Everything Goes Wrong

What a great, flowing, virtuoso bit of filmmaking. Effortless interlocking scenes moving one to the next. One character's bit of drama bleeds seamlessly into another. This interlocking style is not originated in this film but many of the more recent films have popularized something that this film did so well 50 years before. There is an apparent joyous enthusiasm with which this film is made and, while the subject matter is at times very intense and not always satisfying, there is an infectious energy on display by a doubtlessly talented director.

Crash, Pulp Fiction and other similar recent films owe a bit of a debt to Everything Goes Wrong and fans of those should take particular interest in this one.

I went into it with no expectations as I knew nearly zero about it and at the time I am posting this review only 16 people have even voted for it. A criminally under-appreciated film and it made an immediate impression on me which has continued to grow to admiration. After seeing Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill, Take Aim at the Police Van, Everything Goes Wrong is my favorite film by Seijun Suzuki so far.

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Also known as The Madness of Youth - if you want to find this one on the internet, that's the title I found it under. And you'll want to find this one. It's one of Suzuki's best. It shares many similarities with Koreyoshi Kurahara's The Warped Ones, which I watched (and reviewed) a while back, and it even stars the same actor, Tamio Kawaji, again playing a disaffected youth (Everything Goes Wrong came out less than a month afterward). In The Warped Ones, Kawaji was a total ass, completely despicable. He's kind of despicable here, but the story does more to redeem him - to show that he's just a confused child rebelling against his elders.

After his father died in the war, his mother shacked up with a rich, married man. Fifteen years later, he's still hanging around, and Kawaji thinks of his mother as a prostitute. He kind of thinks of all women that way. It doesn't help that the women he hangs around with are extremely promiscuous (while this comes before the era of the true pinky films, the descriptions of sex are surprisingly graphic). The film is very moralistic, but the characters are well written, and the script flows quickly between several different plot lines (it runs a mere 71 minutes but feels absolutely stuffed - though not overstuffed). The real star, of course, is Seijun Suzuki. It's often said that Suzuki was nothing but a factory worker for Nikkatsu at the time. That may be, but a Hell of a worker he was, and his camera darts around breathlessly and beautifully. You know that famous between the legs shot in Kurosawa's Yojimbo? Suzuki beat him to it by a year (he probably wasn't the first either, but I know I always associate that shot with Yojimbo). The editing is also tremendous, although, supposedly, Suzuki would have nothing to do with that. After all, this was just one of four films the director would make in 1960.

Lets look at the basic story: Jiro is a clean cut, hard working student looking to please his mother, who is having an affair with a business man. Dismissing his mother's situation as prostitution, he falls in further with a crowd of proud criminals and goes down the bad path. Also intertwining sub plots including a young woman trying to raise money for an abortion to not burden her living partner and Jiro's new girlfriend who is involved with a gangster.

Certainly at first glance of a summary like this, one envisions a life time channel movie, or something in the vain of MST3K fodder like "I Accuse My Parents". What ultimately saves this can be summed up thusly: Seijun Suzuki. I won't say this is his best movie necessarily, but it probably displays his strength best, making movies that revel in absurdity while not becoming flat out comedies.

It's to Suzuki's credit that many of these scenes come off less laughable than they should, while others are played up to such an extent you can only laugh, but all of it feels intentional and calculated. Characters will completely shift in behavior at points, and it's a testament to Suzuki we can still take anything seriously in all of this.

One particularly brilliant scene has a man trying to make a solemn, heart felt confession to someone, the kind of performance one would expect in a serious drama, while the person he's speaking to is making out with his girlfriend and talking in a snappy, Godardian fashion. A complete contrast of moods that seems like the actors are in two completely different movies, and yes it inspires a few laughs while still eliciting sympathy, and is brilliant in how it conveys the utter dissonance and break down in communication between them.

I mentioned Godard earlier, and certainly more than a few touches of "Breathless" can be seen here. There are a few jump cuts near identical to those in "Breathless", and towards the end Jiro even begins talking a little like Michel, however there's enough original flourish here. The camera work is sweeping and complimentary to this hyper paced film of only 70 minutes, weaving through plot points gracefully. There's a lot of content in this seventy minute picture but it is never rushed.

Well worth a look.

The united states title for this is everything goes wrong, while in japanese, it translates to everything is crazy. Jiro is a confused, angry, youth, trying to grow up in the crazy world around him. This was 1960, so japan was starting to get back on its feet after world war two. When he discovers that his mother is hanging around with a married man, he must deal with his own feelings, in spite of the fact that the married man has helped them financially over the years. So Jiro does what a youth in a city does... he joins a gang and goes down the wrong path. Starts pulling jobs and making bad decisions. It's pretty good, with lots of peppy, jazzy music. The tone always seems to be upbeat and fast, even when Jiro is breaking into cars. The director must really like jazz. Story by Akira Ichijo. Directed by Seijun Suzuki. Wikipedia dot com says he went to film school after the war, and about ten years later, began directing films. This is pretty good... has almost the same plot as Blackboard Jungle, which had come out five years prior.

This post-war Japanese film essentially revolves around a young man by the name of "Jiro Sugita" (Tamio Kawaji) who lives alone with his mother and hangs out with his friends who have formed a street gang of sorts. Within this gang is a girl named "Toshimi Tani" (Yoshiko Nezu) who is quite smitten with Jiro and believes that the reason he doesn't return her affection is due to his overall shyness-and this only increases her resolve to be with him even more. What she doesn't know is that Jiro is insanely troubled by the fact that his mother has been having an affair for ten years with a married man named "Keigo Nanbara" (Shinsuke Ashida) who also loves her but cannot bring himself to file for a divorce from his wife. As a result Jiro harbors an extreme disdain for all women and treats them accordingly. So when Toshimi finally breaks the ice with him and they end up sleeping together she isn't quite prepared for what happens afterward. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this coming-of-age film had more than its fair share of personal dramas involving a number of other characters than those just mentioned. It also consisted of some overly-dramatic acting that is uniquely typical for many Japanese films of this type as well. That being said, while it may not appeal to all audiences, it wasn't too bad for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.