japanese movie review: dolls
“dolls”, a quiet(really quiet) movie from the well known japanese director kitano takeshi, like itami’s “tanpopo”, is actually three stories woven into a single storytelling.
the film starts with the traditional “bunraku”, a play involving puppets. i sat there scratching my head for a bit, thinking “is this what the whole movie is about? puppetry? ” me, being a cultural philistine, wasn’t crazy about a whole movie about puppets, no matter how beautiful or cultural it all is. thankfully, it’s just an introduction and the theme to the rest of the film.
the main story revolves around a young man named matsumoto, who on his wedding day, ditches his (wealthy)bride and his family to be with former fiancee, who upon hearing of matsumoto’s marriage to his company’s president’s daughter, attempts suicide. she is saved in time, but now has seems to lost her mind, unable(or maybe unwilling) to recognize anyone and is now in a perpetual state of zombie-like incoherency.
matsumoto wanders throughout japan tied to sawako(played by kanno miho) by the waist, often ridiculed by people and enduring endless walking through some very beautiful landscape. to what end? the viewer can only conjecture: is it because he feels like he has done sawako such wrong that he feels he needs to redeem himself, tied to her walking endlessly until she silently forgives him? or has he simply lost his mind too, like sawako? the movie doesn’t really say… it’s up to the viewer to interepret his motives and the outcome of this story.
the second story is of aging yakuza dude named hiro who abandons his girlfriend in his youth. his girlfriend, ryoko promises she will always be waiting for him on a bench everyday with a bentou. perhaps fifty years pass before hiro decides to visit that same bench one day, and indeed, there she is, waiting on the very bench they said goodbye on.
this story, of course as unlikely as it is, is almost the reverse of story of matsumoto, where a woman’s devotion and her promise is kept through ridiculous amount of time that has passed by.
the final story, one that is the shortest and one that makes me tilt my head and go “huh?” is about an uberfan to a singer-idol named haruna. a typical otaku name nukui in his thirties even wears her face on a large button on his vest when he goes to work as a construction worker. to prove that he is her greatest fan, he does the unthinkable to his own body, just for a chance to meet her.
the common running theme in all three movies is about love and devotion, and to the extent and the length some people will go in order to remain devoted to someone they love. it is not a film for the impatient, nor resolutions, nor conversation, as almost the entire movie is lacking in any conversation. instead, the actors in the film tell their story through light in their eyes and implied sadness in the way they live their lives. it is at once a great story telling, and also glacially slow. but i couldn’t stop watching because film itself is really pretty, with beautiful backgrounds and great cinematography, as well as wonderful, if rather silent acting.
7 out of 10