Por Jorge-Mauro De Pedro | Mayo, 2015.
Aunque Tetsuo, la verdad, tenía que conformarse con la perversidad, básicamente porque faltaba presupuesto para revestirla de cierto grado de sofisticación (y sin embargo… ¡qué moderna que sigue luciendo!). Alardeaba de estética “sucia” en blanco y negro, desplegando soluciones en la línea de Cabeza borradora (David Lynch, 1977) y Pi (Darren Aronofsky, 1998).
Una danza plagada de sonidos industriales (magnífica banda sonora) insertos en una película prácticamente sin diálogos en la que asistíamos a la metamorfosis de un nipón cualquiera (pulcro, disciplinado, dispuesto como cada mañana a tomar el metro camino de su trabajo) en un amorfo montón de tuberías, tuercas y cables. La pesadilla comienza tras ser abducido por un ente voyeur que deposita en su cuerpo la semilla de la transformación en metal, observando y controlando –en cierta medida- sus pulsiones.
Uno más de esos “monstruos de tamaño normal” que aparecían en el prólogo del filme: humanos lacerados que aceptaban el acero dentro de sus cuerpos, tortura autoinfligida sin una motivación clara. La tecnología incrustada en el interior de uno mismo, un matrimonio mal avenido entre tendones y vísceras y superficies afiladas y pulimentadas. O si se prefiere, un manual de “cómo ser un cyborg” donde se imponía el hágalo usted mismo (aunque acabes desgraciándote en el intento).
Regresiones, viajes acelerados, ¿fantasía punk? La escena más recordada de Tetsuo era la más grotesca: aquella en la que el protagonista era sodomizado por una mujer equipada con una trompa elástica y corrugada… para acabar desquitándose merced a un falo-taladro de dudosa utilidad.
El resto, un pulso entre el invasor y el huésped, entre lo que queda de su cuerpo y la desordenada armadura que le va recubriendo. Un duelo que ocupa un tercio de su reducido metraje (67 minutos) y que propone un viaje sin retorno y sin glamour: la cibernética no está aquí representada por ningún superordenador sofisticado, sino por un enjambre de desechos industriales que deciden anidar en la piel del tipo ordinario (y eso que todavía no había smartphones).
Fusionados y dispuestos a “oxidarlo todo y convertirlo en polvo en el Universo”, la primera entrega concluía con una promesa de destrucción cuyos ecos se remontaban a su contemporánea –y animada- Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988). Si Tetsuo y Kaneda se tiraban media cinta caneándose por las calles de Neo Tokio, nuestros jinetes del Apocalipsis –fusionados- desfilan por avenidas de la megacity dispuestos a reducirla a cenizas. Vamos, como el prólogo de una peli de Godzilla pero sin maquetas pisoteadas.
Tetsuo: the Iron Man is considered one of the defining titles in the ‘body horror’ movement and a cyberpunk classic. While it may have been shot in black and white 16mm, the creative force in this film is near overwhelming and totally absorbing and it is easy to see why this became an international cult hit and why many hail this as a classic.
A strange man known as the “metal fetishist” (Tsukamoto) spends his days at a scrapyard sticking scrap metal in his body. He is knocked over in a hit and run incident involving a salary-man (Taguchi) and his girlfriend (Fujiwara). The next day the salary-man finds himself transforming into a half human-half metal monster and he finds out that the metal fetishist might not be as dead as he thought.
The mutations affecting people are halfway between Cronenberg’s body horror and Geiger’s biomechanical creations. There is a queasy mixture of sex and mechanical transformation which breaks traditional boundaries in the most painful ways. The dissolution of the human body is visceral. The technique in showing this is two-fold. Firstly the actors provide finely judged performances littered with startling physical performances with expressionistic dance sequences with convulsions and thrusting which is both sexual and painful. Tsukamoto captures these performances in a frenzy of action and images with his sound design, editing and constant use of different camera angles bombarding the viewer into submission.
We are treated to montages of industrial scenes, sinuous wire, and metal pipes like entrails and bones, twisted bodies, extreme close-ups on faces distorted by pain and anger brought on by mutation and hatred. There are nightmarish visions of fevered sex intercut with increasingly disfigured bodies withmetal jammed into flesh. It is visually confident and becomes extremely disturbing with the disgusting and disturbing stop motion morphing sequences which document the biomechanical changes taking place which have to be seen to be truly understood. At the most frantic points Tsukamoto damages film stock. Accompanying this visual frenzy is an industrial soundtrack with insistent pulsing drums. There are interesting sound design choices where simple human functions are accompanied by the sound of grating metal and gunshots. It all adds to the oppressive sense that humanity is changing for the worst.
