Now on theatrical release in Japan, as well as available on Amazon Prime Video and other streaming sites worldwide, “Prisoners of the Ghostland” is director Sion Sono at his most convention-defying extreme — which in this veteran provocateur’s case, is extreme indeed.
Premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it stars Nicolas Cage as a bank robber who ventures into the titular Ghostland, a nightmarish zone where victims of a nuclear waste accident are trapped in a spiritual limbo.
His mission: Rescue Bernice (Sofia Boutella), the runaway adopted granddaughter of the corrupt “Governor” (Bill Moseley) of Samurai Town, a mashup of the Old West and Japan’s Meiji Era (1868-1912). Imprisoned after a botched bank job, Cage’s character — known only as “Hero” — has been released and, at the order of the Governor, outfitted in a bodysuit studded with explosive charges. If he fails to complete his mission in five days, he’ll be blown to kingdom come. As a sort of warning, one goes off, destroying a testicle.
That is only the beginning of the action, which unfolds in a bizarre alternative world in which cowboys coexist with the Governor’s silent samurai bodyguard (Tak Sakaguchi), and modern-day cars share space with feudal-era pleasure quarters. Fans of Sono’s previous work, such as the similarly out-there Amazon Prime series “Tokyo Vampire Hotel” (2017), will find something familiar in this film’s dystopian vibe, flamboyant visuals and myriad cultural and historical references, from the Fukushima nuclear disaster to the sloganeering of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Prisoners of the Ghostland” was to be Sono’s first full-fledged foray into Hollywood, a move he had long mulled. Just before filming was slated to start in February 2019, however, he suffered a heart attack that he later described as a near-death experience. Fortunately, he recovered and shot the film, but in Japan instead of Mexico, as he had previously planned.
On a recent video call, the director says that he is now feeling well and already preparing to start production on his next Hollywood project.
“This is not the end and the next one will not be the end either,” Sono says, adding that “Prisoners of the Ghostland” is just the start of his Hollywood ambitions. “I want to keep making films in America. I’ve been thinking about (working in Hollywood) for 20 years. I’ve got about another 20 years before I die and, until that time comes, I want to keep shooting there. It’s been really exciting and interesting — I feel that I’ve finally, finally arrived.”
Despite Cage’s reputation as an over-the-top eccentric, with some critics slating him for turning his characters into grotesque caricatures, in “Prisoners of the Ghostland” he treats Hero’s dire situation, which borders on black comedy, with complete sincerity.
“(Cage) was very serious about the role,” Sono says. “He respected me as the director and didn’t try to act like a star.” Sono adds that when he got the script from writers Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai, Cage’s character “didn’t impress me so much, but the way he played it was amazing. It got a great reaction.”
The project was originally brought to Sono by U.S.-based producer Ko Mori. “It was something like ‘Mad Max’ — it was mainly an action movie,” Sono says. But by the time shooting was about to start in Mexico, he adds, the script had evolved. “I was going to make something like a spaghetti Western.”
Then came the heart attack and another rethink of the project. “Nicolas Cage was worried about me and said we’d better give up (the Mexico shoot),” Sono says. “So we made the film in Japan. From the beginning, though, I’d had no intention of filming in Japan. Also, I wanted to make an action movie, with no Japanese-style swordplay and no Japanese in the cast.” At Cage’s suggestion, though, the script underwent another rewrite and the samurai were added.
Sono’s aim, however, was not to make another genre send-up similar to Takashi Miike’s 2007 “Sukiyaki Western Django,” in which all the cowboy characters were played by Japanese actors and all the dialogue was in English.
“My motivation was completely different from Miike’s,” Sono says. “He wanted to make a strange world from the start, but I ended up shooting in Japan due to certain circumstances and my attitude was totally different.”
Also different for the director was the casting: All the American actors were cast in Hollywood, the Japanese actors by Sono in Japan. Also, Sakaguchi, who took on the responsibility of action director in addition to playing the Governor's bodyguard, held long rehearsals with the actors for the action scenes, but Sono says that by the time he was finished, “we had absolutely no time to rehearse the performances. But I was satisfied with the film, even though we had a lot of problems along the way.”
I mention that I have just seen “Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle,” a film by a French director about a Japanese soldier who spent decades after World War II as a guerilla fighter on an island in the Philippines, a project that resembles Sono’s in its cultural border crossing, if in an opposite direction.
“The Japanese film industry should have more of these mutual exchanges,” Sono says. “I’d like to see a lot more films made in collaboration with various countries.”
At the same time, Sono is not comfortable with films being just another form of streaming content. “I’m old school, so I like theaters,” he says. “That’s how films should be seen, in theaters. I like that it has been done that way for such a long time. Because of the times we live in, I can’t help making drama series and so on for Netflix and Amazon, but what I like best is making a movie and showing it in a theater.”
“Prisoners of the Ghostland” is available now on Amazon Prime Video and other streaming sites worldwide. It is also showing in cinemas nationwide. For more information, visit bitters.co.jp/POTG (Japanese only).
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