KIKUJIRO is Kitano's NORTH BY NORTHWEST, a hugely enjoyable, almost parodic precis of a mighty oeuvre - we have the shy young protagonist and his violently unstable father figure from BOILING POINT; the disjunction of sentimental music and violent imagery from VIOLENT COP; the beachgames idyll, suspended in time and place, from SONATINE; echoes of KIDS' RETURN, such as the two tapdancers; the devastating intrusion of mental fragility from HANA-BI.
Of course, NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a masterpiece; KIKUJIRO, for all its many merits, isn't quite. The first half, detailing the quest of an incongruous pair - diffident, lonely boy who lives in his imagination, abandoned by his parents; and abruptly grouchy, middle-aged, henpecked husband search for former's mother - is full of great Kitano things, but seems to me a touch manipulative; the how-can-you-resist-it stoicism of the eternally disappointed boy; the swathes of romantic music that are sometimes undermined, but not always; the trying-a-bit-too-hard performance of Kitano himself, managing to mug shamelessly while retaining a rigorously deadpan demeanour (nevertheless, he has never been funnier, ).
Like I say, though, it's full of good things, avoiding the blatant sentimentality of CENTRAL STATION or THE STRAIGHT STORY (KIKUJIRO is a film which is anything but straight - it begins with repeated shots of Masao crossing roads, bridges etc, as if signalling some kind of progress will be achieved, from childhood to maturity or something, but Kitano's subtle way with flashbacks means he, and we, are constantly going around in circles).
This is very much a boys' film; not in the sense of startling violence or macho posturing (this is a Kitano film full of day-glo and angel bells), but in its fantasy. The quest is a search for a woman, the mother (Kikujiro's also), that first, perhaps stifling, experience we all have of life. The quest, therefore, might be seen as a return to the womb. But it fails halfway through, where a Hollywood movie (like THE STRAIGHT STORY) would end. The best stuff is still to come; the end of the journey (the woman) is made irrelevant. The quest is also an escape for Kikujiro from his permanently disapproving wife, back into a childhood where he is bully, in control; the temporary commune the pair set up is all-male.
To accuse Kitano of misogyny would be absurd; the film is shot through with the child's sensibility as expertly as Stephen Dedalus' in Joyce's 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' (we are watching, after all, Masao's snapshots). This is a boy who early in the film stands tiny, alone, in a huge all-weather because nobody bothered to tell him about the suspension of summer soccer practice. In the corresponding scene near the end, he is no longer alone, chased on the pitch by his friends.
The linearity of the film is constantly disrupted, and finally abandoned after the quest fails - Masao is a child, after all, and must be entertained; and so we stop for entertainments, jugglers, human robots, funfairs. There is even the sense that Kikujiro's erratic irascability is all just a show for Masao, his mishaps as ritualised as performances - like a cartoon, he emerges unscathed from his very physical misadventures. This is crystallised in the glorious second half, where Kikujiro/Kitano, director of entertainments, struggles to keep the child constantly amused - this is as joyous as 90s cinema got, an affirmation of imagination, friendship and play. But absolutely no women.
There is a lingering feeling of traditionalism in these gestures. Although Masao dresses like his American equivalent, and lives in hyperWestern Tokyo, Western culture doesn't intrude very much in his life. He doesn't watch TV or collect Pokemon cards. In the opening sequence, when we see him wandering about Tokyo, we see him framed against ancient Japanese signifiers, temples, lamps, the equivalent of those headless seaside cartoons you see in Brighton, etc. Further, KIKUJIRO is shot through with fantasy, dreams, hallucination, and the most astonishing, otherworldly colour, and these are always heightening and making absurd the film's realism - the recurring shots of Masao sleeping, and the unsignalled shift in time, suggest the events exist as much in Masao's head as actually happening. But his subjectivity is highly ritual, stylised, like Japanese theatre, as if he is some kind of unconscious receptacle for a vanishing culture. (And, they always seem to have a spare pot of make-up handy)
For all its comedy, its variety, its humanity, its sense of the preposterous, KIKUJIRO is one of Kitano's saddest films. Although connections are formed in this eerily underpopulated Japan, the overriding sense of arbitrary fate and violence, of the increasing selfishness and soullessness of modern life, are painfully apparent. Curiously, Kitano's most open film in terms of space, is his least expansive in terms of thematics and effect - the compressions of genre seem to suit him best. This is still one of the best films of the year, as a middling film from the world's greatest living director must be. The Kitano style is awesomely confident, his unemotional, uncluttered, static framing, his comic editing and ellipses, his unobtrusive way of revealing emotion through landscape.
