Movie Review: Takeshis’ (2005)
Posted by Will Ooi | Posted in Film, Japan | Tags: Movie Reviews | Posted on 14-04-2009-05-2008
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So when does a film like Being John Malkovich get out-Malkoviched? When Takeshi Kitano makes one, that’s when.
A few words about Kitano San to begin. Many of you will remember that crazy old 80’s TV show Takeshi’s Castle, where contestants participated in a myriad of next-to-impossible obstacle courses with predictably hilarious, injurious, I’ve-got-a-bad-feeling-about-this, results. Well this is that very same Takeshi. The very same Takeshi who then went on to make a name for himself in the 90’s with hauntingly beautiful (and often very violent) Yakuza films, before finding relative international success in the 2000’s with the fascinating Zatoichi, a film about a blind samurai, a pair of revenge-seeking geishas, and tap-dancing. Obviously. And in between? Well, that very same Takeshi made a lot of weird ones too. And when I say weird, I mean crazy, messed up, only-in-Japan weird.
If you haven’t realised by now, I’m a big fan of “Beat” Kitano, a nickname he often likes to call himself. I love his charisma, his takes-no-shit attitude. His facial twitches and odd mannerisms. His involvement in the incredibly psychotic cult classic Battle Royale. I’ve even put up with a lot of the ridiculousness that happens in his movies, acknowledging it instead as a unique artistic vision with the defiance of an over-fervent stalker fan. But this time, with Takeshis’, you’ve gone too far, Takeshi. You have gone too far.
Don’t even try to understand what’s going on here.
Only someone like Takeshi Kitano can make this reviewer, in an attempt to explain the plot of this film with the utmost of his ability, sound like a complete and utter fool. Allow me to demonstrate:
Takeshis’ is a movie about the real life Takeshi, as a director, making a movie, and there are auditions for this movie. Fair enough, so far so good; if Kitano is making a mockumentary-type satire about himself, fine. I won’t even mention how this movie (the movie being watched, not the movie within the movie being watched) actually started with a scene in a WWII setting. Not relevant, not one bit. But it sure doesn’t help when one of the people auditioning for Takeshi’s movie is also played by Takeshi, and that this Takeshi, a character working in a convenience store, is practicing for the role of, seemingly, the real Takeshi in the movie within the movie. Oh shit. And then it turns out that every new scene is totally unrelated from the last, but still contains the same imagery and characters we’ve seen moments earlier in a different context. And some of these scenes are dreams. And that this dreaming Takeshi is now an altogether separate character who drives a pink taxi around, and who is not auditioning for a part but still meeting all the same people these other two Takeshis have already met. And in the end, the convenience store Takeshi kills the real life director Takeshi. And that last bit really isn’t a spoiler because (a) I have no idea as to what the significance of that scene even was, and (b) spoilers tend to ruin plot points and this movie, really, has no point.
See what I mean? I was really trying there, too.
If one were to plot the storyline of this movie as a diagram, it might well look like this picture below. In 3D. Which is also what your head will look like if you attempt to work out a coherent and logical explanation behind it all.
Kitano has said that he wanted audiences to come out of this film not knowing what to say or what to think, so in that respect he has definitely succeeded, albeit in some deranged and sick Yoko Ono unit of measurement (Y/Onos per minute?). Takeshis’ makes Being John Malkovich look like a predictable American sports film where the underdog team with the player who was always teased or came from a broken home scores the winning touchdown or basket or goal in the last second. Actually, I’d go as far as saying that Takeshis’ makes even the most surrealist nonsense you could conjure up in your mind (whilst on elicit drugs) seem as certain as the knowledge that a hammer against a window equals smashed glass. And it is for this very fact; the fact that I understood precisely none of it and am certain that I will never see anything like it ever again in my lifetime, that I give it 4 stars out of 5. And as for you, Takeshi, I still reckon you’re awesome, but I think it’s also time we had a break as I go off to watch something I can comfortably understand.
I enjoyed Being John Malkovich. Not a big fan of Takeshi. I have seen and enjoyed Kikujiro, Zatoichi, Battle Royale and Brother. But I wasn’t moved by them. They were okay. But I still think about Brother once in a while. Still sticks with me. I’m not going to czech out Takeshis’. Sounds too random, “Japanese,” weird, off-kilter, and non-cohesive to me. Thanks for the heads up though. Let the Right One In is a good foreign vampire movie. T4 looks awesome. Do you want me to come over there and break your lights? We are so done, professionally.
I’m not sure if you’ll see this comment, but if you do:
Takeshi’s was a really interesting, if not a little frustrating, movie. It does a lot of messing around with the “fourth wall”, as people say these days.
Another great Japanese movie that messes around with realities and dimensions like that is “Heart, Beating in the Dark” (“Yamiutsu Shinzô) (the one made in the ’00s, not the one from the ’80s). It’s a sequel to the ’80s movie, but also a documentary about the MAKING OF the sequel, but also a REMAKE in which the same exact events of the ’80s movie happen, but to a different couple who eventually encounter the couple from the original movie, but twenty years older than they were in the ’80s, and occasionally switching between characters and actors playing themselves.
Yeah, uh, I just failed to explain it, but it’s a cool movie.