Watching Izo, I felt like it all takes place in a desolate plane between life and death. Izo has died, and instead of letting go into death, he is a vengeful spirit who seeks revenge.

We begin our journey at the foot of a bloody crucifixion...

Izo comes upon the spirit of those he has wronged and destroys their memory. He comes across dieties, and destroys them. Mental obstacles do not barr his way, the bullets, the trucks, the swords... he is determined. God sends his minions, the wrathful dieties to stop Izo and they fail.

Izo is a sort of Conan the Barbarian in philosophy, and yet I am reminded of the story of the stone monkey of Buddhism, in that no matter how far Izo should progress, he is always sitting in the palm of the Buddha.

Because this all takes place in the realm of spirit, we must look at the context from a different standpoint as we would if this were a experience here on Earth.

In a sense Izo plays the part of everyone who is a seeker of the path. He comes across ego devices and destroys them, he comes across temptation in the woman and destroys it, he breaks the constructs of his illusionary mind and destroys them, this is the true nature of the path, and the path Izo will accept no substitute then the experience of the truth in it's fullness!

There are likely many ways to interpret film, and my way is merely one manner of interpretation. But I digress and we continue...

Izo destroys everything false the way God will spit out the luke warm water mentioned in the Bible of those whose spirits are not alive with the word.

Izo then is the true mouth of God. The scales of the Egyptians.

Izo soon comes upon Geia, the mother of all mankind after defeating the false prophets. She offers herself to Izo in a scene that makes very little sense to me if any. Why she is represented as a vulgar whore, and why she laughs while Izo screams during their intercourse seems without interpretation.

And who are the 5 men at the table, the man with the snake and his 2 servants?

One asks who is Izo, and Beat Tokeshi Kensho answers simply that he is a vengeful spirit, but does it not seem implausible if not fully illogical that a simple vengeful spirit would come this far in the higher planes? Yes, it's not exactly true to any Buddhist or mythos of which I am aware. But I digress...for now.

The real question then is who is Izo to Miike? Who is this character? He seems to be the poster child for cosmic futility.

He comes upon businessmen who attempt to change Izo's mind, but he is not to be swayed, and when they default to the path they have settled on it angers Izo who attempts to kill them, for he cannot settle! He will not settle for anything less then the completion of his vengeful path. The men take form of vampires with steely blades and attack Izo viciously, the monstrosity of their karma coming to bear under the blade of the merciless.

He meets his mother and cuts her in half when she tries to stop him, stating with certain prophetic eloquency "If you kill me you kill yourself."

The next scene we find Izo surrouned by young girls, crying out to Izo in a room of cobwebs. What this means in the subconscious mind or on the spiritual path for Izo or mankind is anyone's guess. Whether lovers he had scorned in life, or merely figments of his imagination, in death Izo is not empathetic to their plight anymore.

We come to a courtoom where he sees himself put on trial for crimes against man and God, kills the mental creation of himself and the judge on the bench. This would be comparable to the end of Pink Floyd The Wall if Pink killed the little stuffed representation of himself, and then ran the judge through with a sword [ [[smile]] ] . A refusal to be swayed by any legislation of wills.

A lakeside serene, on the beacn in meditation. Izo has destroyed his illusions, even his self image, and asks Who Am I? Perhaps at this point in the movie we discern Izo is walking the eightfold path of Buddhism played out in the ox drawings of the Sixth Patriarch. You might remember the Cat Stevens album "Catch a Bull at Four" which is describing the fourth drawing, or step on the eight-fold path where the bull, or ego mind is caught by the practictioner in meditation and discipline.

It begins to rain, perhaps a reward for Izo's having traveled so far on his spiritual path.

Izo bowing before 2 beings in the rain in sublimation is asked, "What is revolution?" he answers, what is to slaughter people.

We then spend a while travelling through a myriad of alternate realities with Izo, where he confronts deeper embedded illusions within his psyche. At this point we see Izo revert to slaughtering and the teacher is unphased by the behavior, afterall, he is merely acting out against illusions the only way he knows how.

Izo has lost his will to continue this way, at this point and is felled by a being who would normally not have stood a chance against him, but that is okay, his savage mind has been felled and he has understood the futility he has been chasing his tail like a mouse in for so long and ascends the side of the mountain, in this case the side of a building, toward a new level of understanding. Nicely done.

What is Izo then? A vengeful spirit or the spirit of the vengeful?

After this Izo wanders as sorrow through the paradise lost, through the abyss, to fall back down below the Earth, back to his past, to a little town where he is accosted by gangs of thugs, men in black, peasants with lamps, wandering swordsmen, and gangs of workmen... what they represent is the levels of democracy and the system Izo defies. At this point it might be wise to point out the sort of zorro mask Izo now wears on his face as he wanders the earthly plain, feeling great exhaustion, and facing endless obstacle, like Sysyphys with his stone.

After he has killed the four groups of attackers, in the burrows of darkness and murk, we see a glimpse of his mother over his shoulder, and then he is back above ground. He spends very little time in the green grass and sunllight when he stumbles again down to the little town.

At this point we face some kind of war between Izo carrying the white flag (of surrender?) and men with red flags. He comes home to his mothers' and a man with a guitar plays...

Izo comes home and is pleaded with by family or something, at this point my subtitles stopped working so all I see is two little children pleading with Izo who has become quite literally a monster, a meaningless war machine, spilling blood of the innocents and a man with a guitar plays...

Izo is chaos. And in chaos brute strength cannot overcome skill of the righteous or the wicked. He is cut down and killed, but his mother carries his spirit back to the gates of life and death where Izo is resurrected to seek his vengeance again. Izo does not know compassion, he only knows when something stands in his way. Izo does not know compassion, he is here to peel onions of fire, flesh and blood, and to cry over their bloody fumes.

I am the tally of your soul...

Izo then passes through all soldiers (lost causes) in a maze with endless doors (mind, futility)to defeat the General...(logic).

And finally Izo comes to the room of 5 men and the man with the snake. Izo who kills the five men, or the senses... the last one to die being that of indulgence drinks his last and a man with a guitar plays...

Now Izo has destroyed all illusions of memory, of evil, of good, of concept, of sense, and runs an endless round in infinite space, chasing the ellusive end... nothing left but the drive and the infinite, and Izu destroys even that.

At the foot of a bloody crucifixion, Izo sits. He is confronted by a samurai and somehow we see him on the crucifix suddenly... and now Izo has found the man with the snake.

But first he must fight the two protectors, the man who fires arrows upon him and woman with her razor daggers, but even they cannot stop him... and butterflies fly out of her disembodied head. But they do not die the man and woman, for he reverts to a snake form and she a caterpillar and a giant flower opens up to bring them home...

And Izo confronts the man in white, who held the snake at the beginning of our tale, and the ground shakes, and opens up beneath Izo, and as he goes to touch the man with shaking fingers, body drenched in blood, the man breathes on him and he falls back and the abyss is gone. The soul returned to the womb, in the cosmic cycle of rebirth. And she takes upon herself the charge of his karma, and that is the end.