As almost every fan of Kitano Takeshi knows when the noted actor/director/writer stars in a film he uses his stage name Beat Takeshi from his days of manzai performance with his partner Beat Kiyoshi, hence The Two Beats, and when he directs he goes by his full name Kitano Takeshi. In his book Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano Casio Abe states that Beat Takeshi and Kitano Takeshi are two distinct personalities of the same being. Beat Takeshi is the persona Kitano uses for vacuous television entertainment for a mass audience while Kitano Takeshi is a creator obsessed with death, especially his own, as can be seen in his films in which his character commits suicide. While Dolls is often considered his most ostentatious and self-indulgent films, Takeshis' might soon take its take in the minds of critics because obviously, as the title suggests, the film entirely focuses on the miasma created by the bifurcated personality of Kitano.
The film opens with Beat Takeshi losing a mahjong match to a yakuza boss who asks Beat Takeshi to put his son in one of his films. As he exits the building, a woman, Kishimoto Kayako who played Beat Takeshi's wife in Kikujiro and Hanabi, who works for the yakuza tosses a glass of water on him demanding that he pay back the money he owes her. Bemused by this situation, Beat Takeshi and his girlfriend, Kyono Kotomi, and manager, Osugi Ren, make their way to a television studio where Beat is working on another yakuza film set in Okinawa. (Sonatine anyone?) He bemoans the life of being an actor: the same thing day after day and receiving flowers at the end of a shoot. However, this day he meets a man in clown makeup who bears a striking resemblance to himself. A struggling actor named Kitano with beach bottle blond hair. Of course Kitano is a big fan of Beat's work and asks Beat for an autograph. It is at this point that the film starts to become a bit odd.
As Kitano, not Beat Takeshi, makes his way home, a girl, who adores Beat Takeshi, gives him a gift thinking that he is Beat. Kitano then encounters Beat's girlfriend who is instead now his loose neighbor instead of a sharply dressed woman and a yakuza, Terajima Susumu, who had played his fellow clown in the studio. The bizarreness continues with the yakuza boss and his son being the patrons of a noodle shop and Osugi Ren being a cab driver. I'm not even touching on some scenes which include "The Hard Laborer's Song" performed by the female Miwa Akihiro who appeared in the Mishima Yukio Fukasaku Kinji film Black Lizard in 1965.
It seems that with this film Kitano is trying to split his personality once again. While already the distinct personalities of Beat Takeshi and Kitano Takeshi, it seems that he is trying to split off from his stereotype as a director of yakuza films. Sonatine and Hanabi are both victims of Kitano's sardonic wit and while there are some scenes more outlandish than those that appear in Getting Any?, they have more of a frightening effect than a humorous one. While I found this film to be entertaining overall, the bizarreness of it was almost too much at some points. However, one could also take this as a sign that this films requires repeated viewings. Definitely one for Kitano fans, but for those who have yet to view a Kitano film, this is probably the worst place to start.
The film opens with Beat Takeshi losing a mahjong match to a yakuza boss who asks Beat Takeshi to put his son in one of his films. As he exits the building, a woman, Kishimoto Kayako who played Beat Takeshi's wife in Kikujiro and Hanabi, who works for the yakuza tosses a glass of water on him demanding that he pay back the money he owes her. Bemused by this situation, Beat Takeshi and his girlfriend, Kyono Kotomi, and manager, Osugi Ren, make their way to a television studio where Beat is working on another yakuza film set in Okinawa. (Sonatine anyone?) He bemoans the life of being an actor: the same thing day after day and receiving flowers at the end of a shoot. However, this day he meets a man in clown makeup who bears a striking resemblance to himself. A struggling actor named Kitano with beach bottle blond hair. Of course Kitano is a big fan of Beat's work and asks Beat for an autograph. It is at this point that the film starts to become a bit odd.
As Kitano, not Beat Takeshi, makes his way home, a girl, who adores Beat Takeshi, gives him a gift thinking that he is Beat. Kitano then encounters Beat's girlfriend who is instead now his loose neighbor instead of a sharply dressed woman and a yakuza, Terajima Susumu, who had played his fellow clown in the studio. The bizarreness continues with the yakuza boss and his son being the patrons of a noodle shop and Osugi Ren being a cab driver. I'm not even touching on some scenes which include "The Hard Laborer's Song" performed by the female Miwa Akihiro who appeared in the Mishima Yukio Fukasaku Kinji film Black Lizard in 1965.
It seems that with this film Kitano is trying to split his personality once again. While already the distinct personalities of Beat Takeshi and Kitano Takeshi, it seems that he is trying to split off from his stereotype as a director of yakuza films. Sonatine and Hanabi are both victims of Kitano's sardonic wit and while there are some scenes more outlandish than those that appear in Getting Any?, they have more of a frightening effect than a humorous one. While I found this film to be entertaining overall, the bizarreness of it was almost too much at some points. However, one could also take this as a sign that this films requires repeated viewings. Definitely one for Kitano fans, but for those who have yet to view a Kitano film, this is probably the worst place to start.