The 1967 Japanese film “Koroshi no Rakuin’ or ‘Branded to Kill’ is famously known as being the film that made its producers Nikkatsu Studios sack its long standing director Seijun Suzuki branding him as one who makes incomprehensible films that don’t make money, prompting Suzuki to file a court case against the Studio and win it too. The film is also known to have subverted the conventions of the ‘Yakuza film’, a genre well established in Japan and dealing with the ethics and codes of the traditionally organised crime syndicates, by giving a quirky black humour angle to it. While many find glimpses of early Goddard in this film, others harp on the fact that this movie has influenced quite a few contemporary movie makers like Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino and John Woo. A few others have also seen this film through the colored glasses of the American ‘Film Noir’, a genre that also deals with the underworld.
But ‘Branded to Kill’ can also be interpreted as a film on the being of inner suffering of a high ranking member of a crime syndicate who endures a systematic nerve-racking agony thrust by his superiors before ultimately being liberated by death. The film therefore can also be temptingly called as ‘Branded to suffer and be killed’! The protagonist Hanada Goro is a swanky operator high up in the ranks in the crime syndicate and very efficient in his job, but is third in the hierarchy in the syndicate. He would want to go up to the top, the identity of the worthy current occupant of the position is itself a mystery. Hanada moves around in stylish cars in the classy areas of a modern city, owns cool firearms with which he kills people with as much ease as an accountant would make a book entry. He lives in a modernist looking house, is worried about increasing expenses, has a fetish for the aroma of boiling rice, post inhalation he either picks up a crime assignment or gets involved in a gratifying wild sex romp. Now, why would such person be subjected to a mandatory scary endurance of sorts? It is futile looking for an Achilles heel in him, as director Seijun Suzuki probably provides you none.
A brief mulling over the plot of ‘Branded to Kill’, could elucidate this. On the instructions of the syndicate boss Yabuhara, Hanada escorts the number one hit man of the crime organization, ignorant about his identity, to a safe place, braving some ambushing men who have murderous intentions. The job is well executed, as the ambushing men include the Number 2 and Number 4 of the crime syndicate. But in this process Hanada loses his friend Kasuga who also was once a ranked member of the crime syndicate, but deactivated because he messed up an assignment and could not hold his nerves. Simultaneously, Hanada is also oblivious to the affair that his spend thrift wife Mami is having with his boss, Yabuhara.
In the second part of the plot, Yabuhara assigns Hanada with a task that needs him to work with the mysterious Misako, a lady with a death wish and a penchant for dead birds and butterflies, whom Hanada is instantly attracted to. Is this his Achilles heels? Probably not, because, as we realise later, Miksako is just cog in Hanada’s suffering process. When Hanada fails in this task, ironically, due to a distraction provided by a live butterfly, Mikaso marks him as a person to be killed. Peeling off her mask Mami shoots Hanada, we realize later, as per Yabuhara’s plans. Hanada survives by chance as the bullet hits the buckle of his belt. He takes refuge in Mikaso’s house where the two, bound by duty and survival instincts, try to kill each other; but fail miserably as they are by now fixated with each other. Hanada kills Mami but before he kills Yabuhara, unknown to Hanada, Number one obliges. Through an audio-visual message Hanada gets to know that Misako’s life has presumably been taken as she had failed in her duty to kill Hanada. In the message, the now dead Yabuhara invites Hanada to a shootout with his hentchmen. When Hanada kills all the shooters, Number one reveals himself much to the surprise of Hanada and declares his intention to kill Hanada as he is being paid for it, but not before mentally breaking him down first.
The third part of the film is how Number one psychologically destabilizes Hanada and turns him into a nervous wreck, a condition that besieged Hanada’s friend Kasuga which ultimately led to his death. Everything in this section leads to a final shootout at an empty boxing hall where Number one, Hanada and Misako, whom we realise was not killed but badly wounded, are all eliminated. As a matter of fact, all the high ranking of professionals of crime syndicate are killed by the end of the film, almost ritualistically.
Why was the first part necessary? Wasn’t there a great singularity of the plot action if the film had started from part two? ‘A high ranking member of criminal syndicate accidently goofs up an assignment that is brought to him through a mysterious lady to whom he gets attracted only to be killed for it’ – this maybe a great one-liner for a Hollywood based film noir. But ‘Branded to Kill’ is from the stable of the maverick director Seijun Suzuki who, as per his own confessions, got mischievous with his studio bosses at Nikatsu by playing around with genres, the structure and his cinematic language. In part one of the plot, why is it that Hanada is unaware of the identity of the Number one? Being the strong man that he is why would anyone need to protect Number One, leave alone Hanada, who is down at number three? So, is Hanada being set up by Yabuhara and Number One in the first part of the plot so that he is led into Misako, the new assignment, the mysterious butterfly and the failed shoot out, the torture and finally the purgation in part three?
So, knitting together all the three parts of the plots what is its unity of action? ‘A high ranking member of a criminal syndicate is lured into a situation where he has to professionally fail, get tortured, loose his nerve and finally get killed, but not after killing his killers’. Would this be a fair representation of the film in which every sequence would add up to form a singular action that would inevitably lead Hanada into his mandatory archetypal suffering ritual? There seem to be no apparent valid reason for his sufferings, although there might be a reson for him to die as Number one says he is paid to kill him by an unknown source. If all these sounds complicated, it probably is.
