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DIRECTED BY: Flying Lotus (credited as “Steve”)
FEATURING: Bethany Schmitt, Ouimi Zumi, Iesha Coston, Zack Fox, Shane Carpenter, George Clinton, Tim Heidecker, voice of David Firth
PLOT: Survivors of an L.A. earthquake are stricken by disease and experience bizarre events.
COMMENTS: “Kuso,” the Blu-ray’s liner notes explain, is Japanese for “shit,” and you’ll see plenty of kuso in the course of Kuso. The film opens with a shot of maggots wriggling in trenches spelling out the film’s name, followed by a shot of a jerking seismograph. That intro segues into the opening sequence, in which two straight-laced white news anchors reporting on an earthquake are interrupted by a black man in putty-makeup who performs a free jazz scat explaining that “no one will save you” (among the more coherent lines). Then the kuso-show begins in earnest.
The brief earthquake mention is about all the context we get for the segments that follow, which are intercut together and interspersed with surreal (and usually obscene) collages and animations. There’s a couple with a pus-based love life, a flatulent bald kid in a dunce cap who finds a giant anus in the woods, a woman who loses her baby in a hole, a stoner girl who lives with two fuzzy Muppet creatures with TV monitor faces (and who has an exceptionally tasteless date rape/abortion subplot), and a man who undergoes scat therapy to cure himself of his fear of breasts. It’s not clear that all of these characters live in the same universe, except on one occasion when two of them meet and converse in a doctor’s waiting room.
None of the individual stories have much structure or go anywhere interesting, and none of the individuals have any characterization beyond their surface deformities. The lack of storyline and of characters of course contribute to Kuso‘s surprising dullness, but there’s also the lack of variation in the suffocating atmosphere: there’s no real humor, no joy, just endless darkness, cruelty, and a fetishistic focus on disease and bodily fluids. There’s no tonal contrast in the film, which is surprising for a director who’s a musician. It’s no symphony, but instead the cinematic equivalent of a 90-minute bass solo.
There is so little African-American surrealism out there that it’s a crime that this lump ends up as one of the more prominent examples of the form. The film seems pointless, never applying its vision to any end beyond the most juvenile variety of shock possible. It depicts a world of cruelty and disease unrelieved by any sort of thought or emotional investment. That is a sort of vision. But it has nothing to do with Flying Lotus’ anarchic but groovy and joyful music, which is experimental and challenging but harmonic—unlike Kuso, which is a harsh blast of formless noise. Because Lotus is so talented, I hope that he will aim higher in future filmic excursions, and that one day we’ll look back at this movie as a lonely misfire in his artistic catalog. But as it stands, Kuso does a great disservice to weird films. Jodorowsky, Lynch and their brethren often shock, but you never doubt that deep down the fillmakers actually like people. Kuso has nothing good to say about our species, and actually appears to actively hate humanity—including, by extension, its audience.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by “Dan M.”, who said “I’m assuming somebody else has already suggested it but there you go.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
![Kuso [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51gn-h7Nc1L._SL500_.jpg)
- Region A Blu-Ray
…and that moment when the presenter is challenged to a staring contest with the camera lens and proceeds to gaze at the viewer for several minutes—all while clips of this, that, and particularly the other spool out on the in-frame—it’s clear that these jokers (by which I mean Binek and Deliso) are really just doing whatever they want. The scattershot approach to this compelling nonsense keeps you on your toes, because who knows what will happen next? Will it be flashback? Complaints from Psycho Ape actors about not being in the sequel? More courtroom shenanigans? Or maybe it will just be a long segment featuring Bill “Doctor ZOOmis” Weeden getting his right ear pierced after avoiding this for decades?
I’m going to have to ask you to hold that thought as we have just received a live-breaking report from our man in the field, Giles Edwards.
…so I’m not sure what more to say. From the nonsensical trial of Psycho Ape, to the odd nod to prey-predator polyamory, to the direct re-creations of classic film scenes (Titanic, The Dark Knight, and The Temple of Doom, among others), to the regular blasts of product placement, this is goofy, meandering, and defiantly pointless—with a degree of self-awareness not usually becoming for a feature film. But it’s always lively, and wraps up well before interest might wane. The talent gathered for this (presumably from a deep well of friends and acquaintances), though mixed in proficiency, is invariably cheerful, with a deep, deep, deep awareness that while they probably shouldn’t bother with this thing of a movie, they Can, and so, boldly, they Do.