“I wanted to make movies that can't be pigeonholed. I want
audiences to come out of this film not knowing what to say or what to think”,
says the multi-faceted Japanese artist Takeshi Kitano (aka ‘Beat’ Takeshi). Mr. Kitano is one
of Japan’s top media personalities. He is a poet, recording artist, actor, and
once a stand-up comedian. But the most revered of his identities is when he masters
the triple roles of ‘writing-direction-editing’. Although it’s hard to say what
subject Mr. Kitano would plunge himself into in his subsequent films, there are
few recurring elements in his film (good enough to be called as
‘Kitano-esque’). His best films are known – Sonatine, Hana-bi, Zatoichi –
for their brilliant juxtaposition of harsh violence and poetic realism.
Thematically, Kitano’s works keeps on brooding over love, existence, and fate.
Furthermore, Kitano’s protagonists are mostly tough-guys (sometime Yakuza
figures) whose deep sensitivity escapes through their hardened facial features over
the narrative course. The editing and directorial style of sweetly swerving
Kikijuro might be totally different than violent genre pictures like Brother,
Outrage or Zatoichi. In spite of the wildly changing formal schemes, a
bewitching, lamentable tone could be unmistakably felt in Takeshi Kitano’s
cinema.
After facing lukewarm response to his American debut Brother
(2000), Kitano distanced himself from restrained gangster films to attempt his most
free-flowing movie yet. Kitano’s languidly paced art-house feature Dolls (2002)
prioritizes visual lyricism over predefined narrative arc. Dolls portray three loosely interconnected tales,
circling around the themes of love, obsession, and loss. The three stories of
doomed love are full of achingly beautiful images, although its intended
meaning (if there is one) isn’t always easy to grasp. The film opens on a
literal stage with a Bunraku performance (traditional Japanese puppetry). The
visible doll handlers control the sad characters (of this tale) as per the narrator’s voice.
Subsequently, the puppets become the spectator and witness dramatic tales of
tragic love. A young white-collar worker Matusmoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima) breaks
off engagement with his true love Sawako (Miho Kanno) to marry the boss’
daughter. A decision heralded by his colleagues and forced upon by Matsumoto’s
parents. Sawako in a state of despair attempts suicide and ends up in near-catatonic state.
Burdened by guilt, Matsumoto runs away on his wedding day and kidnaps Sawako
from the hospital.
He decides to drop out of the society with her and go
through a journey of reconciliation. The non-talkative, child-like Sawako is
bound by a long red silk cord that binds her to Matusmoto. When we first see
the lovers, the red cord brushes through the cherry blossoms, while people
gathered around tease them as ‘bound beggars’. An aging Yakuza boss Hiro (Tatsuya Mihashi) with an existential crisis one day visits a park, where he discovers
the girlfriend Ryoko (Chieko Matsubura) he once had abandoned as a young man, still
anticipating his (every Saturday) return at the park bench. A famous pop-star Haruna
Yamaguchi (Kyoko Fukada) inspires idolatry among the alienated men. Nukui
(Tsutomu Takeshige), an introverted traffic controller, is one of her most
devoted fan. When the pop idol is caught in a car accident which slightly
disfigures her face, Nukui takes extreme measures to prove his ardent love. The
pair of bounded star-crossed lovers passes through different seasons and also the
principal players of other tales, while teetering towards their inevitable
fate.
Kitano’s movies are familiar for slight surrealistic or
magical realist touches amidst the formal mode of restrained naturalism. In
Dolls, the narrative is entirely diffused with hyper-reality and magical
realism. The stylistic opening passage of the Japanese Bunraku performance sets
the stage for film’s unreal aesthetic appearance. Since it’s the dolls that use
humans as form of puppet characters, Kitano’s atmospherics are tinged with
sumptuous imagery which isn’t necessarily realistic. The deliberate
theatricality of the aesthetics is designed to circumvent the conventional
dramatic tension. The bound beggars’ journey through four seasons is captured
in glorious color schemes. Matsumoto and Sawako’s costumes progress down from
modern-day dress to traditional Japanese robes (majestically designed by famous
costume designer Yohji Yamamoto) as they shuffle through sunny land patches,
cherry blossoms of spring, red maple leaves of autumn, and white snow of winter
(glorious cinematography by Katsumi Yanagishima). The sharply contrasting flow
of seasons may indicate the lovers’ impossibility from liberating themselves
from the cycle of misery and fate. The extravagant costumes and the color-coordinated
landscapes keep intact with fanciful imagery, since in real life the homeless
lovers’ would be dirty, and dressed in tatters. At one point, we see the
red-color maple leaves moving on to snow, as the camera pans up to showcase
vast snow-capped landscape. Director Kitano says he included the shot to denote
“it's as if it was a play, and the set is being changed.”
The three tales aren’t attached with huge emotional appeal.
Their lives are destroyed by some strange twist of fate. Moreover, the
characters themselves make mistakes and spoil the love rather than exterior
forces. The mistakes are done out of self-love and free-will. And, the amends
are made through stranger ways too. The lovers’ gestures to uphold the spirit
of love may seem ultimately pointless, but it definitely provokes our empathy.
The stretched-out acts of repentance also lead to devastating, yet beautiful
images. The theme of looking is consistently established from the beginning of
the narrative. Shots are often visualized in subjective mode with the
blank-faced characters often watch over something: an angel toy, stomped
butterfly, maple leaves, etc. This subjective mode underlines the film’s
magical realist vision. The Bunraku
references and other deep layers of symbolism might be lost over those not
well-versed in Japanese culture (like me).
Dialogues, as usual are kept to bare minimum. Nevertheless, the
emotional purity of the characters easily penetrates through the narrative’s
placid surface. The haunted, repressed expressions of anguish from Nishijima
and Miho Kanno (the central pair of lovers) are thoroughly heartbreaking. Miho
Kanno especially wrings our tear in more than one occasion. The scene of her
bursting into tears over the inability to play with broken toy effortlessly heightens our emotional pains. Most agonizing was the scene towards the end, when
Matsumoto hugs Sawako, begging her forgiveness, after she clutches her silver
chain, in a brief moment of epiphany.
Trailer
Those who have the patience to emotionally invest themselves
in Dolls (113 minutes) would be rewarded with a dazzling and deeply affecting
movie experience. Takeshi Kitano, despite taking occasional self-indulgent
turns, depicts these very simple tales of love & loss in a mesmerizingly
powerful manner.
1 comment:
nice narration of ur review
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