Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Takeshi Kitano's Kikujiro (1999) is showing March 23 - April 22, 2017 in the United Kingdom in the series Kitano x 3.1With each viewing, Takeshi Kitano’s Kikujiro becomes increasingly porous. The gaps are clear: though the film is the story of Masao, a young boy searching for his estranged mother, and Kikujiro, the former yakuza forced to accompany him, they and the strangers they encounter exist without much background. The sleepy-eyed Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi) speaks only in short murmurs. Meanwhile, Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano) spends most of the film gambling off the two’s spending money at the track cycling racetracks, only to develop a compassion so subtle that he himself does not notice it. Simply put, the film is a blur, or a series of blurs.But these lacks of interconnectedness are why Kikujiro has only gotten better with age,...
- 3/23/2017
- MUBI
★★★★★ The mind of 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano is surely a singular and unique one. Last month saw the blu-ray release of his acclaimed crime melodrama Hana-bi, a compelling fable of violence, grief and nihilistic defiance. This month we are treated to his directorial follow up, Kikujiro, a comedy that is as similar to Hana-bi in style and structure as it is different in tone and content. As in Hana-bi, Kitano stars, this time as the eponymous grumpy, middle aged man who finds himself in the unlikely position of caring for a little boy, Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi). Masao is on the hunt for his long-lost mother whose whereabouts have recently been discovered; an acquaintance of Masao's grandmother, Kikujiro reluctantly agrees to take the boy to his mother.
- 2/22/2016
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano works in a wholly different emotional register with "Kikujiro no Natsu" (Kikujiro's Summer), a movie that turns away from the extreme violence and pessimism of his previous titles in favor of camaraderie and friendship between a young boy and a very unremarkable man. Kitano overextends the inherent sentimentalism of the material, though he continues to refine his exceptional aesthetic blending of deadpan physical movements within spare, rigorously framed compositions.
Kitano's art is bound by contradiction, a modernist whose work appears at times almost primitive, as if he were encountering a new language for the first time, unconcerned with rules and order. At the same time, he seems hyper aware of the emotional consequences his skilled and deeply imaginative art yields. Kitano has no equivalent in American culture, an astonishingly varied performer on the basis of his work as a stand-up comedian, television personality, actor, writer, poet, essayist, novelist, cartoonist, newspaper columnist, musician and painter.
"Kikujiro" isn't a major work, like "Hana-Bi", "Sonatine" or "A Scene by the Sea", but it is a great deal of fun. The story is related in tales, or chapter headings, introduced in beautifully arranged photo diaries. The film is a road movie about the eponymous protagonist (Kitano) who invents a series of diversions, games and activities for a lonely 9-year-old boy, Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi), as the two undertake an odyssey to locate the child's mother, a woman whom he has never known. Kitano's character is a departure from the laconic warriors and gangsters he normally plays. Kikujiro is basically a layabout, inept, irresponsible (when his wife retrieves the money some local thugs take from the boy, he immediately tries to pocket it himself).
The story is a variation of Albert Brooks' "Lost in America", with Kikujiro immediately blowing the money his wife entrusts him gambling at a cyclist race track. When the boy miraculously provides a solution to their money problems, the windfall doesn't last. Now broke, the two must suddenly find alternate means to their destination, turning into an almost absurdist farce in which the two encounter a motley arrangement of bikers, thugs, truck drivers and hotel clerks. Kikujiro, incensed over his bill at a hotel, insists the clerk drive them; the clerk then hands the boy some money that Kikujiro promptly intercepts, screaming, "That's my money".
Indeed, the first half of the movie contains scenes funnier than anything in a Jim Carrey movie, where the comedy, like Buster Keaton, is achieved through the absurdity of the extreme physical juxtapositions of incident and detail (often photographed in extreme long shot or extended takes). Kitano buttresses these lovely moments with inventive uses of sound (a shattered window, the punctured tire of a car). The second half loses its concentration, and "Kikujiro" seems less concerned with advancing the plot or developing character than experiencing the pure joy and beauty of moviemaking.
But Kitano doesn't desert his recurring motifs. He is drawn to themes of loneliness and isolation. The melancholy underlying much of his work, the divide between what you long for and what is available, creates an emotional rhythm that is both understated and acute. Interestingly enough, despite his unparalleled popularity at home, Kitano's seven previous features have all been commercial failures in Japan. Kitano has ascribed that to his oversaturated image (he appears on seven different television programs simultaneously). But "Kikujiro" is also a social critique about Japanese ideas of masculinity, work and conformity, imbuing it with a grace, depth and beauty. Kitano has said he made "Kikujiro" to counter the subjects he was already known. In going outside himself, he verifies his status as a major filmmaker.
