Art isn’t for everyone. It can be profitable for the artist if it is, striking the balance between personal vision and widespread appreciation, but it’s not a necessity. Sometimes art is entirely for the artist, the work so niche that few beyond the artist’s circle may ever appreciate it. Other times, the art becomes a clarion call, a beacon by which to find likeminded individuals who can exalt the work, even for a moment. What is clear, however, is that the creative process, whatever the outcome, is difficult and can be quite burdensome, even painful, for the progenitor. Giving birth, if you will, to art requires a tapping into the innerworkings in such a way that it may require robust introspection to the point that one is forced to shed the presumptuous view of self to get to the honest truth. For all of its quirky and abstract moments, this appears to be the heart of Ken’ichi Ugana’s The Gesuidouz (ザ・ゲスイドウズ,), screening during Japan Society’s JAPAN CUTS 2025 Powered by GU Feature Slate section, a comedic punk rock musical that uses a turbulent lead singer’s determination to die like her heroes as the basis to explore the creative process and the way art doesn’t have to be for everyone to be meaningful.
L-R: Yutaka Kyan as Ryuzo, Leo Imamura as Masao, Natsuko as Hanako, and Rocko Zevenbergen as Santaro in THE GESUIDOUZ. Photo courtesy of Rights Cube. (c)2024 “THE GESUIDOUZ” Film Partners.
Horror-loving Hanako (Natsuko) headlines the band The Gesuidouz, a struggling punk band who can barely get audiences to come to their shows. Frustrated by the lack of pay-off in his investment, record rep Hayato Takamura (Yûya Endô) signs them up for a paid gig in the country where they will be given a house and a job for one year, during which they’ll be tasked to write a hit song or get dropped by their label. Believing that she’s destined to die by her 27th birthday like her musical heroes, Hanako doesn’t put much stock in their time away, but as she, guitarist Masao (Leo Imamura), bassist Ryuzo (Yutaka Kyan), and drummer Santaro (Rocko Zevenbergen) get settled in the country, they discover that maybe they have a chance to make their punk rock dreams come true.
Yûya Endô as Hayato Takamura in THE GESUIDOUZ. Photo courtesy of Rights Cube. (c)2024 “THE GESUIDOUZ” Film Partners.
What constitutes punk music often differs depending on the listener as some bands, like U.S.-based bands Green Day and MXPX, possess more of a pop-bend than what would be characteristic of the term punk, whereas U.S.-based bands Bad Brains and Black Flag and U.K.-based The Sex Pistols possess the fast rhythms and chaotic sound spaces that are identifiable with the genre seeking to discard the corporate rock commonplace in music from the 1960s. (For those interested in a deep dive on the punk scene in the U.S., check out documentary Punk the Capital: Building a Sound Movement.) At its core, punk isn’t noise, it’s organized rejection of establishment-approved music. With this perspective, it’s why American composer John Cage, creator of avant garde pieces like “4’33” fits so nicely within this definition and makes sense as a namedrop in The Gesuidouz by Hanako. At the point in which she does, we have seen the band play once (a song that’s more screamo than punk) and viewed her in her bedroom, a place decorated with trash and horror memorabilia, implying someone passionate about their fandoms but not so interested in taking care of themselves. This, plus the disaffected performances from the lead foursome, creates an impression that none of The Gesuidouz are particular educated or present, more interested in being famous without having made a hit. Yet, from the moment that Hanako mentions John Cage, a suggestion forms that, perhaps, there’s more under the surface than the authors of Toxic Avengers Infinity War, their underperforming first album, make it seem. Anyone can make music, but it requires vision to make music art.
From here forward, the time in the country is a mixture of situational and physical comedy in which The Gesuidouz try to acclimate to their rustic situation whether it’s hanging out with the mostly geriatric constituency (with the exception of Katamoto Moe (Baby Assassins series’s Saori Izawa) or leaning out to pluck radishes (the apparent primary root grown in the area). But with each interaction with Tome Iizuka (actor unlisted in any available credits), the person in charge of the migration promotion project the band was signed up for, Hanako finds herself inspired to create, which is where the film opens up from a pseudo-music doc setup in which we observe The Gesuidouz manifest their hit track to a story about artistic creation as a profoundly difficult process. Speaking as someone who spends much of their time exploring cinematic works for their technical and thematic contributions to the larger cinematic collective, creating art is an extraordinary thing, but each piece is not for everyone. Nor should it be. By wrapping up the creative process in a lo-fi, absurdist package, writer/director Ugana (Visitors (Complete Edition)) both heralds the artists who produce and lampoons the dealmakers only interested in profit, all while presenting its central foursome as Gen Z burnouts who either spend too much time meditating on their death to focus on creation or find themselves addicted to a bean-based cake. The first is utilized to highlight the plight of the artist who thinks that their work is too perfect and, therefore, find themselves unable to create art when it doesn’t match up to the expectation. The other is a manifestation of what audiences expect from musicians, to fall by way of addiction, only Ugana makes it something so ridiculous as to garner laughs instead of sympathy without undercutting the correlation. One might even presume that Ugana is suggesting that Hanako endures a psychotic break due to hearing John Cage speak to her via quixotic philosophical phrases (voiced by Takumi Saitoh), but, because so much of the tone of Ugana’s film is a step to the right of reality, this comes off as more of a manifestation of inspiration and the ways in which it can truly come out of nowhere to the artist. Of course, the art itself in a Ugana story has a tendency to speak for itself (and not necessarily in the way you expect), but that just becomes part and parcel of the type of film that embodies its musical roots, eschewing the common rules of cinematic storytelling and embracing punk.
L-R: Yutaka Kyan as Ryuzo, Natsuko as Hanako, Rocko Zevenbergen as Santaro, and Leo Imamura as Masao in THE GESUIDOUZ. Photo courtesy of Rights Cube. (c)2024 “THE GESUIDOUZ” Film Partners.
The impressive thing is that, even while there’s so much going on under the hood, you can also just watch The Gesuidouz as a musical slacker comedy and come out still having enjoyed yourself. It’s fairly low-stakes, the inclusion of comedy is often due to extremes (bigger reactions, intense staring, loud voices), and the songs (especially the so-called bangers) are quite infectious. But, if you opt to dig a little deeper, you’ll find that Ugana’s The Gesuidouz captures the essence of punk by ditching all the tropes and stylings that would make this story blend in everywhere else. The film isn’t so much anti-establishment in tone or narrative, it did premiere at TIFF 2024, as it skips over the expected to garner surprises right when you think you have it figured out. Sometimes good art is sitting in silence while you take in the diegetic sounds around you, other times it’s embracing that all things die in their own time and never before. As long as artists keep making art, we’ll all be ok.
Screening during JAPAN CUTS Powered by GU 2025.
For more information, head either to the official The Gesuidouz JAPAN CUTS Powered by GU or Rights Cube webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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