Suddenly, completely out of nowhere, Kitano’s next film was announced
during Cannes 2005, with a huge black banner with big red letters spelling
"Takeshis’", and with smaller white letters "500% Kitano – nothing to add".
Instant confusion and curiosity. Instant clicking onto Office Kitano. Instant
frustration. No synopsis, no cast, no poster. Not even a trailer… that until
mid July, where a teaser began running the theatres in Tokyo, and from
September 1st on Office Kitano, showing Kitano tap dancing on a railroad
track.
The silence wasn’t broken until Toronto, where it was announced that Takeshis’
would run in their masters program, thereby sort of ruining the elaborate
stunt planned by Kitano, who unannounced showed up in Venice and in the very
last minute "Takeshis’" as the 12th and last entry in the competition. Of
course Marcus Moeller had known this all along, but for the public, the
surprise was almost total.
Kitano had hardly sat foot in Venice, before an invitation only press
screening and later the same day the first public screening took place. The
reaction was cold, to say the least. Casual applause from the shy, boo-ing
from the not so shy, and in general people shouting “Give us our money
back!” One critic even announced, “We love your dreams, but we are not
your therapist!”
Clearly the audience was confused and frustrated about the film. Not
surprisingly. There is literary no plot, rather reality blended into fantasy
blended into dreams blended into reality. It is deconstructed to the last
frame, arranged along the ideas of cubism, where Kitano edits using sounds,
images, impulses and suggestive dreams as cause for his idiosyncratic cause /
effect ellipsis. But he had warned the audience ahead. In a statement from the
director, Kitano had explained the background for the film and had asked the
audience not to attempt to analyse the film, but instead just to let go and
feel the film, and in the press conference afterwards, Kitano said, "I want
audiences to come out of this film not knowing what to say or what to think.”
But somehow they didn’t listen to what Kitano had to say. After all, they were
critics, they could understand a film instantly, and if they failed to do so,
it was the directors fault. Takeshis’ was bombed.
Returning home to Japan to vote in the elections, Kitano was asked about his
reactions to a confused European audience, to which Kitano amused said, “Sometimes
it is good to be confused.”
"Takeshis’" tells the story of Beat Takeshi, the real life Kitano, who is
famous and knows everyone, who by chance meets his blond doppelganger, a shy
convenience store cashier named Kitano Takeshi, who, still an unknown actor,
is waiting for his big break. After they have met, Kitano begins to
hallucinating about becoming Beat, and the more he is turned down at the daily
auditions, the more intense his dreams become.
Kitano conceived the idea some twelve years ago during the shooting of
Sonatine. Then called Fractals, the idea was to depict how an ordinary persons
dreams would create an imaginative world, where the dream personas dreams
would create another imaginative world and so on, going back and forth between
his actions in reality and those in his imaginary worlds. While Kitano talked
about arranging his images according to the ideas of cubism, he used
mathematical terms when describing the structure of the film, “The film can
be solved using algebraic solution or factorization with x,y,z,α,γ,β, even Σ,
but there is one element which is logarithmic ellipsis, so there would be one
thing which is unsolvable.”
The project was for many reasons put off thru the years, until now, where
Kitano rewrote the storyline and made himself the protagonist.
Takeshis’ is the most personal film to date from Kitano. There is so much of
him in the film, carefully camouflaged and altered to keep his privacy. Beat
is part the real Kitano, part the perception of how the mass audience
perceives him, both thru his films and thru the gossip. Here, Beat is an
egocentrically megastar, who as an actor stars in mindless actions films,
where he does little than shooting people. In one scene, Beat is sitting in a
Porsche (the red one from "Getting Any?") on an Okinawa beach (the location of
"Sonatine") and suddenly dozens of policemen and samurai appear in front of
him and just as suddenly Beat stands in front of the Porsche with a machinegun
in each hand blasting them away, them not hitting him. Either you get the
joke, or you don’t.
And getting the joke is the key. Before you even can begin to think about
analysing the film, you must get the joke. You must be able to see what Beat
and what Takeshi represent. You must be able to see why for instance Terajima
Susuma constantly pops up and tells everyone, that Kitano has forgotten about
him. It is all about who Kitano is and what his films are about.
To me, "Takeshis’" is a second “suicide” attempt by Kitano, like Getting Any?,
not only because of its very essence, but also because the title can be read
as Takeshi and Shis (shisu meaning to die in Japanese), suggesting the title
meaning Takeshi Dies. When asked, Kitano noted upon this and pointed out, that
Takeshis’ marked the finale, the end of one stage of his career as director.
