THE BLOOD OF REBIRTH (Japan, 2009)
Directed by: Toshiaki Toyoda
Starring: Tatsuya Nakamura, Masao Kusakari, Mayuu Kusakari

Toshiaki Toyoda has been screwed, denied the reputation he deserves. His youth-on-the-loose classic, BLUE SPRING, is a cult favorite, and 9 SOULS, about a group of cons who bust out of prison to take care of unfinished business, was a surrealist odyssey into the hearts of nine creeps that deeply divided viewers. In 2005 he was poised to break big with his family dysfunction saga, HANGING GARDEN, a film that should have garnered the praise later applied to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s unambitious TOKYO SONATA (2008), but a drug arrest derailed his career just when it was about to take off. He was given a suspended sentence, but in the conservative Japanese film industry his career was over.

But Toyoda cannot be stopped, and BLOOD OF REBIRTH is a trippy shot fired over the bow of Japanese cinema that proclaims that his visionary filmmaking is as vital and electro-charged as it ever was. Based on the legend of the 15th century adventurer, Oguri Hangan Daisukeshige, whose story has been told in kabuki and Sekkyô music (a form of chanted and sung Buddhist parable), Toyoda gives bruised flesh and hot blood to this myth. This time out, Oguri is a down-and-out wandering masseur hired by a local despot, Daizen, to massage away the venereal disease he caught from one of his sex slaves. Oguri is happy to oblige, but eventually he’s ready to move on. Unwilling to lose his latest human possession, Daizen kills him. And that’s when the story really begins.

Tatsuya Nakamura, drummer of the space rock band Twin Tail, plays Oguri. Previously his biggest (and one of his only roles) was in Shinya Tsukamoto’s intense and experimental BULLET BALLET and BLOOD, choking on peyote and dripping with a shimmering, muscular spirituality that feels practically medieval, proves to be a worthy follow-up. Twin Tail provides the throbbing, aching score for this retelling of the Oguri legend, but it’s Toyoda’s take that gives it its heft. In his hands, BLOOD becomes a movie that’s literally about rebirth, wherein no man can be imprisoned by threats of violence, by iron bars, by a jailhouse cell or even by life itself. With willpower alone, man can shatter all the prisons that hold him back the same way Buddha shattered the illusions that chained him to this physical realm.

The Japanese film industry thought Toyoda was over, and they’d written him off. They weren’t prepared for this. Like Oguri, nothing can stop Toyoda. No matter where you bury him, no matter what you take, no matter how you punish him, he will not quit. BLOOD OF REBIRTH is here to herald the rebirth of one of cinema’s most intense talents.

Presented in association with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film (July 1 - 16, 2010)