watched this a couple of nights ago on mike’s recommendation. a strange little film. i liked it (i think sunhee did too) but i’m not entirely sure why. in many ways it is deeply conventional but it seems to also tweak those conventions (kikujiro pretty much remains an abusive cipher till the end, no one is really transformed). i would recommend it to people but i am simultaneously bemused by its winning the golden lion or hyaena or whatever at the berlin film festival, or whichever major festival it won the top award at–surely there must have been better movies that year.
mike, you should add this film to your onoging “irresponsibility” thesis.
I saw this in a big crowd at an indie theater in Minneapolis; it felt like everyone in the room was a Kitano fan already (and the crowd was a sell-out), so the laughter was loud, constant, inviting. Seeing it later on I saw it more in the manner you noted, Arnab–a few bursts of laughter, impressed by the visual style and the central performance, but overall… it was just a nice little film.
I don’t know what to say about the distinctions in my viewing experience. Could be audience–the crowd just got the tone/energy of the film so precisely that we all fell into lockstep appreciation. I really loved the intertitles, the paintings in between scenes, but I’ve seen him since do that even more impressively…
Maybe we can tie this into an earlier thread–I love Kitano, but why has he been so roundly embraced by European (and to a much lesser extent American) critics? Why did “Kikujiro” get the big nod in Berlin, at Cannes?
I guess that means you all have to go see it, too. Kitano’s deadpan abusiveness is worth a look–he’s equal parts Buster Keaton and the most anarchically aggressive aspects of Harpo Marx.
Interesting, the excellent new father-son memoir/study of contemporary Japanese manga and anime culture (Peter Carey’s “Wrong About Japan”) is jumped started by Carey’s twelve-year-old son having watched Kikujiro over and over to the point that he becomes obsessed with Japan and wants to move there when he grows up. A bit concerned, Carey decides he needs to figure out what’s making his son tick and so, after a few forays into NYC’s manga sub-culture, the two travel to Japan together to experience the real and the hyperreal for themselves. Personally, I’m more of a Hana-bi (Fireworks) fan.