Outrageous Colors, Flashy Neon Lights, Surreal Sets, Eternal Music. Bad Film and A Grand Spectacle.

TÖKYÖ NAGAREMONO [TOKYO DRIFTER]
(1966)

Directed by- Seijun Suzuki

Written by- Yasunori Kawauchi

*Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Ryuji Kita, Hideaki Nitani, Tamio Kawaji


My mind is imploding right now due to a surge of passionate and conflicting emotions.
Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter is a most polarizing film. Badly made and an absolute treat to watch.
The film juggles the good and bad aspects with equal ease and ends up as a heady cocktail of spiked cinematic pleasure.

Quite basically;

The Good: Lovely cinematography. Exquisite lighting. Unforgettable music. Dreamy sets.

The Bad: Hammy acting. Patchy writing. Weird action. Lazy direction. Sloppy editing.

So, it's more or less even-steven, but I still can't come to dislike the film, because for all its fallacies the film has stayed with me and I can't get it out of my head.

The visual aspects of the film are undoubtedly incredible and its strongest point, and so, half the credit for my love for the movie would go to cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine. He starts off in black and white and then moves to color via a montage of Tokyo city.
He then throughout the course of the film treats us with stunning visuals whether of snow covered landscapes, colorfully lit environments, or the beautifully captured urban surroundings.

But even that isn't all as Suzuki takes it a notch higher with his surreal sets which give the film a unique, dreamlike quality.
The neon-lit bar, disco and restaurant are all wonderfully crafted, but the crowning jewel is the minimal set featuring low stairs. a giant piano and weird sculptures in the climax. We see it first lost in blackness as the heroine sings, pining for her lover but as the hero steps in, the set magically fills with dazzling white light by his angelic aura, radiated from his pristine white suit.

Also Hajime Kaburagi's music is phenomenal. The main theme is such a hauntingly beautiful tune I still can't get over it and have been incessantly humming it ever since I first heard it.

Yes, there are some terrible, terrible cons in this film too, which are seemingly unpardonable. The writing is hazy and the plot gallops away without ever resting to settle the ongoings in the viewers' minds.
The editing is a bit off too and entirely disconnected sequences are almost intercut so they seem to be happening simultaneously and you lose all perception of time in the screenplay.

But despite its over-acting, infeasible action, and a cliched and too nonsensical to be bothered about plot riddled with stock characters, Tokyo Drifter is a fantastic experience. 
Because when you look beyond the obvious trappings of story, character development and well, logic, you see a fulfilling and wholly unprecedented experience which goes far beyond its limitations and even expectations, and appeals to you on a most basic, sensory level.

Rating- 3.8/5