Monday, October 07, 2013
Three sad stories
Far away from martial arts, these three tragedies are tied together by a concept and their method.
The last Takeshi Kitano film.
The stories arise from the tradition of bunraku, a puppet show that uses traditional characters. There is a singer and a shamisen (lute) player. A group of masked puppeteers manipulate the "dolls" to tell a tragic story.
The film opens with the main story, a tale of two "bound beggars", a man and a woman, who are destined to walk through life bound together with a red rope.
Kitano says, in an interview on the disc, that he saw such a pair many years ago and the image stuck with him. It inspired a story of love denied and love regained.
This he combined with two other stories, one about a yakuza who discovers that the woman he left when he quit his regular job is still waiting for him and the second relating the results of a stalker whose star withdraws from public life. None of these are traditional stories.
They are new stories, the style is old told in traditional bunraku fashion.
As the actual dolls come to life as the film lovers, they cross paths with the other two stories.
All is beautifully done. Gorgeous scenery and lush backgrounds.
In Kitano's usual style there is action punctuated by long intervals of waiting. In his violent films, the break in the quiet is a sharp and stunning act of violence. Here it is a turning point. A surprise. The lulls are in incredibly beautiful places. Cherry blossoms, a river, a temple.
He does not appear in this film. Satisfied to merely write and direct.
I liked it once I got used to the flow and the bunraku formula which matches Kitano's style to a tee.
The stories are in modern dress and about contemporary situations although the bound beggars themselves are period-less and end up in the puppet form with costumes and mannerisms to match. A beautiful transition. Seamless. We end with the same puppets.
I liked it a lot and will give it a 3 out of Netflix5.
And that will do for Takeshi Kitano for this time. Next time back to the classics. He has a ton of them. I have barely scratched the surface in the ten or so that I have already seen.
Labels: films
