When Shinya Tsukamoto released his first feature, "Tetsuo," in 1989, many critics compared the crazed black-and-white speed dream about the merger of man and metal to the work of David Lynch. This critic, though, couldn't see it: Lynch is an ironist and nostalgist, Tsukamoto is neither. In fact, he is not like anyone -- a mark of distinction in a country where many directors pepper their work with references to revered senpai, foreign or domestic. (Admittedly, he does have his influences, including the Ultraman series.)
Tsukamoto takes the rage and emptiness of modern urban life to their natural conclusions -- violence, murder, psychosis. He is the poet of fists, bullets and drills shattering flesh, the dreamer of ultimate nightmares that are also ultimate fulfillments. His heroes not only secretly (or not so secretly) desire degradation and annihilation -- they revel in it. In "Tetsuo" the faces of two enemies conjoined in a bizarre ambulant junk pile are suffused with mad glee. They are free at last from the pain of being human.
He would seem a natural for the now-trendy genre of horror, but unlike Hideo Nakata ("Ringu") and Takashi Shimizu ("Juon"), who made suitably scary movies in Japan, then dutifully trooped off to Hollywood to turn out more of the same, Tsukamoto resists genre conventions. He made genuflections toward the mainstream in "Yokai Hunter -- Hiruko (Hiruko the Goblin)" (1990) and "Soseji (Gemini)" (1999), but remains an apostate to the religion of the box office.
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