TAKESHIS'. (2005) WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND EDITED BY TAKESHI KITANO. STARRING TAKESHI KITANO, KAYOKO KISHIMOTO, REN OSUGI AND KOTOMO KYOMO. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This film is the last word in surrealism. As such, it's going to be tricky enough to review. Goddammit...! Hee-hee, only joking. Although I didn't know this when I watched the film, it's apparently the first in a trilogy of autobiographical movies by legendary Japanese director, actor and film personality Takeshi Kitano, also known as 'Beat' Takeshi from his days as a stand-up comedian.
The other two films are GLORY TO THE FILM-MAKER (2007) and ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE (2008). You might as well know that little snippet of information just for ha-has. Haha...!
Beat Takeshi is a very funny guy. It seems to come naturally to the handsome fella with the deadpan but somehow still expressive face. In his movie KIKUJIRO (1999), his performance as a deadbeat petty crook who takes a small boy on the road-trip of a lifetime is imbued with so much humour and humanity that I was crying as much as I was laughing during it.
I recently watched his performance in his film HANA-BI (1997) as well and it totally cracked me up, although the film isn't a comedy and he's not playing a funny role in it. Au contraire (Did you like that? That little bit of French there? Just trying to classy up this joint a bit...!), he's playing a hard-bitten cop whose wife is dying of leukaemia and who's recently retired from the police force after seeing his best mate gunned down in a shoot-out that leaves the poor guy in a wheelchair. The friend, that is, not him.
It's not a comic role at all and yet he's just so super-cool in it, with that brilliant deadpan expression on his face the whole time, that you can't help but laugh out loud at how much of a goddamn legend he is. It's like watching Clint Eastwood in one of his Westerns (I forget which one) shooting two guys behind his back without even looking at what he's doing or breaking a sweat. That kind of cool is Kitano cool. You can't buy it or swap it for half a sandwich, even a good sandwich. You gotta be born with it.
TAKESHIS' is a film about the concept of duality. More than one person in the dramatis personae is playing two roles. The main person doing this, of course, is Beat Takeshi himself. He's playing himself, on the one hand. Himself as the acting legend, movie director and television personality that we know him as, with the stretch limos and the fabulous bouquets of flowers and the fancy-pants lifestyle and the entourage of kisser-uppers and hangers-on and so on. He's even got the obligatory stalker...!
Then, on the other hand, he's playing his identical double as well, a painfully shy convenience store clerk called Kitano with a dodgy bleached-blonde barnet and even worse taste in clobber. This quiet Eminem-lookalike (the hair, the hair!) harbours a burning desire to be an actor, just like his hero Takeshi whose movie posters adorn the walls of his humble flat.
He goes to auditions (these are hilarious) and gets turned down, much to the amusement of his yakuza neighbour and the neighbour's ditzy slapper of a girlfriend. He even meets his idol, Takeshi, and gets his autograph, but it's obvious that the great director/movie star views his blonde-haired doppelganger as, frankly, a bit of a joke. A loser, even.
Then, one fateful day, Kitano gets his hands on a bagful of guns after a yakuza quarrel spills over into the Kwik-E-Mart, erm, sorry, the convenience store where he works. What do you think he decides to do now he's suddenly found himself unexpectedly armed to the teeth? Well, you'll have to watch the film to find that out, movie fans. I'll certainly never tell, haha...!
The film is full of bizarre surreal scenes and dream/fantasy sequences. You'll have your work cut out for you trying to separate the real from the unreal. Question: What do you get when you cross a giant caterpillar and a drag queen chanteuse with a tap-dancing trio and a pair of grotesquely obese twins? Answer: Ramen noodles...! No, I'm not explaining that and, no, it's not meant to make sense...!
Two of Takeshi's co-stars from HANA-BI are working with him again here. There's the lady who played his wife and also the chap who played the cop in the wheelchair. The lady who played his wife in HANA-BI, the actress Kayoko Kishimoto, is the best and funniest character in TAKESHIS' after Kitano the clerk himself.
She has a terrific nagging voice and sour disapproving face that would make her the perfect choice to play the kind of wife that waits behind the door with a rolling-pin for her drunken husband. In fact, she plays Takeshi's domineering wife in his earlier film KIKUJIRO (1999) and she does a brilliant job of it. They make a good team, the pair of 'em.
The great director himself, he of the sexily lopsided grin that makes me melt whenever he flashes it, talks directly to camera for about fifteen minutes in the DVD's extra features about things as random as his hair colour and the service in noodle restaurants. That last one was actually pretty damn random...!
Before we finish up, I must just tell you what the friend with whom I watched TAKESHIS' said about it. I have to warn you in advance, it's a bit rude. Although she loved this outrageously quirky film as much as I did, she did also describe it as one giant 'wank' on the part of Takeshi Kitano. Meaning that it's quite self-indulgent and I suppose that, in all honesty, maybe it is.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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