‘Together, we can turn this fucking world to rust!‘
Surrealist cinema as popularised by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali in the 1920s and ’30s posited that cinema had the power to take dreams and make them real, not in a Steven Spielberg bringing the T. Rex back from the dead way but rather using dream logic to edit together random shots like a cloud cutting across the moon juxtaposed with a razorblade slicing into an eyeball. Tetsuo: The Iron Man takes that premise and runs with it with grisly and bizarre results…
After accidentally running over and killing a metal fetishist (Shinya Tsukamoto who also writes and directs), an unnamed businessman (Tomorowo Taguchi) starts to turn to metal himself. Absolute madness ensues in all directions.
Incorporating surrealist cinema but also the work of Davids Cronenberg and Lynch, Tetsuo: The Iron Man has very little dialogue, is shot in black and white and has a plot that is utterly bizarre and completely incoherent. This is experimental cinema at its most unnerving and strange. The fact that it spawned two sequels is a terrifying prospect and I left this film baffled as to what I had just seen.
That being said, the practical effects here are genuinely breathtaking and the dizzying mixture of industrial techno and speeded-up editing makes for a unique cinematic experience. while I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind watching this film more than once, I’m glad that I did experience it, and the nightmarish visuals ensure that Tetsuo: The Iron Man is worth sitting through. Just about. It’s the kind of thing that you might accidentally wander into in a museum of modern art only to find yourself unable to tear yourself away. A truly original and truly peculiar film.