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Film Review: Strange Circus
The Creepiest Show on Earth
“Everything looked like a guillotine,” narrates Mitsuko in the beginning of Strange Circus. She is recounting her childhood living under the torment of an emotionally sadistic father. Like any abused child she is in a constant state of anxiety, worried she may do something to draw her father’s ire. In that situation, even the walls must look dangerous, like armed guards blocking any chance of escape.
Mitsuko’s father, Ozawa, is also the principal of her school where his face is broadcast into the classrooms each morning on a TV screen like a low rent Big Brother. The school hallways are soaked in crimson. Crimson ceiling, crimson drapes, crimson walls, crimson carpet. The walls are textured like dripping blood frozen in place. It’s disquieting when two students slowly wheel a TV down the hall, Ozawa’s stern eyes staring daggers from the screen. These halls show up frequently, sometimes empty of people, other times looking like they’ll drown the pale little figure of Mitsuko.
Being memories, these early scenes aren’t linear, but flow from one to the next like a furious dream. Interspersed are moments from a circus show. Acrobats in garish costumes filmed from all directions with fast cuts and chromatic lighting to make it queasy. That’s not the only thing that will overturn the audience’s stomachs.
One day Mitsuko peeks through the keyhole of the bedroom door and has the misfortune to see her parents having sex. Ozawa notices and likes the idea of voyeurism. He drills a hole into a cello case and locks Mitsuko inside, her position forcing her to watch through the hole. Ozawa’s depravity only starts here. He has a tight grip on his wife’s psyche. He manipulates her into being jealous of the attention he gives to their daughter, however debased it is. While the violence Mitsuko suffers from her father is that of a deliberate monster, the violence inflicted by her mother is the lashing out of a fellow victim.
Taeko/Sayuri (Masumi Miyazaki), Mitsuko (Rie Kuwana)
So harrowing are these scenes that when they end abruptly it’s surprising to see only 30 minutes or so have passed. The person who’s been narrating is actually Taeko, a wheelchair-bound, bestselling author who claims Mitsuko and her abusive parents are all products of her imagination—characters in her latest manuscript. Her publisher has hired a new agent, Yuji. Yuji is quiet. He’s indifferent to stories of Taeko’s various sexual adventures with his coworkers, yet he has a particular interest in the writer.
The two get closer as Yuji spends his days pushing Taeko’s wheelchair around town. Both are guarded about their true identities. It’s clearly a possibility that contrary to what she claims, Taeko’s latest story is veiled autobiography. The movie interjects more of Mitsuko’s story as she becomes an adult, but still lives under her father’s rule. The way these two storylines are weaved together suggests that whether it’s memory or fiction, Taeko’s life is deeply connected to Mitsuko’s.
If you’re struggling to follow, then I’m accurately describing the movie. Strange Circus is confusing by design. Director Sion Sono is less concerned with plot than with mood and the mood he creates is a mixture of delirium and fear. Sono has a keen sense for visuals and the emotions they evoke. Take the motif of hallways. There’s the haunting red hallway mentioned earlier and the hallway leading to the master bedroom in the mansion Mitsuko lives in. Ornately engraved panels adorn the walls bathed in the sickly glow of incandescent light. The room is tall and the path narrow making it both imposing and claustrophobic. Moving a snail’s stride toward the door at the end of the hall, the camera creates the sensation of being a child sneaking where they know they shouldn’t. And we know what monster lies behind that door.
Consider another motif, that of the cello case. It would’ve been more practical for Ozawa to trap Mitsuko in a box or a closet. By using a cello case, the image latches to your brain and never leaves. A mundane object transformed into something dangerous, something scary. Because of the focus on suspense and the grotesque imagery, it seems fitting to classify the movie as horror, and that’s mostly correct. At one point, a character mentions a composer named Clive Barker. This allusion goes beyond simple name-dropping when later in the movie chains are utilized in a way most Barkerian. Horror is the clay Sono sculpts with and like with his films Suicide Club and Cold Fish, he molds the elements of horror into something distinctly his own.
Sion Sono
Sono’s movies seem to take place in other worlds, like visiting a planet a lot like Earth, but not wholly like it. Something’s askew. It’s an uncanny valley of reality, where the things we recognize only make the unfamiliar bits that much stranger. Yet the weirdness isn’t nonsensical. It may feel like a dream, but in a dream anything can happen. In Sono’s films things happen for a reason. There’s an inner logic even if you can never quite pin it down. That’s one reason he pulled off the four hour film, Love Exposure, without exhausting the viewer.
Consider the scene in Strange Circus in which Taeko’s publishers meet together in a club. Strippers throw themselves on the men like they’re Mafioso instead of book publishers. The room is choked with a smoky haze and they sit on a sofa that looks like it belongs in an antique shop, not a strip joint. Or take the set design of the room Taeko writes in. Filling every inch of the wall are dark, surreal paintings, knick knacks, and grotesque sculptures, one of which resembles the book of the dead from Evil Dead II.
A film is not the product of one person. Sono is aided by a fantastic cast. Masumi Miyazaki plays Taeko as boisterous with a dominating presence even from her wheelchair. The script calls for wild shifts in mood and demeanor. She’s believable performing even the most extreme behavior. And perform extreme behavior she must in her other role as Mitsuko’s mother, Sayuri. Amid all the confusion, this dual role is less jarring than one would expect. No great effort is put into making the two look different so the differentiation hinges on Miyazaki’s performance. In her short time on screen, Sayuri’s fragile mental state is made clear. She is more a pitiable character than a sympathetic one. This was Miyazaki’s return to the screen after a ten-year hiatus. I confess to not being familiar with her previous work, but it’s a triumphant return nonetheless.
