Movies #49 Pistol Opera

Pistol Opera: No amount of writing will ever do this film justice. To call it strange or lurid or bizarre or any of a thousand other adjectives would fail, in a complete and utter way, to describe this Seijun Suzuki film. I can use no drug metaphor, write no description utilizing psychiatric illness definitions, or craft a hallucinogenic wordstage that would accurately convey what it was like to watch this utterly insane movie.

It almost shocks me to say this, but Pistol Opera is by FAR the strangest Suzuki film. It’s so fractured, fucked-up and confusing that it makes Branded to Kill, one of the craziest films ever made, look like It’s a Wonderful Life.

What’s so fascinating about this is that it’s Suzuki Unleashed. Made after his ’90s discovery (his films were basically unknown until recently,) without the constraints of trying to put one by his studio, Pistol Opera seems like the visual regurgitation of Suzuki’s creative soul- a soul unlike any other this world has ever seen.

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