Takeshis- doesn’t get any more Kitano than this!
Siddharth Pillai | Movies | January 17, 2007 at 3:54 am
Cult Japanese director Takeshi Kitano had just completed his pop opera version of Japanese popular culture hero ‘Zatoichi: The Blind Samurai’. His blind massuese was incongruosly peroxide blonde, a gambling addict and the adventure he set out upon involved other absurd elements including a vengeful cross dressing giesha and an all out rousing tap dancing session for a climax. In the light of this return to critical and commercial success after the failure of his ill thought off attempt at a Hollywood crossover ‘Brother’ and another mediocre effort ‘Dolls’, Kitano with true irrverence unvieled the poster for his next undertaking with a poster at the 2005 Cannes film fest. All it said was ‘TAKESHIS’ in large, bold letters with the mysteriously hokey tagline- 500% Kitano- nothing to add.
Nothing to add indeed.
If ‘Being John Malkovich’ showed you what it felt to be a character in Malkovich’s head, ‘Takeshis’ takes you up, close and personal into that place where every Kitano cultist craves to be- in that warped peroxide head. Like Kitano told a bewildered audience after the premiere at the 2006 Venice Fest, it was never about making sense, in fact, he has made every effot in just the opposite. Sense has hardly anything to do with ‘Takeshis’. It exists only because it is Kitano.
The movie begins with American soldiers entering a bombed out complex strewn with Japanese soldiers. One american comes face to face with the fallen body of Kitano and the scene cuts to the quintessential Kitano sequence- a yakuza shootout after which Kitano walks off as the last man standing. The credits start to play and the camera pulls back to reveal it to be movie playing on a TV in a room where the real Kitano and cronies are playing a bout of mahjong. During the conversation that ensues, almost as if by some cue that exists only in the Kitano sub-conscince, the movie starts to jump cut to pure absurdity. When Kitano’s secretary tells him that she’ll be a nice girl, the scene cuts to her writhing naked. When an assistant makes a sympathetic comment on cab-drivers, he spends the rest of the movie as a cab driver, without the least bit of explanation or provocation. The madness and irreverence gathers momentum when Kitano runs into a bleach headed doppelganger who aspires for a film career of his own and is a big fan of the real Kitano. Kitano acknowledges his doppelganger, offers him his autograph and even sets upon to ponder on his existance. Perhaps, he works in a convinience store, he remarks. Presto, doppelganger does work in a convinience store. At this point, reality and illusion are completely blurred. The real Kitano’s stalker begins to follow the doppelganger, even cars meant for Kitano land up at his residence. Is the real Kitano having a dream? Is it maybe the doppelgangers’ dream? Is it the deconstruction of the Kitano persona? Is it a movie within a movie. Or a movie within a dream within a movie within a movie? Arrange that which ever way you want, but it won’t help frame the movie. Every five minutes, the movie abandons one focus for another, swivelling the unsuspecting audience from orbit to orbit making it impossible to watch the movie with any kind of a frame of reference.
There are great moments of inspired outrageous absurdity. The nightmare taxi drive through a dark alley involving two overweight comedians in skirts, a newspaper salesman, his crossdressing son and some strewn bodies of the dead. A quintessential Kitano shootout which is captured through a top shot and the orange bursts of gunfire are juxtaposed with the constellations in the sky. The impromptu ballet of amazing grace and beauty that Kitano’s secretary perfroms as she walks down the beach to pick up a football that has rolled in, the serene blue of her dress flowing against the beautiful Okinawa backdrop. A standout moment of comic surrealism, happens after an audition where an old proffesional extra and a yakuza’s son turn up to try thier hand at a role of a grouchy noodle chef for a Kitano movie. Later, when the doppelganger enters the restraunt, he finds in place of the cook, both the old man and the yakuza repeating the dialogues, each in thier own way. Absurdity hits fever pitch during a prolonged session of tap dancing when a dead yakuza turns up to perform an apopletic version of ‘the robot’. Even the DJ console morphs into a naked woman and later the naked woman with the DJ playing at her breats, is superimposed on the writhing naked secretary. It all ends, of course, in yet another bullet ballet. Also present throughout are references to Kitano’s body of work. The bleached head, the crossdressing son, the tap dancing are obvious references to ‘Zatoichi’. The kid can also be traced to ‘Kukijiro’. The beach sequence is somehow reminescent of ‘Hana-Bi’ while the movie Kitano is shown to be shooting bears refernce to ‘Sonatine’. While keeping the fanboys cheering, the scenes perhaps represent thier presence in Kitano’s head or even maybe is a bizarre representation of how he was inspired to make those movies.
At an hour and fifty, the movie seems to push on for long. Every time the movie seems to come to a close, there is an eye opened, a dream ended and yet another one going on. But each time the movie drags on, Kitano makes it worthwhile by introducing another rewarding scene which furthers twists the maze that is the movie.
Inventine, unique, absurd, beautiful, terrible, self-indulgent, clever, bloated, funny, irreverent… “Takeshis” is a haiku on speed. And with that, Kitano once again succeeds in proving himself to be as emigmatic and original as ever.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Great Take on Take-shi. any idea if we get any such marvels on the ghetto streets selling “english” dvd’s except in festivals for the fortunate few?
regarding Takeshi, one thing is for sure, if one watches and enjoys it, he would at least have a different outlook towards films, or at least would not make commenst like, why this happened, there is no reason for it, n the likes.
Tushar, the company I am working for which is Utv palador has bought rights of most Takeshi films (including Zatoichi) for dvd , tv and theatre release in India. So don’t worry, he is coming to you soon!
oh great, thanks for that info Chaitanya!
= Thanks for this… I’ll admit I’m not big on Takeshi… while watching Zatoichi, I had this sense of alienation from many a scene/sequence… sometimes I feel the sequences seem to have some sort of drugged feeling to it… like some of the boy and his sister side of the story… shots like the boy dancing in the lonely street in front of the house… it’s as if Takeshi was on some kind of a drug trip when he visualized that concept…
Brother was another one… here I felt Takeshi went self indulgent… and I just couldn’t connect with the beach sequences… it felt dry very dry in my view though I did realize why those beach scenes were important to tell the story of Aniki Yamamoto…
On one hand in Brother, Takeshi was trying to provide his usually style true to life projection of the Yakuza, yet alternating between dangerously falling into the trap of a documentary on one end and the indigestibly over the top sequences on the other end.
But this one intrigues me… checking it out on my wanted list…
I have heard of the man, I have seen pictures of him, but I know nothing of his films or who he is. Thank’s for introducing me to a new director who sounds very, very interesting! Looks like a trip to Chinatown is in store for me this weekend!
Really, for any of you who live in LA and want cheap Asian movies, contact me!!! The connection is in Chinatown!
‘takeshis’ was terrible I thought, very disappointing
@Siddharth
I know this is a very late reply but I am just starting to write an artivle for PFC on Mr. Kitano or to put it properly, my exeriences of his movies. I haven’t seen Takeshi’s yet. I am still trying to finish his earlier movies. Hard to get those!
In any case, I do not think ‘Dolls’ was mediocre. It is as sensitive and romantic a portrayal as the some scenes in Hana-bi are. Wanted to know your take on Dolls.
Thanks.