KIKUJIRO NO NATSU
An Office Kitano production
Producers:Masayuki Mori, Takio Yoshida
Director-writer-editor:Takeshi Kitano
Director of photography:Katsumi Yanagishima
Art director :Norihiro Isoda
Music:Joe Hisaishi
Costumes:Fumio Iwasaki
Color/stereo
Cast:
Kikujiro:Beat Takeshi
Masao:Yusuke Sekiguchi
Kikujiro's Wife:Kayoko Kishimoto
Fatso:Great Gidayu
Traveling Man:Nezumi Imamura
Baldy:Rakkyo Ide
Running time -- 116 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Kitano's art is bound by contradiction, a modernist whose work appears at times almost primitive, as if he were encountering a new language for the first time, unconcerned with rules and order. At the same time, he seems hyper aware of the emotional consequences his skilled and deeply imaginative art yields. Kitano has no equivalent in American culture, an astonishingly varied performer on the basis of his work as a stand-up comedian, television personality, actor, writer, poet, essayist, novelist, cartoonist, newspaper columnist, musician and painter.
"Kikujiro" isn't a major work, like "Hana-Bi", "Sonatine" or "A Scene by the Sea", but it is a great deal of fun. The story is related in tales, or chapter headings, introduced in beautifully arranged photo diaries. The film is a road movie about the eponymous protagonist (Kitano) who invents a series of diversions, games and activities for a lonely 9-year-old boy, Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi), as the two undertake an odyssey to locate the child's mother, a woman whom he has never known. Kitano's character is a departure from the laconic warriors and gangsters he normally plays. Kikujiro is basically a layabout, inept, irresponsible (when his wife retrieves the money some local thugs take from the boy, he immediately tries to pocket it himself).
The story is a variation of Albert Brooks' "Lost in America", with Kikujiro immediately blowing the money his wife entrusts him gambling at a cyclist race track. When the boy miraculously provides a solution to their money problems, the windfall doesn't last. Now broke, the two must suddenly find alternate means to their destination, turning into an almost absurdist farce in which the two encounter a motley arrangement of bikers, thugs, truck drivers and hotel clerks. Kikujiro, incensed over his bill at a hotel, insists the clerk drive them; the clerk then hands the boy some money that Kikujiro promptly intercepts, screaming, "That's my money".
Indeed, the first half of the movie contains scenes funnier than anything in a Jim Carrey movie, where the comedy, like Buster Keaton, is achieved through the absurdity of the extreme physical juxtapositions of incident and detail (often photographed in extreme long shot or extended takes). Kitano buttresses these lovely moments with inventive uses of sound (a shattered window, the punctured tire of a car). The second half loses its concentration, and "Kikujiro" seems less concerned with advancing the plot or developing character than experiencing the pure joy and beauty of moviemaking.
But Kitano doesn't desert his recurring motifs. He is drawn to themes of loneliness and isolation. The melancholy underlying much of his work, the divide between what you long for and what is available, creates an emotional rhythm that is both understated and acute. Interestingly enough, despite his unparalleled popularity at home, Kitano's seven previous features have all been commercial failures in Japan. Kitano has ascribed that to his oversaturated image (he appears on seven different television programs simultaneously). But "Kikujiro" is also a social critique about Japanese ideas of masculinity, work and conformity, imbuing it with a grace, depth and beauty. Kitano has said he made "Kikujiro" to counter the subjects he was already known. In going outside himself, he verifies his status as a major filmmaker.
KIKUJIRO NO NATSU
An Office Kitano production
Producers:Masayuki Mori, Takio Yoshida
Director-writer-editor:Takeshi Kitano
Director of photography:Katsumi Yanagishima
Art director :Norihiro Isoda
Music:Joe Hisaishi
Costumes:Fumio Iwasaki
Color/stereo
Cast:
Kikujiro:Beat Takeshi
Masao:Yusuke Sekiguchi
Kikujiro's Wife:Kayoko Kishimoto
Fatso:Great Gidayu
Traveling Man:Nezumi Imamura
Baldy:Rakkyo Ide
Running time -- 116 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 5/24/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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