Why Don’t You Play in Hell?

It begins with a television commercial for toothpaste, set to a catchy pop jingle and fronted by a smiling pre-teen. Then wannabe filmmakers don skates for dolly shots, a child slides through a floor of blood, and a wife paints the streets red in a fit of rage – and, as they say, this is only the beginning. What comes next proves just as eccentric, eclectic and ecstatic – and anarchic and over the top, too – spanning a long-running gangster war, the intersection of ambition and artistry, and the death of cinema. The film can only be Sion Sono’s playful parody and astute allegory Why Don’t You Play in Hell? (Jigoku de naze warui), a feature as gleefully off-kilter as its moniker.

An art collective obsessed with all things celluloid forms the focal point in an effort that leers at its characters with a mischievous gleam in its eye and lurches between styles, genres and aspects of its story. Ten years ago, The Fuck Bombers dreamed of taking over the filmmaking world, their fates shifting when one of their guerrilla shoots intersected with a local mob fray. As self-appointed leader and aspiring director Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa, Japanese TV’s The Cloud Stairs) explains, ‘My world changed that day. Until then I was just a movie buff.’ The impact on their enthusiasm and motivation may be immediate, but the repercussions – to lives and livelihoods – prove long ranging in their fallout.

Of course, that’s not all there is to Sono’s hyperactive, hyper-violent narrative, one first distilled in a screenplay 18 years ago and since updated to canvas the advent of digital filmmaking. In the present day, The Fuck Bombers are far from a success, their hopes of making martial arts movies with the Bruce Lee-obsessed gangster Sasaki (Tak Sakaguchi, Snake of Violence) flailing. The competing criminal elements are still in combat, and are still dealing with the consequences of the events a decade prior. Clan leaders Muto (Jun Kunimura, Like Father, Like Son) and Jun Ikegama (Shinichi Tsutsumi, The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji) continue to compete, Muto’s wife Shizue (Tomochika, Quirky Guys and Gals) and daughter Mitsuko (Fumi Nikaido, a veteran of Sono’s Himizu) are ensconced in events, and making a movie becomes the only option.

Paying homage to film in film has become an auteur’s playground of late; from Leos Carax’s Holy Motors to Quentin Tarantino’s entire oeuvre, everyone seems to be doing it. A combination of both is perhaps the closest a comparison that Why Don’t You Play in Hell? can garner, and even that doesn’t begin to do justice  to the feature’s madcap antics and overall atmosphere of mania. It is a fan’s exuberance, a master’s earned hubris and a lover’s lost lament that courses through the film’s cinematic veins, Sono adopting all positions. His adoration for his medium, both past and present, is as obvious as his attempts to address its downfall – and that of many aspects of his nation’s society.

Accordingly, anything that can be thrown at the screen is, in style and in content. An all-out swordplay spectacle, an earnest romance of yearning, and a multi-generational fable of family issues? Check. Kinetic action that frees limbs as quickly as it fires bullets, a literal battle between stoic Japanese filmmaking and frenetic slicing and dicing, and a soundtrack that humorously repeats the opening ditty whilst parodying the over-use of Handel and Beethoven in contemporary cinema? Check again. Tones, emotions and intentions blend into a seemingly effortless symphony of all that movies are, were and can be, canvassing the silly and the serious yet remaining sublime.

For many a cinephile, perhaps the most pertinent and potent thematic thrust comes from the many reminders of the changing cinema landscape, from students asking ‘what’s 35mm?’, to picture palaces turned into deserted ruins, to ostensibly shooting a snuff film becoming the only option for aspiring practitioners. Sono isn’t subtle in his statement; however nor does he wallow, his feature a celebration as much as a eulogy. Joy and fun oozes out of Why Don’t You Play in Hell? in the same manner as experimentation seethes within it. The film is not his swansong, with Toyko Tribe due to start making the festival rounds, but will always be his bold calling card. ‘Make a damn good movie, even if it is only one,’ extolls a wise sage of cinema early in proceedings, and in Sono’s grindhouse-esque love letter, his words ring true off screen as well as on.