Pistol OperaStray Cat is the third deadliest assassin in the syndicate; when she is solicited by her agent, Uekyo Sayoko, to assassinate the number one killer--Hundred Eyes--she feigns indifference but gradually gets lured into the contract. What follows is an abstract and unorthodox presentation of action and gunplay, of metaphor and jazzy trumpets. Pistol Opera is a theatrical kind of film, where duels by these colorful killers are not played for tension so much as a kind of philosophical underpinning. The almost hallucinogenic experience defies conventional logic and like modern art, opens the door for the viewer to reach their own interpretations.
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For practically the entirety of Pistol Opera, we are led to believe that Stray Cat has some kind of punishment being inflicted upon her, where she is not allowed to keep anything but a toy pellet gun, a stipulation she arbitrarily violates about half way through when she goes and buys a gun for herself. As her name suggests, this behavior is in keeping with her fickle and somewhat carefree attitude, refusing to follow orders, since she is an independent "stray cat". She has a passion for guns bordering on obsessive, but her lust for a pistol is a means to feel complete, and whether Stray Cat really even cares about her ranking in the syndicate is questionable. When she is approached by the dodgy Uekyo--who I think shares some resemblance to Anjelica Huston--she taunts Stray Cat with various lures to encourage her to participate in the syndicate's efforts to have the ranking killers kill one another off, and this leads to the expected encounters with the club of eccentric ranking members, each with their own unique idiosyncrasies. For example, Teacher is an athletic--but wheelchair-bound--killer who chases Stray Cat across the harbor. When Stray Cat gets the jump on him and kills him, she shoots out the breaks to make it appear that he wheeled himself into the ocean in an act of suicide...which would work if not for the bullet holes in his body. Her encounter with the Painless Surgeon, himself a westerner who speaks broken Japanese (and questionable English, for that matter), is one which is framed in a dramatic fashion. The Surgeon who cannot feel pain has the drop on Stray Cat, but due to some kind of utterance for theatricality, she escapes his grasp--more accurately, it is as if she were never under his sway, and her own craftiness is deadlier than his knives. And when Stray Cat is approached by "Hundred Eyes", he acts with a kind of false civility, playing pretend with serving tea...pretend because he is a killer, and though he claims he has no intention of killing her until they meet under more appropriate settings, it is clear that he does intend to go through with it.
As Stray Cat continues her odyssey through the ranks of syndicate assassins, she encounters--and is tethered to--a young girl named Sayoko. The girl is not only harmless at first, but she is shy and keeps a distance from Stray Cat. But as they spend more time together, Sayoko becomes more bold and requests Stray Cat to teach her how to kill, calling her "sister". There could be many reasons Sayoko wishes to be closer to Stray Cat, but regardless, Stray Cat mostly keeps the young girl at arms length, perhaps out of protectiveness or simply out of distrust--the general ambiguity of the film does not commit to one stance or another on the matter. Stray Cat's relation with Uekyo is also unclear, but there appears to be some kind of strain to it--perhaps Stray Cat is being manipulated into being an assassin by the masked agent, or there is another resentment less defined. Uekyo represents the manifestation of the theatricality of Pistol Opera, the stage director taking center, and a costumed manifestation of other Japanese films featuring confident and stylish femme fatales; she behaves as though she were in charge of all of the little pawns under her. For a film which is vague about our heroine's greater ambitions, we get a sliver of light peaking through about what Uekyo truly values when she delivers her monologue--quite out of the blue--to a group of what look like young westerner women, perched atop an automobile. Uekyo talks of how she remembers seeing a film as a young girl, where the flags of Japan, the United States, and even Great Britain were held aloft while dancers danced on stage. To her, the flags glowed with light as though they were on fire, and she felt some great connection; it is a bold accompanying metaphor here that Uekyo is draped in the Union Jack as well. Her story mirrors that of Seijun Suzuki's film in that it does feel as though it is styled after other western influences, like the jazzy riffs and stage action which bleeds through the film. One could say that the movie feels like what Kill Bill might have been like if directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, especially as I recall Stray Cat's grandmother telling the tale of the giant-sized carcass of the goldfish. Pistol Opera is filled with twists and turns, and often flips you over entirely--a disorienting experience, but a colorful and challenging one nonetheless.
Recommended for: Fans of a dramatic and weird tale of rival assassins in a contest to kill their way to the top. A strange film with an abstract story, one which may leave you scratching your head...so if you enjoy the unexplained, you should have a ball.
As Stray Cat continues her odyssey through the ranks of syndicate assassins, she encounters--and is tethered to--a young girl named Sayoko. The girl is not only harmless at first, but she is shy and keeps a distance from Stray Cat. But as they spend more time together, Sayoko becomes more bold and requests Stray Cat to teach her how to kill, calling her "sister". There could be many reasons Sayoko wishes to be closer to Stray Cat, but regardless, Stray Cat mostly keeps the young girl at arms length, perhaps out of protectiveness or simply out of distrust--the general ambiguity of the film does not commit to one stance or another on the matter. Stray Cat's relation with Uekyo is also unclear, but there appears to be some kind of strain to it--perhaps Stray Cat is being manipulated into being an assassin by the masked agent, or there is another resentment less defined. Uekyo represents the manifestation of the theatricality of Pistol Opera, the stage director taking center, and a costumed manifestation of other Japanese films featuring confident and stylish femme fatales; she behaves as though she were in charge of all of the little pawns under her. For a film which is vague about our heroine's greater ambitions, we get a sliver of light peaking through about what Uekyo truly values when she delivers her monologue--quite out of the blue--to a group of what look like young westerner women, perched atop an automobile. Uekyo talks of how she remembers seeing a film as a young girl, where the flags of Japan, the United States, and even Great Britain were held aloft while dancers danced on stage. To her, the flags glowed with light as though they were on fire, and she felt some great connection; it is a bold accompanying metaphor here that Uekyo is draped in the Union Jack as well. Her story mirrors that of Seijun Suzuki's film in that it does feel as though it is styled after other western influences, like the jazzy riffs and stage action which bleeds through the film. One could say that the movie feels like what Kill Bill might have been like if directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, especially as I recall Stray Cat's grandmother telling the tale of the giant-sized carcass of the goldfish. Pistol Opera is filled with twists and turns, and often flips you over entirely--a disorienting experience, but a colorful and challenging one nonetheless.
Recommended for: Fans of a dramatic and weird tale of rival assassins in a contest to kill their way to the top. A strange film with an abstract story, one which may leave you scratching your head...so if you enjoy the unexplained, you should have a ball.