening to the voice and the story inside the heart of each actor. Art and life are linked, and expressed through my actors.
Personally, I enjoy being able to see something that you haven't seen before.
It wasn't really my intention to make movies quickly - it's more to do with the reality of the Japanese film industry. That's been the only way for me to change my situation; to prove how little time you need to make a good film.
Audiences are an unknown mystery to me, so I can't really predict anything. For me, the best audience is myself, my crew, and the actors.
I think I'm a director that is very easily misunderstood.
In general, I'm probably seen as an unusual director.
Actually the hardest films to make are comedies. In normal life, funny things happen by accident; to re-create those by design in a film takes real technique.
In '13 Assassins' the biggest challenge was that action period films, for budget reasons and because of the age of the actors involved, are not considered to be a good business decision by some companies.
Every medium has its own kind of freedom. I don't want to just cross from one to the next. I want to enjoy the freedom each one has. Sometimes, you can do something for TV that you can't do in the cinema.
I'm deeply appreciative that many people have enjoyed my films, films that I made in my own style. The successes have helped me learn how to make films free of expectations and focus solely on the pure filmmaking aspect, without worrying about how much money it'll make.
Personally, it all feels like I've been filming just one long film the whole time and I have no personal like or dislike for any of the films that I've done. I feel like all of the all of them are important to me, all of the cast and all the staff that I've worked with have also been very important to me.
When I'm facing an issue or a challenge sometimes, it's easier for me to avoid really facing that or dealing with it, and just go make films.
People say that my movies are violent. I do not think so.
Bigger-budgeted films have more restrictions and less freedom to create. Because of this, I try to find freedom in the people I work with. I often work in ways I don't want to. It's more about controlling the situation. Lower-budget films are freer.
Japanese of my generation try to get through life without stepping on anyone's toes; in some ways that's unnatural and stressful. The yakuza are different: They live short lives but live and die on their own terms - it's exciting to portray that.
I see myself as having this innate weakness that a lot of times will get confused with kindness, but I know that it's often more weakness than kindness.
That's a very Japanese idea - that children are an extension of their parents. And that when you're reborn, your new form reflects the sins of your previous life - you can't escape.
I am discovering myself as a director all the time.
One Missed Call', it was regarded as a mainstream film for my career because it was big budget and filmed in Japan and it really opened wide in Japan, it did really well commercially. So I was really surprised.
Filmmaking is not a balancing act, although some directors think it is. I don't believe in it. I like ups and downs. They're the best way to translate my feelings to the screen.
The directors whose films scare me the most, are the ones who carefully hide the aggression in the background, and don't show it directly.
My influences happen at more of a subconscious level, I don't dig too deep into that or analyze it myself.
The people who like my work, I know that I can't trick them into laughing someplace where there is not a genuine reason to laugh.
I myself have always had that secret desire to become something completely different and enact revenge on certain things. So I do that through my movies. My desires become reality in the movie because it can't become real in real life.
For the birth of one champion, there are many young boxers behind them who had setbacks. In terms of that, I think boxing is very dramatic.
For me, no matter what movie I make, no matter what the genre or the budget, they all have the same theme at their core: fear of death and happiness about living.
Sometimes it's good to know there are limits.
We have this desire for that balance between death and life or death and joy. We want to believe that something we can also have.
The position of an assistant director in Japan is a handyman who does everything if necessary. They must overcome the unreasonable demands of hard-hearted and whimsical directors, and staff with different personalities or habits.
I loved spaghetti westerns but besides these pure entertainment movies, there was also something different.
I wanted to make '13 Assassins' in the old manner, to use old techniques and not to rely on modern-day ones such as CGI, or editing that changes the speed.
My films are like drinking a good beer, but pleasure doesn't mean that it cannot change someone's point of view.
You could not imitate Fellini. His beauty was above anything else, but that intelligence was typically Italian. This helped me to realise that I had to create something that was distinctively Japanese.
Regarding the responsibility that a director has to society, first of all, there are ratings. There's freedom to make films, and freedom to watch them or not. It's not like I take those films to a school and force kids to watch them.
You know when I was a high school student I wasn't a very good student. Upon graduation we were asked if we would become a full working adult or go to university. I decided to go to film school and still to this day I try to avoid being a full working adult.
Live life before making movies, because you cannot make films about life, without having lived one.
I'm even a little afraid of the dark. If I'm alone in the dark I'll sometimes feel that there's a presence behind me and I'll even be afraid to turn around, but then if I do get the courage to turn around, I'll just be scared that whatever was there has just jumped over to the other side of me.
I think everyone really wants to just be happy and live the life that they want to live. But they come up against all of these obstacles and sometimes the way that react we react to that can be very hilarious. To me. It's hilarious and laughable.
I feel that the smallness of the filmmaking environment is somehow connected to the freedom of creating film.
I'm just curious how it'd look like if someone tried to remake my work. But I really believe that it's hard to remake of any of my work.
Manga, as a medium, is very different from cinema. Its creators are free to express themselves with harsh, cruel stories, and they enjoy vast distribution throughout Japan.
I don't think a film that has no effect on people or society is a good film.
You hide your instinctive self and instead create a social self with lies. That's how people are able to get along with each other. What's scary is when you strip all the lies away to get at the essential you. What if it's pure evil? You don't want to face that. So lies aren't all bad - we need them to live.
Gozu' was influenced by American cinema.
I think what people think about my films depends on the film they see. It's all different and opinions are all different.
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