Synopsis
“Bakushi” means "the master of rope," and these masters create a kind of performance by tying and suspending people who want to be restricted completely by the rope. The body performance fully fed by fetishism represents the sado-masochist entertainment, and it is displayed by the stage, pictures, and video works. This movie is quite a disputable documentary including the voices of three Bakushis or rope masters and models as well as the process of their preparation for the performance. The disputes expand into the issues of rope masters vs. models, "fetishisized" symbol vs. human desires, and show vs. truth. However, the rope masters and the "tied" people easily avoid the disputes by placing a means of communication, the rope, between sadism and masochism. This movie claims the rightfulness of their communicative voices by showing the details of the process in which the models are tied, suspended, and stimulated. A model abused in her childhood encounters her wounds through a masochistic show and feels the maximized desire. After all, it becomes clear that the sado-masochism cannot be a cure for mental wounds, and it cannot help moving on to the destructive fetishism, as it focuses on not the treatment but the experiment on desires and the perfect freedom through destruction. The director HIROKI Ryuichi displays a sharp criticism on human desires by closely watching the masochistically abused bodies being stuffed like butterflies, before he takes his camera to the mental wounds. The rope master says, "It is really hard to understand the inside and desires of human beings. They are not afraid of the death." (Alice YOO)