Ido (2005)

 

a.k. I.D.

Director: Kei Fujiwara

Screenplay: Kei Fujiwara

Cast: Kei Fujiwara as Ryo; Eiji Hayashi as Riki; Yoshiaki Maekawa as Yoshio; Yasuyuki Mineta as Yamada; Masamitsu Mizuguchi as Michi; Kenji Nasa as Numata; Tojima Shozo as Shimomura; Sakae Yamazaki as Yamazaki

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #200 / An Abstract List Candidate

 

Father is not a pig!

Following on from her directional debut Organ (1996), Kei Fujiwara sadly made only one other film with Ido, together anomalies in Japanese genre cinema for how distinct they are. This also has a distinct nature to it that it almost acts as if it is Organ 2, a long gestating project which directly connects to the previous film, a main character from that story returning as a traumatised homeless vagrant, introduced "borrowing" a harmonica from a young boy, a survivor of the previous film who finds himself on a pig farm.

Beginning with a voice talking of how a person can say "Amida Buddha" and be saved, the film in its genre bending, weird and grotesque form is nonetheless trying for something more distinct. With this character a bystander on the farm, the pigs are a metaphor for beasts' ungodliness, doomed to be because they cannot speak out in prayer. A controversial statement for some animal rights campaigners in the modern day, as is the comment heard also in voice over as they were created to show human beings their virtue, but bear in mind that human beings unfortunately, at least these ones on the farm, can also be beasts who just eat and fuck about, even arguably worse in how they live then the aforementioned animals here to eventually be processed into meat. Animals, whilst in Ido are meant to teach humans the value of life, do not become as dysfunctional as the group of people we see. One character is sympathetic, a near murder victim who surviving her family killing his whole family, but the main family that we follow, who squabble and get into arguments, are scraping in their own world of mess and squalor. Members are also idiosyncratic, like Yoshiro, a tall male character with a moustache and goatee who yet dresses with a schoolgirl's ponytail, kawaii schoolgirl accessories, plush toys and even a rucksack, at first meant to be an eccentric (and sympathetic) figure who is almost childhood, in spite of his hulking form, but also capable of awful behaviour like everyone else, with director Kei Fujiwara also among the cast of mainly male characters. Fujiwara herself will probably most recognised from Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989), playing the lead female character, but was also the co-cinematographer and working on the production of the Shinya Tsukamoto debut. Her own career after Ido, whilst finished in cinema from the 2000s and 2010s, would be in her own experimental theatre company, something to bear in mind with how this narrative work plays out.

Split into chapters, of three stooges-like male figures (born from stop motion goop) wander about with a blank paged text they obsess over and tell the main narrative, Ido is a weird film. It is also, like Organ, a grimy and gross film full of degradation, liquids like blood and goo, and a dark view of humanity. In terms of an actual plot, we merely follow this multi-family group at the pig farm with a growing sense of chaos, which by Chapter 5 leads to a dead body which escalates everything to a full blood bath and justifying the horror genre tag.

A lot of the film is dealing with trauma as a large part of its subject. The survivor of her father, who after something disastrous in his career decided to kill himself and his family, still has a mental breakdown in spite of even joining a religious group who goes door-to-door to make proclamations about it. Fujiwara's character is likely a victim of trauma due to her father, seen in her memories and hallucinations as a sexual deviant, which suggests a really bleak way he traumatised her. Then there is the one figure that gets the worse of it, a schoolgirl. At first, revisiting Ido, I had presumed Yoshiro was this character himself, who had happened to be cast with a male actor, as is the case of the nine year old boy Riki being played by another adult man for a clear deliberate effect. In truth, the real character I was thinking of, and is a poor character in terms of what they go through, is a schoolgirl character played by a man, transgender as she is clearly comfortable as she is, who is introduced being peeked at undressing in her room as the others in the multi-family clan stroke phallic substitutes in part of Ido's deliberately broad and artificial tone.

This character never becomes a subject for its own subplot, and what happens is going to be uncomfortable for many, but in this bleak world, she joins the list of the few people in the cast who are sympathetic figures dragged down in the mire of this environment. Tragically beaten up when a would-be rapist, Yoshiro, learns whom she is, getting a rougher shake when forced to go back to he, to dress as a man, including having his hair forcibly cut off. Their very violent reaction, including demolishing a policeman's booth, is naturally understandable if extreme, especially as said police officer was involved in their entire trauma.

Ido is not an easy film to digest. It is a film more of mood, balanced by its intense mood and exceptional music by Ken Shimizu, who tragically did not do any other cinematic work, ramping up to the conclusion...which gets to the point of literalising its themes in a surreal extreme, as someone eats the face off a character which suddenly peeled off without prompt. Ido, to its credit, does have more to mind, this notion that society in its rot will drag people down to a lower state than beasts, following Organ taking a pulp horror thriller about illegal organ trading and adding a greater emotional conflict. Feeling as if characters from a Shohei Imamura piece here, the pig farming clan are isolated and breakdown, with the patriarch being killed and Fujiwara herself turning into a pig-human hybrid, it feels distinct and not pointlessly nasty for the sake of it.

It is worth this paragraph just to talk about the blood in Fujiwara's only two films, and violence in general, as it is horrible and visceral in a unique way to her, including how its aftermath is depicted. She herself, as a character, ends up so beat up due to an argument, bloodied giant bandage over one eye to contrast a bloody red dress, she looks like a literalisation of a Bloody Mary, part of the film's heightened extremity. Symbolically the film's deranged ending makes sense, where she is pushed to her limit and turns into a literal monster, infected as much by one of the other characters from Organ, who returns, who became a violent evil form himself in that film.

It is still something you would need to think about in greater detail in meaning, especially with context of Organ, but Ido does reach a manic power sided with a fascinating optimism at the end in spite of all that is endured. It is neither a contrived, conservative religious edge either, but the idea anyone, all these characters, could have found salvation in terms of release from pain, and the issue is more how utterly monstrous human society can be. It is definitely a film, like Organ, in dire need of revisiting and reappreciation, though one to follow with from Organ first to appreciate it fully. Again sadly, its director-writer did not make any other films, but thankfully, she was able to still create work in a field, more than likely, where it would not take years just to be able to make a film like this as was the case.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Grotesque/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium