I will never equate innocence with beauty again.
I have always been an admirer of the Japanese culture. Their history: the shoguns, the samurai, the arts and ceramics. Their present: the school system, the work ethic, the automobiles, the video games, the electronic devices, and the cinema. Their future: the economic center of the world, and the country to which every American will eventually, unwittingly sell their souls.
But their past and their future, whatever it may be, isn't what this is about.
The French are known for their films about sex, wine, and incest; the Dreamers being a case in point. The British for their comedies, John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Mr. Bean. The Chinese for Chow Yun Phat and Jet Li, action and martial arts, and more recently, Ang Lee's movie about gay cowboy sex on a mountain. But the Japanese more and more just seem like they are intent to just scare the living shit out of everybody, and they are doing a fairly good job at it.
Unfortunately, for a Japanese movie to have any hope of scaring the living shit out of an American, it has to be redone and rereleased by an American studio with American stars in American English before it can be shown in American theaters. Which is unfortunate. These ghost films are invariably mere shades of the originals. The Ring and The Grudge are both redone Japanese horror flicks, and each had its scary moments, supernatural entities haunting the living; ghostly, dripping wet girls crawling out of televisions, and little, gothic Japanese boys meowing like cats. But as frightening as these images can be, they are not real monsters. They are not human beings. Least not anymore. That is why Audition creeped me out more than either of them. The antagonist in Audition is something you could and often do run into in real life. Man, or more precisely, Woman.
At the heart of Audition was a common theme, loneliness, the search for companionship, and the ultimate ugliness of humanity. But that movie took ugliness to a whole other level, even vanillad down as it was. I watched the version that had been subjected to the wonderful MPAA, that had two minutes removed from the film that I am sure would have liquified a lobe or two of my brain had I seen them. So props to the MPAA for that. Kidding. The MPAA is a bunch of snobbish old farts who think their sole existence is defined by their ability to impose their beliefs upon others, but what they do actually does little good for this country, and while this movie as I saw it did creep me out, I am sure those extra two minutes would have done an even more thorough job. Not that I need to be horrified, but isn't that the reason people watch things like this. Who exactly do they think they are trying to mellow out my horror fix?
Minor complaints aside, the movie was highly effective in making me both jump and cringe, something that is difficult for most movies to accomplish. I am not going spoil it for anyone, I actually wish that I had seen it knowing a little less about it, but I will tell you that I will never look at a burlap sack the same way again, Carlos Mencia's "Dee dee dee" now has an entirely different meaning for me, and while I still think Japanese women are demur and beautiful, they, like the rest of humanity, are going to have to now do a little work to earn the title of innocence.
