There are plenty of directors who masterfully tackle diverse genres and types of films, but few can compare to Takashi Miike, who literally has more than 100 films to his name and hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down. Miike is sometimes reduced to an excessive, sensationalist filmmaker who gleefully pushes boundaries. This is certainly true to some extent, but Miike has also directed his share of more intimate character-driven dramas that don’t feel the need to drench the screen in blood or…other fluids.
Miike’s fearlessness can create a numbness to these extremes where the audience takes these spectacles for granted. For a director where nothing is off limits, the most impressive thing is sometimes to show restraint and rein things in. Sham is an emotional uppercut that is hardly Miike’s most “normal” movie. However, it uses the everyday horrors that hide in plain sight to remind the audience that the real world can be just as frightening as any deranged serial killer, bloodthirsty serial killer, or rabid monster. In fact, it can be so much worse.
Based on a harrowing true story that was chronicled in Masumi Fukuda’s 2007 book Fabrication: The Truth About The ‘Murder Teacher’ in Fukuoka, Sham unpacks a situation that’s simultaneously simple and infinitely complex. A teacher, Seiichi Yabushita (Go Ayano), is accused of bullying one of his students to the point of suicide, only for it to later come to light that these accusations may or may not be credible, regardless of any damage that’s already been done to Yabushita’s reputation and career. This is rewarding material for Miike to dig into, especially due to the way in which this information is presented to the audience.
Sham begins with sequences of intense violence between Yabushita and his students before anyone understands whether these events are credible. At this point, this first impression has already conditioned the audience to feel a certain way about Yabushita that’s comparable to the general public’s toxic view of him. It’s a particularly brilliant, subconscious touch that strengthens the emotions behind this story. The audience would have a completely different feeling going into Sham’s second act if they were presented these events in a different order. The rest of the film has the audience playing de facto jury while they consider these conflicting testimonies.
At the center of all this is the idea of trust; what that word means and the extent of the power that it wields, even when it’s false. The fluid, corruptive nature of trust, plus the way in which doubt can spread like a virus, is rewarding material for Miike to deconstruct. This oddly enough isn’t Miike’s first courtroom drama — nor is it the first of his films to use a school as a figurative haunted house — but it is the most important. “Taint” is a word that’s repeatedly used in Sham, often in reference to the afflicted Takuto (Kira Miura) and the potential prejudice that Yabushita holds against him. These are feelings that turn trust into an increasingly slippery and unreliable concept. Sham intentionally doesn’t allow the audience the chance to collect their bearings. The film rushes open to hordes of lawyers storming a courtroom, hounded by paparazzi, while the viewer ekes out the details – the truth – on their own.
The way in which Miike presents this story repeatedly proves to be one of Sham’s greatest assets – along with its blunt brutality. There are dozens of different ways to tell this story and it’s easy to imagine how Sham’s multi-pronged perspective is what got Miike the most excited about this script. This is hardly the first genre film to radically reinvent a story by switching between perspectives, but Miike’s latest thrives in this space and accomplishes a Gone Girl-esque reinvention every time the point of view shifts. Characters’ testimonies are used as a natural conduit to jump between contrasting versions of events. These wrinkles add more and more layers to Yabushita’s dilemma, the likes of which facilitate a revelatory performance from Ayano. Sham has a talented cast that’s full of Miike regulars, such as Ken Mitsuishi (Audition), Kazuya Kamenashi (Lumberjack the Monster), and Ko Shibasaki (Over Your Dead Body), but Ayano is the true standout with how he shifts through these extremes.
Sham tackles some powerful ideas that make the audience want to look away, which is exactly why they shouldn’t. This is a movie that features many upsetting visuals, but not in the way that one might expect from the typical Miike offering. This film isn’t rich in brutalized bodies, but the psychological and emotional abuse of helpless children is a whole other form of evil. These corrupt caregivers indicate a cruel world that’s akin to the often-too-much tragedy porn of a Sion Sono film. Sham hits harder because this is all pulled from reality. The film’s central conflict is important, not just for Yabushita and Takuto, but also with how it approaches cycles of pain and if they can be broken or are destined to be further perpetuated. This culminates in a beautiful, haunting finale that’s one of Miike’s most powerful endings in years.
Sham is cruel, unflinching filmmaking that allows Takashi Miike to flex a rare set of muscles that brings out raw, angry work. There can be a hollow nature to some of Miike’s endings because they exist in such extreme worlds, yet the opposite is true about Sham. There’s a melancholy shred of optimism that’s something to be grateful for, but Sham is more a story about fear and retribution, where the truth is a sword instead of a shield. Sham is imperfect and it could have gone deeper with some of its ideas. However, it’s exactly the type of film that Miike should have made at this point to remind audiences that there’s a beating heart under all that blood and guts.
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