On top of using these technical aspects Tsukamoto mixes genres with Godzilla style battles, Cronebergian body-horror and supernatural cum-technological possessions which kept me off-guard and marvelling at his confidence and skill in creating this story. I knew I was hooked from the start but the one section that affected me the most – my heart beating, my fists clenched – is the sequence involving a woman styled to look like the Bride of Frankenstein chasing the salary-man. I found it was a genuinely terrifying section which confirmed to me that Tsukamoto’s vision and his audio-visual bombardment had done the trick. There is an oppressive atmosphere and it is relentless.
Uploaded 10-10 2012, Size 3.28 GiB, ULed by aoloffline
Enlaces:
http://www.culturaca.com/los-tetsuos-de-shinya-tsukamoto/
https://goetiamedia.com/el-cinefilo-tetsuo-the-iron-man-1988/
https://genkinahito.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/tetsuo-the-iron-man/
https://genkinahito.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/tetsuo-ii-body-hammer/
https://blog35milimetros.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/critica-tetsuo-el-hombre-de-hierro/
https://lwlies.com/articles/tetsuo-the-iron-man-and-the-dark-side-of-transhumanism/
Regresiones, viajes acelerados, ¿fantasía punk? La escena más recordada de Tetsuo era la más grotesca: aquella en la que el protagonista era sodomizado por una mujer equipada con una trompa elástica y corrugada… para acabar desquitándose merced a un falo-taladro de dudosa utilidad.
El resto, un pulso entre el invasor y el huésped, entre lo que queda de su cuerpo y la desordenada armadura que le va recubriendo. Un duelo que ocupa un tercio de su reducido metraje (67 minutos) y que propone un viaje sin retorno y sin glamour: la cibernética no está aquí representada por ningún superordenador sofisticado, sino por un enjambre de desechos industriales que deciden anidar en la piel del tipo ordinario (y eso que todavía no había smartphones).
Tetsuo: the Iron Man is considered one of the defining titles in the ‘body horror’ movement and a cyberpunk classic. While it may have been shot in black and white 16mm, the creative force in this film is near overwhelming and totally absorbing and it is easy to see why this became an international cult hit and why many hail this as a classic.
A strange man known as the “metal fetishist” (Tsukamoto) spends his days at a scrapyard sticking scrap metal in his body. He is knocked over in a hit and run incident involving a salary-man (Taguchi) and his girlfriend (Fujiwara). The next day the salary-man finds himself transforming into a half human-half metal monster and he finds out that the metal fetishist might not be as dead as he thought.
The mutations affecting people are halfway between Cronenberg’s body horror and Geiger’s biomechanical creations. There is a queasy mixture of sex and mechanical transformation which breaks traditional boundaries in the most painful ways. The dissolution of the human body is visceral. The technique in showing this is two-fold. Firstly the actors provide finely judged performances littered with startling physical performances with expressionistic dance sequences with convulsions and thrusting which is both sexual and painful. Tsukamoto captures these performances in a frenzy of action and images with his sound design, editing and constant use of different camera angles bombarding the viewer into submission.
We are treated to montages of industrial scenes, sinuous wire, and metal pipes like entrails and bones, twisted bodies, extreme close-ups on faces distorted by pain and anger brought on by mutation and hatred. There are nightmarish visions of fevered sex intercut with increasingly disfigured bodies withmetal jammed into flesh. It is visually confident and becomes extremely disturbing with the disgusting and disturbing stop motion morphing sequences which document the biomechanical changes taking place which have to be seen to be truly understood. At the most frantic points Tsukamoto damages film stock. Accompanying this visual frenzy is an industrial soundtrack with insistent pulsing drums. There are interesting sound design choices where simple human functions are accompanied by the sound of grating metal and gunshots. It all adds to the oppressive sense that humanity is changing for the worst.
On top of using these technical aspects Tsukamoto mixes genres with Godzilla style battles, Cronebergian body-horror and supernatural cum-technological possessions which kept me off-guard and marvelling at his confidence and skill in creating this story. I knew I was hooked from the start but the one section that affected me the most – my heart beating, my fists clenched – is the sequence involving a woman styled to look like the Bride of Frankenstein chasing the salary-man. I found it was a genuinely terrifying section which confirmed to me that Tsukamoto’s vision and his audio-visual bombardment had done the trick. There is an oppressive atmosphere and it is relentless.
Uploaded 10-10 2012, Size 3.28 GiB, ULed by aolofflineEnlaces:
http://www.culturaca.com/los-tetsuos-de-shinya-tsukamoto/
https://goetiamedia.com/el-cinefilo-tetsuo-the-iron-man-1988/
https://genkinahito.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/tetsuo-the-iron-man/
https://genkinahito.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/tetsuo-ii-body-hammer/
https://blog35milimetros.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/critica-tetsuo-el-hombre-de-hierro/
https://lwlies.com/articles/tetsuo-the-iron-man-and-the-dark-side-of-transhumanism/
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