Richie on Gerow

[Aaron Gerow]

Thanks to Markus for mentioning my book.

> I met Richie on the way to Yamagata, and we both agreed the best  
> book on Japanese film in recent memory is Aaron Gerow's Kitano  
> Takeshi (catchy title, Aaron!).

But he was of course too humble to remind us that his book on Ogawa  
has just come out to great praise.
>
> The bulk of the book consists of close textual analyses of films up  
> to, but not including the recent disaster. I'd like to know Aaron's  
> take on that one; he hinted that he has a recuperative one.  The  
> analyses are all really great. But the best part of the book is the  
> first one, the frame on framing. I learned a lot about Kitano and  
> about recent Japanese film criticism.

I append my Yomiuri review of Kantoku banzai below.
>
> If I have one criticism, it is that Aaron hides behind all the  
> other critics. This is the "evenhandedness" that Richie writes  
> about. The sentences where he edges toward taking some kind of  
> position are tempered by the plural form ("Our interpretation...";  
> "Our question...."). This is hardly a big deal, but "one does" wish  
> he were a little more direct when writing about Kitano's slippery  
> politics. I'm left as confused as before on that count.

I thought I'd respond to this because it is a comment familiar to me-- 
some of the prepublication readers made similar comments. It is true  
that for a book that focuses a lot on how people talk about Kitano,  
my own voice sometimes seems less prominent (but I never think I  
"hide" behind them). In the rewrite stage, I did bring out my own  
voice even more, especially in the film analyses. There, the first  
half is usually devoted to how others have discussed the film, but my  
stance inevitably ends, if not frames the analysis. That said, I  
always try to give a film a chance to argue for itself. I remember  
Fukuma Kenji once writing in Eiga geijutsu that he liked how my film  
reviews always tried to find something meaningful even in a poor  
film. This is how I learned film criticism from a NY Times film  
reviewer back at Columbia: sometimes its more important to attempt to  
understand what a film might be trying to say than just condemn what  
is wrong about it. This is also a courtesy for my readers: while  
there are some Kitano films I just don't like, I know from reading  
fan comments that there are avid fans of each of his films. I want to  
understand what it is about the film that they like, as well as give  
them a foothold to enter the book. In the end I might problematize  
the film, but hopefully that should educate readers about different  
stances.

And that is important with Kitano, not only because he has generated  
such different responses, but also because he strategically utilizes  
these different responses through presenting varying images of  
himself. To ignore these different responses or, more importantly,  
these different Kitanos, by insisting on a single response (my own)  
or a single version of Kitano would be to miss the Kitano phenomenon.  
It would also fall into his trap, because as a trickster, he delights  
in pulling the rug out from those who think they know him. Our task  
in approaching him--and I think I explain this in the introduction-- 
is less to understand what Kitano is than how he operates and how  
that might function politically (and I think I am pretty critical of  
how that functions). If his politics are slippery (and they can be as  
he argues on one page against postwar democracy, and on another  
offers utterly ridiculous solutions to that), the point is not to fix  
them--if you did, he would merely slip away--but to engage them with  
a strategic "slipperiness" of your own that, while moving alongside  
this ever-moving object, nonetheless works to divulge its political  
functions (though not necessarily its single political stance). This  
proved difficult to write, and may be difficult to read in parts, but  
I still think it is the best strategy for understanding the  
implications of Kitano's films and image. Kitano essentially  
challenges his viewers to come up with means of dealing with this  
strategy, and my book does as well--while still offering some models.

But in the end, I also wish I had more space to develop these complex  
problems. The BFI was extremely generous in allowing me to write a  
longer text than the other books in the series, but I still had to  
cut about 25,000 words from the rough draft.