To view "Takeshis’" as a “suicide” is intriguing. For the sake of argument,
somehow the sudden worldwide fame thru Zatoichi made Kitano feel
uncomfortable, because he gained so much fame thru a film that really wasn’t
his to begin with. On one side we have ten films by Kitano, who “no one” has
seen, and on the other side one film he was asked to make, which “everyone”
has seen, which made more money than all his ten other films combined. And in
the words of the great master, “It’s like, the more dignified or serious
the situation is, the more nervous and stressed I get, so I have to do
something funny to shake it off, to make me relax. It's just an instinctive
reaction I have.” Thus in order to shake the image based on Zatoichi of
him, he made Takeshis’, an idea which coincides with what he told Joan Dupont,
“I wanted to make a movie that can't be pigeonholed.”
Another way of interpreting the title is it being plural, suggesting
multiples Takeshi, an interpretation the films tagline, 500% Kitano – nothing
to add!, supports. There are indeed many Takeshis. There is the famous
comedian, the TV icon, the public persona of being a celebrity, the actor, the
director, the private after work Takeshi and so on. Each is unique, each so
different, yet all is the same person: Kitano Takeshi. Kitano himself calls
"Takeshis’" a very confessional film, a film which comes deep from his heart,
where he exposes part of himself.
Once the joke is passed, "Takeshis’" blossoms up and is, in my opinion,
Kitano’s most accomplished film to date, where he continues to develop his
ideas of reality vs. irrealty, which he began in Dolls, of kinetic cinema and
of elliptic structures to reduce narrative to a minimum of scenes, while at
the same time, it being mostly dreams, being allowed to create images,
sequences and scenes, which has been with him for over a decade. The technical
side of "Takeshis’" is very important to Kitano.
When I talked to him in Paris before he surprised everyone in Venice, Kitano
pointed out, that his intentions with the film was, "...to make people
uncomfortable… I wanted people to wake and sit up and pay attention to even
the smallest details of each frame, to listen carefully to even the most
trivial dialogue, to study tiny visual hints and then observe how they would
lead up to what follows.”
Clearly, "Takeshis’" is not a film, where you just can sit down and then 108
minutes later say, “What a great film.”, or for that matter, “What a bad
film”. Each image, each cut, each sound, each situation is personally
important to Kitano, so important, that he for the first time ever asked the
audience not to judge it at face value, but to let the experience of it sink
in before trying to understand it.
As a Kitano film, it is a masterpiece. It is everything Kitano is about, as
person, as megastar, as auteur. It displays a Kitano which has taken a quantum
leap in terms of elliptic structures and plurality. It displays a Kitano, who
is tired of being told by people who have no idea of whom he is who and what
he is.
"Takeshis’" is Kitano’s most personal, original, inventive, bold, genial and
accomplished film as a director.
Takeshis’ – 500% Kitano – Nothing to add!
Henrik Sylow (www.kitanotakeshi.com)
Theatrical Release: September 2nd, 2005 (Venice Film Festival)
Reviews More Reviews DVD Reviews
DVD Review: Emotion - Region 2 - NTSC
Big thanks to Henrik Sylow for the Review!
DVD Box Cover |
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CLICK to order from: Thinking of buying from YesAsia? CLICK HERE and use THIS UPDATED BEAVER PAGE to source their very best... |
Distribution |
Emotion Region 2 - NTSC |
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Runtime | 1:47:31 | |
Video |
1.85:1 Original Aspect Ratio
16X9 enhanced |
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NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes. |
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Bitrate |
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Audio | 2.0 Dolby Digital Japanese, 5.1 Dolby Digital Japanese | |
Subtitles | English, Japanese, None | |
Features |
Release Information: Studio: Emotion Aspect Ratio:
Edition Details: Chapters 16 |
Comments | The
transfer displays apart from macro-blocking, some edge enhancements,
color banding, and other artifacts. The film is somewhat grainy to begin
with, but this is a little disappointing. Sound comes in either 2.0 Dolby Digital or 5.1 Dolby Digital. The use of surround is superb. Kitano has arranged sounds with as much care as his images, and the 5.1 Dolby Digital track allows the various channels to come to live. The additional material mainly is a 30-minute making of, which is a hybrid between your typical Japanese B-Roll making of and your European interviews. The interviews are good. Kitano explains background for the film. |
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DVD Box Cover |
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CLICK to order from: Thinking of buying from YesAsia? CLICK HERE and use THIS UPDATED BEAVER PAGE to source their very best... |
Distribution |
Emotion Region 2 - NTSC |