The character of Yuji poses similar difficulties, but Issei Ishida rises to the occasion. Yuji doesn’t change mood in an instant like Taeko, but his shyness masks a tormented soul. Ishida keeps Yuji’s motivations hazy. It is unsettling. Comparatively Ozawa is a straightforward character, but that doesn’t stop Hiroshi Ohguchi from giving a memorable performance. He has a dictatorial air about him, like his desires are the obligations of others. Though I feel it is hinted that deep down he knows how detestable he is. At the very least he knows how detestable society would find his actions.
Child abuse is a subject fraught with emotion. Later in life it leads to depression, shame, regret, confusion, but while it’s happening the emotion victims feel most strongly is fear. Strange Circus drips fear. Not fear of imminent death, but a fear of a constant malevolent presence, a fear unending. Maverick director Sion Sono doesn’t play nice. He shows graphic violence and suggests worse. The viewer is violently jerked from one scene to the next. Flashbacks lead into dreams. Dreams lead into fictional stories. Fictional stories lead back to the present. But you can never be certain which is which. Every moment is uneasy.
Reading this review can’t tell you definitively whether you’ll like the movie, but if what you’ve read sounds like something you’d hate, be confident you would.
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I wrote this review six years ago. I cleaned it up, though it’d be a tighter read had I written the first draft today. Unfortunately the film is no longer easily accessible through streaming so I can’t revisit the movie to see if my opinion would change. Someone at some time held this opinion, at the very least. I’ll trust my memories on this one.
In 2019, Sono released The Forest of Love on Netflix. It’s based (however loosely) on serial killings that took place in Japan during the 90s-00s. It’s really good, though very long and extremely violent.
I think this is true of a lot of East Asian, and European, art film. (Gary can always swoop in to correct me if I’m wrong). Wong Kar-wai, for example, has such a beautiful sense of atmosphere, place, and geographical/human texture, that you can simply get swept away in the visuals of his movies, in large part thanks to Christopher Doyle. And even though they have plots, they’re not plot driven in the way a lot of mainstream contemporary American film is. It’s less about getting you from point A to point B (and presumably a happy ending, or at least some kind of ‘ending’), than dropping you in a particular place, time, and feeling and making you become totally absorbed. My knowledge of Japanese film is poor compared to Taiwanese or those from Hong Kong, but Jun Ichikawa seems to do something similar in Kaisha monogatari. Jim Jarmusch leaps to mind as the most comparable contemporary American who works in that mode, if not always with as much skill or success.
Anyway, really, really well done review. I don’t do horror films and I still felt compelled to go all the way to the end of the analysis.
Reminds me of this guy:
Yeah, that’s accurate, I’d say especially of European film.
I’ve only seen one Wong Kar-wai film (Chungking Express) and am not even aware of Jun Ichikawa. Looks like I have some films to explore. I’d add the films of Kim Ki-duk and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure as other good examples of this filmmaking philosophy in Asian cinema.
Jarmusch is another I’ve yet to delve into, but I know enough to say he definitely fits. (Kinda funny that he’s associated with the punk movement. I guess in relation to popular Hollywood films, slow, aimless, dialogue-heavy movies are the punk thing.) Richard Linklater’s non-studio films are another good example from American directors.
Thank you.
The Coens’ Ladykillers is underrated. You excited for Joel Coen’s Macbeth?
The Scottish tragedy? Surely.
Indeed. I just found out it’s titled The Tragedy of Macbeth. Looks amazing:
I’m not sure about much of his work beyond that one, but I really adore it. There’s another movie hanging around on the Criterion Channel by a more well known Japanese director, The Last Dance by Juzo Itami, that was made around the same time and they deal with both very similar and wildly different themes (death, love, vocation, aging, duty, etc). Even though The Last Dance is a little more dated and less artsy, they’re both worth a try.
Chungking is a masterpiece. Personally, my favorite is In The Mood for Love, but I think you would enjoy Fallen Angels a lot.
Only Lovers Left Alive is the first of his films that I saw, and I’m pretty sure it’s his most commercial. That being said, I’d go with Mystery Train as a first toe in the water, unless you have some undying need to see Tom Waits act.
Didn’t recognize Itami’s name, but looking it up, I’ve long been aware of Tampopo, and when I subscribed to Criterion I had his Taxing Woman films on my watchlist. According to Wikipedia his death was pretty nuts.
You know me well. Fallen Angels is the one I’ve had my eye on.
I’ll take note of Mystery Train (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins as a night clerk already has my attention), but my first foray will probably be with Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. I’ve already had the fortune of seeing Waits in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Seven Psychopaths.
Another example: Anh Hung Tran. Scent of Green Papya, Vertical Ray of the Sun, etc. You can take just about every moment of his movies and frame them on a wall. They likewise do not have plots as we know them, but you still get a story and it’s not unsatisfying.
I’ve heard of The Scent of Green Papaya. I need to stop writing reviews. My movie backlog is big enough as is.
Seems to check out:
Don’t normally necropost, but I had to share this tweet about the director: