Everyone’s got their own personal fetish.
Some people are fascinated with feet. Others just get turned on by wearing socks during sexy-time. That’s not the case with the Metal Fetishist. His hidden pleasure, as self-explanatory as it sounds, is sticking metallic objects into his body. One day, this man with his peculiar and disturbing tastes gets run over by a middle-class, average joe. The man and his girlfriend try to dump the Metal Fetishist’s body by hiding it in a ditch.
The Fetishist, however, is still alive, and he’s got plans for the salary man. To avenge himself, he decides to slowly convert the guilty salary man into a walking scrap of metal. At first, he doesn’t know what’s happening to him but, out of the blue, an iron rod starts protruding from his cheek. After that, there will be no way back to his past self. The machine takes control of his body and mind and soon he loses sight of what is real and what is not. His life spirals out of his control — technology has seized his life. Will he be able to put his life back together?
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1980) appeared in one of the lowest points of Japanese cinema’s history. It was the directorial debut for Shinya Tsukamoto. According to the director, the purpose of this vertiginous film was to criticize the relationship between man and machine. Earlier Japanese movies, such as the all-time classic Godzilla, had already pointed out mankind’s abuse of technology. But there hadn’t been a film in this tradition, and probably in other, that denounced so grittily as Tetsuo how we were slowly being displaced, replaced, and even devoured, by a technology whose purpose is to make our lives easier. Tsukamoto’s film is a nauseating ride into a world of cyberpunk horror where the reality between man and machine has dissipated the difference between the real world and the worst nightmares.
Throughout the years, Tsukamoto’s film has been compared to the grotesque, cryptic style of early David Lynch films such as Eraserhead. Nonetheless, the nightmarish style of Tetsuo —built by the precise combination of expressionist lightning, violent stop-motion animation, whacky pacing, entrapping soundtrack, and a fine selection of actors acquainted with experimental theater— was unprecedented at the time. Because of this, the overall success of the movie took Tsukamoto to extend the narrative to a series comprised of three other films. However, Tetsuo’s offspring were not as relevant and gut-clenching as the original film.
In a sense, watching the salary man’s freakish transformation makes us grit our teeth because it is also a repulsive reflection of our reality. Even though the plot is based on the transformation of society into physical monsters of flesh and metal, it is not really that far away from the place we are today. Its characters suffer a spiritual angst as we do today; they’re devoured by technology because they let it become the center of their existence. The protagonist’s mutation represents the transformation of all men; that’s why his predicament becomes so haunting.
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If your thirst for intense Japanese visuals doesn’t quench with Tetsuo, you should definitely check out the list of the 10 anime shows that are full of philosophical questions and the list of the best anime movies for adults.
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References
Midnight Eye
