11 èþíÿ 2008 // 20:50
Life-time achievement award for the outstanding contribution to film arts will be presented to Takeshi Kitano at the opening ceremony of the 30th jubilee Moscow film festival.
Takeshi Kitano is a unique phenomenon of cinema. A super-nova that appeared in the European and then in American sky in the mid-1990s and is till unbearably bright. He is not an adherer to some style, not a romantic or post-modernist. He is not a naive artist and not an addict of Asian extreme. He is merely Takeshi Kitano. When he turned his attention to cinema, he was a well-known entertainer, a member of the famous comic duo, a TV star; and no one believed in the success of the bow-legged comedian in serious movies. Sudden transitions from impulsive hysterics to catatonic pensiveness have for a long time remained the “know-how” of the former comedian who is now acknowledged as a professional actor.
In the ensuing years Kitano who never gave up his TV career, acted in movies on rare occasions, but his every appearance was very much to the point. Sixteen years later he acted in another movie by Oshima, the controversial and dramatic Gohatto / Taboo impersonating the head of the doomed samurai army. In the idiotic cyber-punk exercise Johnny Mnemonic he played the enigmatic representative of the world yakuza. In the anti-Utopian Batoru rowaiaru / Battle Royale he played himself, the strict and disorderly “Kitano-sensei” threatening irresponsible secondary students with total annihilation. Kitano is a tragic and a comic. After a very narrow escape Takeshi got a new face. One half looks like a Greek mask (or a Noh mask?), frozen in paralytic nirvana, the second smiles and cries.
Kitano played his best and most important roles in 13 movies directed by him. The main part is that of scriptwriter, editor, director, of the most original and amazing Asian filmmaker of the turn of the century. What is Kitano’s movies? Inevitably the striking contrast, the shocking unity of opposites. The constant movement: walking and running, going in a taxi or in a luxurious sport car, moving in the boxing ring or surfing the waves, then there is the flying bullet or the flying kite. And the freeze frame: the sea shore, the town dump, and the pile of bodies. The attentive child and the suicider with a gun at his temple with a dreamy smile frozen on his face.
The utter simplicity of a geometric form from the primary school-book and the most intricate editing constructions, elliptical riddles from the higher mathematics.
At first sight Kitano’s every movie seems simple, but the after-effect is that of a puzzle: the seemingly comic 3-4 x jugatsu / Boiling Point about a looser and his dumb girl-friend turns out to be a heroic epic. Shall Ano natsu, ichiban shizukana umi / Scenes at the Sea be understood as an idyllic tale about a dumb-and-deaf surfer or a mournful requiem for the unrealized dream? The folk cloak-and-dagger epic Zatoichi gradually turns into an absurdist attraction with songs and dance, as though the director, like his character, worked blindfolded. Kitano’s latest movie Glory to the Filmmaker! feigns to be a burlesque comedy. After such merrymaking the viewers are in for several nights of nightmares.
The unparalleled Kitano style means the almost Hollywood-like sentimentality combined with the mournful hard-heartedness of a schizophrenic. In the funny and tragic Kikujiro Kitano takes care of an orphan boy, dumped by his mother, which calls to mind Chaplin’s The Kid; but in the universal harmony of this playful contest between a child and an adult there is enough space for thugs, whores, tramps and pedophiles. Dressed in Yamamoto’s luxurious costumes the enamored mad beggars walk on the petals of the blooming sakura and the red autumn maple leaves. Their ritual procession will be interrupted by a very real death.
Kitano’s funniest gags are equal to outbursts of merciless violence. With one sudden sweep of chopsticks somebody’s eye is pierced. Like a premature burst of fireworks. The director disorients the viewer and always wins. The slapstick “below-the-belt” humor is placed next to the lofty ancient Japanese drama, the scratch of DJ’s vinyl reminds of the doleful chanting of the samurai-akyn. Wooden dolls are very much like real painfully living beings.
Anton Dolin