Aaron Gerow

****************

Title: Kantoku Banzai! /
Directors: Takeshi Kitano
Starring: Beat Takeshi, Toru Emori, Kayoko Kishimoto, An Suzuki,  
Kazuko Yoshiyuki
Rating: ***1/2

When I finished up my book on Takeshi Kitano, I was confident that I  
stopped at the right place: just after Takeshis’. The director had  
insisted that that movie marked the end of the first phase of his  
career and that the next one would form the beginning of a new period  
of filmmaking.
But I, like many others who have taken Takeshi at his word, was in  
for a surprise. His new film, Kantoku Banzai!, actually shares much  
with Takeshis’ and continues some of the themes of his first eleven  
films. It even carries on one of the central paradoxes I described in  
his work: while pulling the rug out from under those who think they  
know what a Kitano film us, undermining expectations, it nonetheless  
repeats a lot of what we’ve seen before. How you take this conflict  
between continuity and discontinuity, repetition and rupture, will  
probably decide whether you like Kantoku Banzai!, a cacophonous  
cornucopia of cinematic tricks and gags that may be masterful to  
some, or a mess to others.
Kantoku Banzai! does form a pair with Takeshis’. If the latter tried  
to dissect the star phenomenon “Beat Takeshi” (Takeshi’s name as a  
comedian), the former attacks the director “Takeshi Kitano.” If  
Takeshis’ coupled a character named “Beat Takeshi” with one named  
“Takeshi Kitano,” Kantoku Banzai! pairs “Takeshi Kitano” with a  
doll named “Takeshi.”
The film begins with a medical investigation of Takeshi, perhaps  
symbolizing all us critics or fans trying to figure out what is going  
on in his head. But what is going through the MRI is not the flesh  
and blood person, but a life-size cartoonish doll. As happens often  
throughout the film, Takeshi is using the doll as a defense,  
protecting himself from the grasp of others.
The narrative premise is that the director Takeshi Kitano, wanting to  
escape the image of a gangster film director (the definition that has  
dogged him through much of his career), can’t quite figure out what  
to film next. The film then proceeds through a series of different  
stories and narratives, ranging from a yakuza movie to love romance,  
from 1950s nostalgia to an SFX extravaganza. These, however,  
represent less the existential conflicts of Fellini’s 8 1/2, another  
film about an indecisive director, but rather Takeshi’s own efforts  
to defend himself, changing the style and the subject before anyone  
can get too close to him.
The last half of Kantoku Banzai! settles on a story (or movie about)  
a con artist mother (Kayoko Kishimoto) who tries to trick a man named  
Kichijoji (played by Takeshi) into marrying her daughter (An Suzuki)  
in order to swindle him out of his money. They, however, have  
mistaken him for being the son of the rich Oizumi Higashi (Toru  
Emori), the head of a suspicious political organization, when he is  
in fact only his secretary.
Tricking someone using an image, or otherwise making mistakes about  
reality, is the major motif in the film, as what little narrative  
there is is interrupted by a series of tricks and gags, some but not  
all of which are hilarious. Forgetting his own efforts at realism in  
the past, Kitano seems to be saying that “Glory to the  
Filmmaker” (the English version of the title) stems from his ability  
to cinematically trick, deceive, and destroy anything he wants. This  
is Takeshi the jester, the trickster.
The director then need not curry favor with audiences, even their  
demands for consistency. Kantoku Banzai! is an exercise in  
discontinuity, as Kichijoji can be a poker faced character in one  
scene, Takeshi’s TV variety buffoon in the next, and then the Takeshi  
doll in the subsequent shot. The movie versions in the first half are  
less parodies than filmmaking exercises, until the mood is ruptured  
by a voice-over that makes fun of the proceedings.
What Kitano in part wants to destroy is our definitions of him. But  
there is a lot of Takeshi’s previous cinema in Kantoku Banzai!, as it  
resembles or specifically cites Minna Yatteru Ka!, Kikujiro no Natsu,  
Zatoichi and of course Takeshis’. Such repetitions have also been  
part of his cinema, as circularity or looped structures can be found  
in 3-4 x Jugatsu, Kids Return, or Dolls. This is Takeshi the artist.
Some may be annoyed by the film’s discontinuities, while others may  
moan at TV slapstick humor we have seen before. Yet more may  
celebrate the filmmaker’s audacious ability to do all this.
Reactions may thus be inconsistent, but perhaps that is what this  
challenging director has been consistently aiming for from the start.  
That is Takeshi the tricky artist.