KIKUJIRO

SYNOPSIS:
Nine year old Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi) is a lonely kid as summer arrives. Living with his grandma, not even knowing his parents, Masao discovers a photo album with his mother's picture and address - a long way away. One of grandma's friends cajoles her obnoxious, lazy, irresponsible husband Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano) into taking the boy on the trip with some of her own money. Mister, a hot-tempered buffoon who may once have been a gangster, immediately gambles away all the money for the trip at the racetrack - forcing the pair to proceed by living on their wits, hitching rides, and staying in hotels without paying. Along the way, they have various encounters with other travellers, allowing Mister to let off some steam while Masao silently observes the strange ways of his unlikely companion.

"Comedy arises when people are treated like objects: I forget who originally said this, but the thought certainly applies to the cinema of Takeshi Kitano. Conventional acting, here, counts for little; timing and framing count for almost everything. Sometimes Kitano stages a gag in wide-shot and lets us see it coming a mile off; sometimes it arrives all of a sudden, literally from an angle we didn't expect (a character strolls into some bushes and instantly falls down a concealed hole). A non-comic example of the same technique: when Mister takes Masao to the racetrack and starts gambling away their money, another director might have wanted an emotional display from the child. Kitano just has him stand to one side, head bowed, still and silent, until the sheer persistence of his inert presence becomes a rebuke to the adult's stupidity. Many of the jokes are explicitly about Kitano's tendency to transform people into props, as when Mister bullies chance acquaintances into wearing ridiculous costumes or taking part in sadistically conceived games. But the transformation is never complete: dressed up or posed in the tableau shots Kitano is fond of, the characters are always embarrassed figures in a stiff postcard landscape, uncertain how they got there or what they're meant to do. This awkwardness is what Kitano finds funny. Much more could be said about Kikujuro, a new film that immediately feels like a minor classic - partly because the cinematic formula of a child plus a childlike rogue is both extremely familiar and extremely effective, partly because for Kitano to make a children's film seems bizarre (given his taste for violence) yet inevitable (given his quizzical, childlike gaze). Most of all, the film triumphs through the sheer wit and confidence of Kitano's storytelling - and he does tell a story, even if opportunities for action, drama or direct emotion are always evaded or downplayed. The deadpan non-reactions of his characters are funny because the characters do have feelings even if they don't show them; hence Kitano can convey more sadness in three shots where nothing much happens than another director can in three hours of vocal angst and despair."
Jake Wilson