Kiku­jiro na natsu [ Sum­mer of Kikujiro ]

Play this music in the back­ground while read­ing this blog [ Oru effect dhaan ! ]. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa0JAvjx05c

 ” After ‘Hana-Bi’, I couldn’t help feel­ing that my films were being stereo­typed: So I decided to try and make a film no one would expect from me ” — Takeshi Kitano.

Once a cre­ator reaches this idea, the next project would be one of his best. A cre­ator has to dis­con­nect from his pre­vi­ous work and the next one [ Remem­ber Min­nale and Kaaka kaaka; Naya­gan, Agni Natchathi­ram, Gee­tan­jali and Anjali ]. Vari­ety keeps the art live.

Few things about the direc­tor.. Takeshi Kitano is an all-rounder; he started his career as a standup come­dian as two beats in Japan [ rea­son for his other name Beat Takeshi ]. He is a multi-skilled per­son­al­ity; actor, script writer, direc­tor, edi­tor, painter and has good knowl­edge in music. Due to a con­flict while act­ing in a film ‘Vio­lent cop’, he turned as the direc­tor for the movie, acci­den­tally. Till Hana-bi, he worked with the same type of gang­ster sto­ries with enor­mous vio­lence and dif­fer­ent method of sto­ry­telling. Kiku­jiro is a dif­fer­ent craft from his shop. After a fatal acci­dent in 1989, Takesh started work­ing more exten­sively [ real­is­ing ‘Life is beau­ti­ful’ ! ]. He’s also a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor in one of the Japan­ese universities.

Kiku­jiro : This film needed 4 impor­tant ele­ments. Masao [ 9 yrs old boy ], Joe Hisaishi [ Music direc­tor ], Yanag­ishima [ cin­e­matog­ra­pher ] and Takeshi Kitano [ Edi­tor & Direc­tor ]. All of them blended well and the final prod­uct is just awesome.

Kiku­jiro na natsu [ Kikujio’s sum­mer ] — 1999/Drama/Japan
Cast : Yusuke Sekiguchi, Takeshi Kitano
Music : Joe Hisaishi
Cin­e­matog­ra­phy : Kat­sumi Yanag­ishima
Edited & Directed by : Takeshi Kitano.

Plot :

Masao, 9 years old n sen­si­tive boy lives with his work­ing grandma in the sub-urban of Tokyo. He doesn’t have a father and mother stays in a far away town, whom he never met. Sum­mer vaca­tion starts and all the friends of Masoe leave the town for hol­i­days. Masoe is left alone. He finds his mother’s photo and address while search­ing for a stamp. With lit­tle money and lit­tle knowl­edge on direc­tions, he walks out of the home and heads towards the address. Takeshi is an irre­spon­si­ble, loud mouthed per­son and his wife was a neigh­bor once to Masoe’s fam­ily. They find this boy on his way, to go out of the town. Think­ing about the risk, she asks her hus­band Takeshi to accom­pany the kid to his mother’s place and gives some money. The highly mis­matched friends start the jour­ney. Takeshi’s wife later con­vinces Masao’s grandma that they are tak­ing him to the seaside.

Takeshi has the least inter­est in tak­ing the boy to the address and starts spend­ing his money in use­less ways. The film is all about their jour­ney and the col­or­ful char­ac­ters they meet, the strange cir­cum­stances they undergo which comes out as a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. Both end up their search, in a dif­fer­ent and unfor­get­table way.

View :

- It’s an ellip­ti­cal style nar­ra­tion. I mean, the film starts and ends with the same shot [ Masao run­ning in a bridge ]. Watch out for the first 7 min­utes titling and theme music [ Fab­u­lous one from Joe Hisaishi ]. Look for the bell sounds in between and it has a mean­ing. [ Mani sathathula ennadaa mean­ing.. Unnai kep­paare illaiyaa :) ]

- The char­ac­ters are intro­duced very rapidly with fewer dia­logues. For ex., Takeshi’s wife says ‘we were neigh­bors’ to jus­tify her con­cern for the boy. Takeshi is intro­duced with his brash atti­tude and his wish to grab easy money. Masao talks less and filled up with unknown sad­ness. The alien­ation of Masao is pic­tur­ized by a long shot in a soc­cer field with him, a ball and an empty ground. Class !

- The jour­ney begins with an irre­spon­si­ble Takeshi and a sad n eager boy, where the chem­istry between them doesn’t work out at all. The fric­tion is car­ried out through out their jour­ney and events slowly change the relation.

- The story focuses on the alien­ation and the nuclear fam­ily struc­ture in Japan. The story is nar­rated with dif­fer­ent head­ings as found in the Masao’s diary.

- In a high­way motel, Takeshi breaks the glass win­dow of a truck for not get­ting a lift. That fol­lows a fight sequence. The entire fight sequence is shown in a long shot with­out any music. A sim­ple and ideal fight which is never shown in that angle. Takeshi never shows the actual fight but he shows the con­se­quences [ Remem­ber the hos­pi­tal fight in Anjathey :) ].

- The char­ac­ters : a jug­gler, her boy friend, a story writer, 2 bik­ers get intro­duced and min­gles with the story flu­idly. Takeshi’s comic acts bal­ance the kid’s sadness.

- The camp they setup in a river­side and the games they play were really touch­ing one. All the grown-ups just return to their child­hood and enter­tain Masao. Those sequences are inter­est­ing and I couldn’t accept when they depart. Also, when Masao runs in the end with joy, it leaves an emo­tional feel­ing about that kid. The emo­tion we get when we fin­ish the vaca­tion — a strange feel­ing which I under­gone after the news break in the Sun­day evening TV films [ next day school-la enna nadakumo :) ]. Like the feel­ing dur­ing the return jour­ney after a get-together [ ம‌ச்சான்.. நான் அடையார்‍ல‌ இற‌ங்கிக்க‌றேன்டா.. அதான் கிட்ட‌ :) ].

- Takeshi, mean­while remem­bers his mother and that sub-plot is a poem by itself. The cello music used in this episode [ The track is named ‘Mother’ in the sound­track of this film ] is directly used in the movie “Anjathey“‘s cli­max :) . In Nan­dalala, it comes with a song, I guess.. [ அம்மா ஒன்ன‌ப் பாத்தா.. வார்த்தை வ‌ல்ல‌ மேல‌.. –Check the song ‘Thaalatu Ketka naanum’ by IR ]

- Joe Hisaishi — The music direc­tor is basi­cally a pianist who has done his part extremely well. The theme music is used in var­i­ous part of the movies with var­i­ous instru­ments [once in vio­lin, cello, just piano etc., ].

- The visuals/lighting ele­vates the movie to another level. The col­ors used in the jour­ney are excellent.

Con­clu­sion :

I would rec­om­mend this movie for the entire fam­ily. Sim­i­lar to ‘In the mood for love’, this film also talks about the lone­li­ness and alien­ation in life. It’s a delight­ful story with an intel­li­gent script, bril­liant cin­e­matog­ra­phy and an enchant­ing score. No won­der Mysskin’s office con­tains only one por­trait, where Takeshi Kitano smiles.

Look­ing for­ward eagerly for the Tamil movie Nan­dalala, inspired from Kikujiro.

–Toto.

Related Posts B

1. Mae­stros in cel­lu­loid — Themes.
2. Life is beau­ti­ful — for those who survived !