They All Look Alike

William Gardner wgardne1 at swarthmore.edu
Mon Aug 30 17:43:46 EDT 2004


No comment about Memoirs, but what I thought was interesting about Kitano's
Zatoichi was that it seemed to being playing with "inauthenticity."

Irrespective of Japanese film-- including the jidaigeki and its
predecessors--  having developed through constant interaction with cinemas
outside of Japan, the jidaigeki has somehow emerged as a symbol of
"authentic" Japanese culture and identity.

Kitano seems to be taking that apart with Zatoichi. In its pacing, play with
sound and music, cutting, staging of action scenes, and of course Kitano's
blonde hair and the final stomping, he seems to bringing the international
hybridity of Japanese mass entertainment to the fore and celebrating it,
deflating the claims of "authencity" of the jidaigeki genre in the process.

Kitano's own experience of the hybrid entertainments of Asakusa and TV
(including his own tap dancing experience) are clearly important to his
vision for Zatoichi. However, it's interesting that if Zatoichi is indeed a
move away from "authenticity," then he is tacking away from some of his
previous film work such as Hana-bi, which, as Aaron and others have argued,
is invested in an auteur sensibility linked to icons of Japaneseness.



On 8/30/04 5:05 PM, "tim.iles at utoronto.ca" <tim.iles at utoronto.ca> wrote:

> All issues of "authenticity" and "name recognition" aside (which have been
> quite interesting from a film-industry point of view), I wonder whether
> one of the challenges for an actor as an actor isn't just this sort of
> thing--convincingly playing a character from a different ethnic
> background. The theatre director Suzuki Tadashi wrote in _Engeki to wa
> nani ka_ (if I recall correctly) that seeing an actor actually cry on
> stage just wasn't acting--the trick is for a dry-eyed actor to make you
> believe s/he's really crying. Having a non_Japanese actor effectively
> portray a Japanese character is one of the interesting bits in the
> performance. 
> 
> On the other hand I can't get worked up about seeing _Memoirs_ at
> all--because of the source, subject matter, and people involved.
> 
> The remarks about _Zatoichi_ were quite interesting, too--I was
> disappointed by the last ten minutes, to the point of losing what respect
> I'd had for the rest of the film. Asano Tadanobu was good, Kitano was
> amusing, the sword-play wasn't _that_ bad--but that tap dance sequence
> was just embarrassing... Oy gevalt what was he thinking...!
> 
> 
> 






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