Dolls

2002 movie from Takeshi Kitano, whose previously viewed work, 'Hana-Bi', is one of our finest, favourite films. And here, he has created another near masterpiece, full of beauty, thought, and so far from melodrama but so encased in the strains of human life, the emotion and pricking of balloons that that entails.
The three plots fit together, and are good enough on their own. The central story has again that wonderful deadpan aspect we love so much in Kitano, the idea of a vast undercurrent that all the characters know and are happy to recognise are their, but do not necessarilly feel the need or know how to react to it. The simply let it go on, as it must.
Let us look at the thematics of the dolls. This firstly gives us a fascinating metaphor where we have the characters who act as though they are being led on strings. They do silly things, they are played around with by fate, by the gods. The literal act of walking, important here in the wandering and in the connection, the ties to each other, show how each is leashed to each other, with a puppetmaster of history and future leading the way onwards.
Aesthetically, the piece also works well by the Dolls metaphor. The costumes are literally colourful, they are though most of all theatrical. Theatre is a crucial theme here. The idea that the characters are being played on a stage, in fact the whole piece is one big stage. The primary colours that shine out from the enviroment, as though highlighted or put in with a felt tip pen. The wonderlands of the bright seasons behind, deliberately slightly comic book, but still close enough to realism in Kitano's distinctive technique.
We have fallen in love with Kitano's direction. Not just the colour of the mis-en-scene and so on, which we mentioned, but also his use of the inscrutable acting. His real genius though is knowing what to capture, how to capture it, and for how long. His use of montage isn't all that slow, but he throws in images from a variety of P.O.V. and other angles that do take one by surprise, while never jarring. How to swtich from a leaf to an emotion, then a move backwards or forwards in time, is an art. It is clear that Kitano is a visual artist, the use of surprise particularly. He frames it in a mixture of long shots, where we have a great sense of place, and a nice sense of putting different actors on scene together which gives a real sense of togetherness and congruity, even though we live in a word where people do seem to find themselves, doll-like, far apart.
Kitano is the master of timing, and what he chooses to time, though it often seems odd and is on paper quite 'arty', is in fact a beautifully wide ranging array of various images. He has the full range of movement and style at his disposal, and puts them together in a simple way. He finds emotion in an emotionless world, so memorable.
We have seen two Kitano films. So far, two out of two. Wonderful, fine entertainment to go with one of the finest cinematic artists.