Seijun Suzuki complicates matters further (or makes it intresting, depending on how one looks at it) by withholding information only to reveal them at a later stage, constantly keeping us on the edge trying to figure out the happenings. There are things that are withheld from the characters and there are things withheld from the viewers. The fact that his wife Miko his having an affair with the crime syndicate boss Yabuhara is hidden from Hanada, but not from the audience. Certain other facts like that the client whom Hanada had initially escorted is the elusive Number One and that Misako too is a part of a plan that is out to corner him are initially hidden not only from Hanada but also from the viewers. And finally, certain other facts that no one wants to know, not even the film maker. Why does the butterfly happen to come in front of Hanada’s rifle when he is about to kill his target? For what purpose Misako have her obsession for stuffed and dead birds? Why in the first place Hanada has to undergo the angst that he undergoes? “It happens all the time’, says Number One to Hanada, when the later asks him his reasons to kill Yabuhara. Neither Hanada peruses his question, nor Number one is keen on answering it.
No wonder the bosses at Nikkatsu Studio found it difficult to comprehended Seijun Suzuki or his films, until much later when he attained international status and when he got some affirmation from the younger lot of his country, a generation later. That Seijun Suzuki showed such a grave process or torture and endurance in ‘Branded to Kill’ in such a light hearted quirky manner without burdening the viewers to the heavy doses of ‘seriousness’, is a tribute to his ingeniousness. He famously and probably in a lighter tone is supposed to have said, ‘In my films, time and place are nonsense’. The eccentric usage of these two crucial elements of cinema are evident in the film, adding to its unconventional charm. They can best be called unreal, bordering towards absurdity, as best exemplified in the sequences that have the presence of a ghost like strange character, Misako.
After completion of his first assignment Hanada’s car breaks down. Mysteriously, almost by chance, driving her top less car Misako stops by and gives him a lift. It is raining heavily, an unmindful Mikaso is dripping all over and is sporting a strange ghostly deadpan expression. Back at his home, while wife Miko is taking a shower anticipating an exciting intercourse, Hanada is getting aroused smelling the aroma of the boiling rice. All of a sudden Suzuki intercuts to short mid shots of Mikaso, presumably in front of his house or maybe in a neutral location. It is raining and she is drenched and she has the same deadpan ghostly expression. Soon enough Hanada and Miko indulge in extended wild coupling. In another sequences later on, Mikaso actually comes to Hanada’s house to offer him an assignment. Initially Mikaso is not shown, but her existance is hinted at when Miko objects to her presence. Hanada locks Miko up in a room, presumably a bathroom, and it is then that Mikaso is shown visually. She is again in a neutral location, it is raining as she makes her offer with her trademark deadpan expression. A shot later she is seen inside the house talking to Hanada, she is clearly not wet now but in front of her we see a streak of water gushing down from above, presumably from the shower behind the glass door where Miko is locked up; its sourse and position deliberately kept vague.
Later, when Hanada fails in his mission and knows that he is destined be killed by his bosses, he comes back to his house. We see water falling from a shower in the bathroom sharp in focus in the foreground, the camera pans to a bathtub where Hanada and Miko are seen lying naked, interestingly the dripping water too moves along with the camera, retaining its position in the frame and maintaining the sharp focus all the while. For Susuki water can gush down at any time and can move anywhere he wants it to! A couple of shots later Miko shockingly shoots Hanada, burns the house and escapes. Much later when Hanada can’t kill Mikaso or get killed by her, a brain wrenched, nervous and edgy Hanada moves around aimlessly in a neutral unknown location. Suddenly, the frame is partially covered by graphics of rain, and of butterflies and the birds that he was so close to in her apartment; till a point where an entire butterfly fills the frame. If you may please, it is a timeless psychedelic space that Suzuki has created out there.
Also standing out is another sequence wherein Hanada informs Mikaso that he would be killed for failing in his mission. Hanada is framed left of camera, is in a long shot, leaning against a wall and looking left of camera. Behind him are the steps of a huge building upon which in extreme long shot stands Mikaso occupying right of frame, looking away to the right of camera and about 10 to 15 meters away from Hanada. But the intonation in which the two converse sounds as if they are about a foot or two away from each other. Realistically, for the distance that they are standing the characters would need shout to be heard, but not here. There are two brief individual mid shots of them in this sequence, during which the intonation of the dialogues remains the same and seem to perfectly fit. Had there not been the reference of the long shot, it would have seemed that the two are positioned not far from each other. Thus, Seijun Suzuki is mischievously streching the space between the characters who are standing still within the frame or is contracting it, depending on the way you look at it. The same treatment is repeated when Hanada meets the Number One for the first time as Number one. This time, Hanada is about 20 to 25 meters away from Number one, who incidentally is sitting in the back seat of his car!
Seijun Suzuki got away with taking the liberties that he took with the cinematic idiom, mainly because the films that he made were categorized as low budget B listed movies. The studio bosses were more concerned with the A listed movies that were to bring in the moolah, had the big stars and thus needed close handholding from their side. Suzuki was given a script, and was not bothered much as to what he did with it, till the time he was sacked. With his films either you ask dull questions like ‘why did the glass pane of the car not break when Number one shot and killed the Number two?’ and ‘Can a metal buckle of a waist belt withstand a bullet shot in close range?’ or you get used to a series of such idiosyncrasies by philosophically letting these ‘things happen all the time’ and look forward to smell the aroma of the boiled rice.
.
Movie Murmurs 
Leave a comment