The history of Japanese cinema can be traced to a few different groupings of filmmakers, who normally tend to be associated to each other depending on their particular style, the stories their films told, or even the specific time in which they were working. It’s a communal approach that made Japanese cinema some of the richest, most fascinating in history. However, one individual that tends to stand as something of an island in this sea of incredible artists is Seijun Suzuki, whose work is amongst the most divisive in mid-century Japanese cinema, but also some of the most beloved. He was a director whose work was so diverse and different, a case could be made for at least half a dozen films as his masterpiece. One of his projects that is often cited as his magnum opus is Youth of the Beast (Japanese: 野獣の青春), a film that sees Suzuki doing what he does best – doing everything at once. It’s not difficult to see why this film is so beloved, just as easy as it is to see precisely why it is incredibly polarizing. It’s an acid-trip of a film, a challenging journey into the depths of Japanese society that takes a long glance at certain issues that are often missing from the more simple, poetic works of some of the director’s forerunners and contemporaries. An incredibly poignant work in its own way and one that makes a concerted effort to be different from anything else produced at the time, while still allowing the director the chance to realize some of his more absurd, darkly comical visions of reality, Youth of the Beast is something of a counterculture masterpiece, a film that refuses to settle to be anything other than a provocative assault on both the mind and the senses, carefully-curated by a director whose attention to detail, and overriding sense of both style and substance, made him an unheralded genius of Japanese cinema who most certainly deserves his place in the canon of great artists to work in the medium.

As is the case with a great deal of Suzuki’s film (as well as my personal favourite, Branded to Kill, which would come a few years later and see him tread through familiar thematic waters), it helps to look at is as a collision of many different ideas and concepts, all of which go into the making of an unforgettable project. Youth of the Beast is equal parts elegant film noir, action-packed crime drama and outrageous absurdist comedy, a film that is just as likely to present itself as an effortlessly cool foray into the criminal underworld as it is to take a completely absurdist approach to reality. It was part of Suzuki’s genius, and the precise quality that makes his films, especially the ones that are most cherished as works of subversive artistic expression, all the more compelling. Functioning less as a film that follows a single coherent narrative, and more as a piece that borrows from innumerable different artistic sources in its efforts to give the viewer an entirely different experience, it’s not difficult to understand why this is both a beloved work of alternative genre filmmaking and something that will bewilder just as many viewers as it charms. Part of the brilliance of Suzuki’s films is that you never know what to expect, and even when he lays his narrative intentions very clear, there are always some surprises lurking just out of sight, ready to ambush the viewer and make us question the reality of what we’re witnessing. It’s all part and parcel of an era in which artists weren’t satisfied to settle on socially-mediated perceptions of what art is – and even when making something as straightforward and unassuming as a yakuza film, Suzuki managed to make a profound statement, at least artistically.

The 1960s were a fertile time for postmodern art to come about as a feasible area of expression, and very few filmmakers take advantage of this movement quite as much as Suzuki. From his debut film a few years prior, the director had always employed a non-traditional approach to his filmmaking, which gave them a distinctive ambience that leaves the impression that something is intentionally amiss, which only draws us in closer and makes us pay more attention to what is being reflected on screen. Much of the writing about Youth of the Beast tends to compare it to pop art, the movement that was popularized in the United States by the likes of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichenstein, with their bold and brash subversions of traditional artistic expression, using colour and space to deconstruct popular notions of what art not only can be but should be. Suzuki was a filmmaker that often took inspiration from numerous sources, but not at the expense of his own vision, so whether you want to view Youth of the Beast as a work derived from the explosive movement happening on the other side of the Pacific, or as a singular work that came about as a result of the director possessing the same unusual, but brilliant, perspective on the boundaries of art, there’s no feasible way to deny the exceptional value in looking at this film as a gorgeously cataclysmic deconstruction of both stylistic and narrative conventions. Visually, the film is stunning – how compositions are so simple, yet carry such a striking elegance, almost as if Suzuki flirted dangerously close with excess, but showed enough restraint to reach the very edge before pulling back at the last moment, creating a film that looks and feels incredibly outrageous, but has the good sense to not alienate the viewer by overwhelming us with an unbearable amount of surplus absurdity. It works spectacularly well in many of the director’s films, but is most notable in Youth of the Beast, most likely due to it being one of his most notable colour-films, where he has been given the medium to express himself with the full-range of possible visual resources, and consistently pushes the envelope without going too far.

While we can easily wax poetic about the artistic relevance of this film, Youth of the Beast deserves acclaim for its approach to the more traditional aspects of the story as well, particularly in how it functions as a crime film. The yakuza sub-genre is one that has the ability to be either wonderfully entertaining or hopelessly derivative, with the success of a particular piece relying on the specific approach taken by those involved. Suzuki was not a stranger to these kinds of stories and demonstrates his keen understanding of the genre, which affords him the opportunity to openly subvert it in very creative ways. Alongside the term “pop art”, another useful descriptor that is often used to situate this film is as a visual manifestation of “pulp fiction”, the kind of low-budget crime stories that don’t carry much in terms of ambitious storylines but are exceptionally entertaining and extremely enjoyable for those who find themselves tending towards an appreciation of this kind of abstract thinking. Throughout Youth of the Beast,  Suzuki puts together a compelling crime story that isn’t difficult to follow once you are tuned in to the same frequency the director intends this film to convey, which simply tells a traditional story of a police detective who may or may not be crooked (we aren’t ever entirely sure) infilitrating the underground crime world as a way of taking revenge on the killers of a policeman that he knew. With this very standard approach comes an underhanded humour that gives Youth of the Beast a very elegant humour, one that feels outrageous, but is actually far less chaotic or nonsensical than it would appear, the result of a director understanding exactly where to navigate when exploring such a story. The bold style only further facilitates the deeply fascinating use of humour, with Suzuki never wasting a single moment to infuse some comedy into the scene, whether it be to break the tension or remind viewers that this isn’t supposed to be taken all that seriously, even if it can be incredibly bleak at times.

Youth of the Beast is a terrific film, and in order to fully experience the true joys of this film, you need to surrender yourself to the beautifully deranged vision of a director whose work always reflects a keen understanding of both social structure and its various idiosyncrasies, and the artistic form, which manifests through a delightfully demented piece that blends dark comedy, physical action and deceptive crime thriller, all of which Suzuki juggles with the ease that can only come from a clear command of your craft. This is a film resonating with a vibrant energy that is relentless in its pursuit to say something new, while still drawing on reality, creating a warped version of it that manages to be as insightful as it is wonderfully strange. Produced with the visual flair that only comes from a self-assured artist willing to sacrifice lucidity for the sake of making a statement, Youth of the Beast challenges so many conventions. It may not appear to be much on the surface – another star vehicle for Joe Shishido to play an effortlessly cool anti-hero caught in a world of violence and despair that he’s always one step ahead of – but when we look beyond the stylish veneer and see how the film quietly navigates some intimidating narrative and thematic territory, it becomes clear exactly why this is such a cherished film amongst those who take an active interest in this particular era of filmmaking. It may not reach the dizzying heights of some of the director’s later work, but it still earns its reputation as a delightfully entertaining work of action cinema and stands as an admirable forerunner to some many of the sub-genres we take for granted today, since this kind of bold, brash postmodern experiment that blends action and comedy has become so saturated. Suzuki made something very special with this film, and it should continue to be seen as the daring work of subversive ambition that never settles for anything other than sheer brilliance it has slowly been recognized as representing.