Sonatine (1993)
Written, Directed and Edited by: Takeshi Kitano starring himself
Sonatine is a yakuza film, a popular genre in Japanese cinema dealing with the lives of crime syndicates. Kitano plays Murakawa, the protagonist of the film who is tired of the gangster life and he is sent by his boss to mediate a dispute between the allies. There is something unique about the performance of Takeshi Kitano and his portrayal of the gangster world, this is quite contrast to the Scorsese world of gangsters where Joe Pesci is constantly cussing and yelling at people. I love the Scorsese's milieu more, but this took me aback a bit. Murakawa is eerily silent always, even when there is a shoot out going on, his calmness conveys that this doesn't scare him anymore and also that he has lost that zeal in life. He is no more that adrenaline junkie, that he'd have been in his younger days. I've read that as Kitano was a comedian in Japan before this film, they didn't accept him as a gangster and the film didn't work whereas he being not so popular in the international market worked to his advantage for this film.
The writing process of Kitano was by building up four incidents in the film, the beginning, inciting incident and a plot point in the middle and the ending and he apparently led the film flow and fill in between these scenes. That explains the narrative, the film doesn't have a cause and effect kind of a narrative, there isn't 'therefore' and 'but' in the narrative, it goes like 'and then' all the time. This isn't a complaint, but it's interesting to see a slice of life kind of a narrative in a gangster film having bombastic action set pieces. Japanese cinema have introduced new genres to cinema like the Takashi Miike's J-horror films like Audition, Ichi the Killer and Ring which have had a huge influence on all the gory violent horror films which were made later across the world. I'm interested to watch the J-horror films and see how they were monumental in starting a trend, in spite of me not being a huge fan of horror.
Sonatine is a yakuza film, a popular genre in Japanese cinema dealing with the lives of crime syndicates. Kitano plays Murakawa, the protagonist of the film who is tired of the gangster life and he is sent by his boss to mediate a dispute between the allies. There is something unique about the performance of Takeshi Kitano and his portrayal of the gangster world, this is quite contrast to the Scorsese world of gangsters where Joe Pesci is constantly cussing and yelling at people. I love the Scorsese's milieu more, but this took me aback a bit. Murakawa is eerily silent always, even when there is a shoot out going on, his calmness conveys that this doesn't scare him anymore and also that he has lost that zeal in life. He is no more that adrenaline junkie, that he'd have been in his younger days. I've read that as Kitano was a comedian in Japan before this film, they didn't accept him as a gangster and the film didn't work whereas he being not so popular in the international market worked to his advantage for this film.
The writing process of Kitano was by building up four incidents in the film, the beginning, inciting incident and a plot point in the middle and the ending and he apparently led the film flow and fill in between these scenes. That explains the narrative, the film doesn't have a cause and effect kind of a narrative, there isn't 'therefore' and 'but' in the narrative, it goes like 'and then' all the time. This isn't a complaint, but it's interesting to see a slice of life kind of a narrative in a gangster film having bombastic action set pieces. Japanese cinema have introduced new genres to cinema like the Takashi Miike's J-horror films like Audition, Ichi the Killer and Ring which have had a huge influence on all the gory violent horror films which were made later across the world. I'm interested to watch the J-horror films and see how they were monumental in starting a trend, in spite of me not being a huge fan of horror.
No comments:
Post a Comment