Of course, NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a masterpiece; KIKUJIRO, for all its many merits, isn't quite. The first half, detailing the quest of an incongruous pair - diffident, lonely boy who lives in his imagination, abandoned by his parents; and abruptly grouchy, middle-aged, henpecked husband search for former's mother - is full of great Kitano things, but seems to me a touch manipulative; the how-can-you-resist-it stoicism of the eternally disappointed boy; the swathes of romantic music that are sometimes undermined, but not always; the trying-a-bit-too-hard performance of Kitano himself, managing to mug shamelessly while retaining a rigorously deadpan demeanour (nevertheless, he has never been funnier, ).
Like I say, though, it's full of good things, avoiding the blatant sentimentality of CENTRAL STATION or THE STRAIGHT STORY (KIKUJIRO is a film which is anything but straight - it begins with repeated shots of Masao crossing roads, bridges etc, as if signalling some kind of progress will be achieved, from childhood to maturity or something, but Kitano's subtle way with flashbacks means he, and we, are constantly going around in circles).
This is very much a boys' film; not in the sense of startling violence or macho posturing (this is a Kitano film full of day-glo and angel bells), but in its fantasy. The quest is a search for a woman, the mother (Kikujiro's also), that first, perhaps stifling, experience we all have of life. The quest, therefore, might be seen as a return to the womb. But it fails halfway through, where a Hollywood movie (like THE STRAIGHT STORY) would end. The best stuff is still to come; the end of the journey (the woman) is made irrelevant. The quest is also an escape for Kikujiro from his permanently disapproving wife, back into a childhood where he is bully, in control; the temporary commune the pair set up is all-male.
To accuse Kitano of misogyny would be absurd; the film is shot through with the child's sensibility as expertly as Stephen Dedalus' in Joyce's 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' (we are watching, after all, Masao's snapshots). This is a boy who early in the film stands tiny, alone, in a huge all-weather because nobody bothered to tell him about the suspension of summer soccer practice. In the corresponding scene near the end, he is no longer alone, chased on the pitch by his friends.
The linearity of the film is constantly disrupted, and finally abandoned after the quest fails - Masao is a child, after all, and must be entertained; and so we stop for entertainments, jugglers, human robots, funfairs. There is even the sense that Kikujiro's erratic irascability is all just a show for Masao, his mishaps as ritualised as performances - like a cartoon, he emerges unscathed from his very physical misadventures. This is crystallised in the glorious second half, where Kikujiro/Kitano, director of entertainments, struggles to keep the child constantly amused - this is as joyous as 90s cinema got, an affirmation of imagination, friendship and play. But absolutely no women.
There is a lingering feeling of traditionalism in these gestures. Although Masao dresses like his American equivalent, and lives in hyperWestern Tokyo, Western culture doesn't intrude very much in his life. He doesn't watch TV or collect Pokemon cards. In the opening sequence, when we see him wandering about Tokyo, we see him framed against ancient Japanese signifiers, temples, lamps, the equivalent of those headless seaside cartoons you see in Brighton, etc. Further, KIKUJIRO is shot through with fantasy, dreams, hallucination, and the most astonishing, otherworldly colour, and these are always heightening and making absurd the film's realism - the recurring shots of Masao sleeping, and the unsignalled shift in time, suggest the events exist as much in Masao's head as actually happening. But his subjectivity is highly ritual, stylised, like Japanese theatre, as if he is some kind of unconscious receptacle for a vanishing culture. (And, they always seem to have a spare pot of make-up handy)
For all its comedy, its variety, its humanity, its sense of the preposterous, KIKUJIRO is one of Kitano's saddest films. Although connections are formed in this eerily underpopulated Japan, the overriding sense of arbitrary fate and violence, of the increasing selfishness and soullessness of modern life, are painfully apparent. Curiously, Kitano's most open film in terms of space, is his least expansive in terms of thematics and effect - the compressions of genre seem to suit him best. This is still one of the best films of the year, as a middling film from the world's greatest living director must be. The Kitano style is awesomely confident, his unemotional, uncluttered, static framing, his comic editing and ellipses, his unobtrusive way of revealing emotion through landscape.