Takeshi Kitano's Takeshis'

Deconstructing Takeshis' beats








Imagine if you will, the whole of Takeshis’ functioning as a Dali inspired Rubik's cube. Imagine it sprinkled with Gondry’s spotless minds. Season it more with some Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich. Then douse it intoxicatingly with a feverish loop of Brazil's ending. If you can do that and enjoy such an idea as much as I do, I would strongly encourage you to take the plunge. Do be warned though that this elliptically blessed and narratively challenged movie demands a lot of patience from its audience. It is also more conducive a film for the nurturing of sensibilities than the manufacturing of sense. But it is worth it. Because it is gratifyingly refreshing to see a film this insistent on checking your heart at the door while lightly frying your brain with fava beans and chianti, which will in turn be served to you in increasing portions. By film's end, you may indeed have tasted something oddly delicious, but you just can't figure out why? Bon appetit!

The idiosyncrasies of Takeshis’ may actually explain the critical backslash the film suffered. My humble view is that most critics want people or themselves to know they understand films more thoroughly than everyone else. They believe they have the authority to rave or rant about any movies, however they see fit. Hence, if they do not or cannot understand pictures like Takeshis’, their instant reaction is that such a film sucks and so does the director. But Kitano famously stated in a press conference, that he does not intend for this movie to be analysed or explained. He just hoped the audience would let go and feel the film, to come out of the cinema not knowing what to say or what to think. I would think such a notion frees the audience to interpret a movie whichever ways he or she sees fit. Hence, the intuitive filmmaker has passed the torch. He has made a movie. It is now up to each and every viewer to make his or her own conclusion. And now that I hold the key to Pandora's box, I shall have some fun and pitch in my interpretations on what Takeshis' mean and how Kitano intends it to be.

Since this film within a film within a film also feels like a dream within a dream within a dream, Kitano may be positing that the mysterious phenomenon of sound and images, past, present and future could already have been created by

i) one's unreliable memory of reality (our waking senses),
ii) the comparatively more "honest" world of our subconscious or
iii) the most truthful artifice of them all, cinema.

He further posits that once created, this phenomenon may start to assume an elusive immortality, unhibited by space and time.

Even when we go to sleep, wake up or when the cinema's curtains draw to a close, the flickering output of what we have just experienced may only diminish on a conscious level. It can never be entirely extinguished. For alter-consciously, it may start to hover in an ethereal realm, existing in a splintering free-radical format. As it hibernates indefinitely, it may persistently emit unstable frequencies which will gestate within a floating bubble. Many of these bubbles may find themselves bouncing off one another in the fluidity of this realm's warped up space and time, awaiting to burst and be re-born....

Yes. This hidden energy can be harnessed. Its resurrection from dormancy may yet materialise anytime, anywhere, via random "contacts" with hyper-sensitive human receptors, for example
- lucid dreamers fueled by futile hopes and addictive neurosis,
- self-absorbed film makers in need of an ego/reality check, or
- just an lucky/unlucky chap in the right/wrong place, the right/wrong time...

Consider now these seemingly disparate audio/visual motion pastiches in Takeshis; a song and dance soccer match along an Okinawan sea shore, the last gasping breaths of a fallen WWII Japanese soldier, an aging tranvestite belting out ditties tinged with faux melancholia. (And don't get me started on the African bloke, the torrential bullet vomits and those incessantly tapping feet.....) Can these happenings be the dazed and confused day dreams of a convenience store clerk? Does he look like someone famous? Would he hope to be the maestro of a infinitesimally operatic bullet ballet? Could he at least have been one of its participants?

Now consider the aforementioned "bubbles" of energy a few paragraphs back. Could they have coagulated and somehow seeped into the playful mind(s) of a venerable pop cultural icon? Could this same artiste have decided his inspirational overload should not be kept suspended? Did he see a need to pop the bubbles? Would he believe that the unleashing of those secret frequencies within might do humanity less harm than good?

Goodness, could there even be a possibility that all which transpired in those 2 hours were mere figments of a dying man's (the WWII soldier) dimming imagination? His past, present and projected future lives flashing before his eyes but none was, is or will ever make sense to that poor guy (or anyone for that matter)? That as the "bubbles" bounce free-associatively back and forth, the dying soldier can in the blink of an eye be seated in a droll lonesome apartment? That in another blink, he may become an idol of millions, gleefully receiving vacuous compliments and a shower of fancy gifts?

Then, as the universe unfolds upon itself, we may revert back to where it all began, the part where the helpless uniformed prey of WWII was stuck within point blank range at his predatorial enemy's gunsight. As the two of them stare into each other's eyes, what could be on their minds? Could they too be wondering what the hell they are doing, in a dilapidated sound stage, without a director to keep their actorly excesses in check? And would they have guessed that the missing helmer is actually in the next door studio (neither within earshot nor eye sight), simultaneously shooting/ acting in another movie, in a wholly different genre altogether (a modern day Yakusa action flick)? And would anyone care to know that it might in fact have been a disorganised production manager's fault for failing to deconflict the booking of valuable studio space and the director's time between the two (or more) movies? And worst, could the reels for both (or more) films have been mixed up due to the day's chaotic confusion? Could the actor/director, who in the midst of doubling as editor for his uncompleted works, have trouble finish cutting his film? Could the toll of the multiple roles both in front and behind the camera cause the director to crack or blossom, depending on the viewer's perspective?

At this juncture, let it be known I am fully aware that I am painting myself into a corner, that I don't make much sense and that I am running out of things to say. Yes, like the movie, I have contorted this piece into a fibonacci circle. But if you asked me, this is only the beginning. The possibilities, the variations, the permutations of this Rubik’s cube are, for lack of a better word, endless. With all said and done, I can hence only offer my shortest of advise to folks who stumble into this puzzling work. Have fun.