Sunday 15 March 2009

"Dolls" by Takeshi Kitano

Takeshi Kitano proudly presented "Dolls" in the Venice festival, where it received bad critics and reviews from the so-called cinema intellectuals and movie critics. A few months later it was premiered in the Sitges Cinema Fest.
"Dolls" is a great movie about true love and the meaning of life. It's perfectly directed, it's perfectly acted. The point to criticize the movie for most of the critics, is the point that I praise: the use of the symbols is 100% aesthetic, I even believe that the real love is not the subject of the movie, but aesthetics; and the greatest of everything is that using this strange way of filming he really emphasizes the story. The traditional filming would use symbol's as a way to directly emphasize the action, but this movie uses the symbols independently from the action and that gives strength to the overall story.The aestheticism is very dangerous, because it can turn your movie into a sum of meaningless scenes attached with a very poor story, making it very boring. However Kitano-sensei manages to exploit aesthetics without loosing the plot.
The visuals of this film tell the story, not the words. Its a first film of a kind where you can completely shut the sound off and get the story nonetheless. With an amazing craft, Kitano explores silence, by that focusing your attention into whats on the canvas. At times, you can freeze frame and just look at the picture as if its a painting. Kitano goes into an exploration of human psyche on such deep levels that sometimes I felt like I was finding out new things about myself. Choosing themes carefully, he delivers a story about human beings and their emotions and what these emotions do to the human beings. At times, looking at us as if we are microbes under Kitano's camera-easque eye of a microscope, he adds elements into life as if on Petri's dish and sees what grows out of it, knowing that some "microbes" won't stand the chance of surviving the newly added obstacles.
Just like Japanese poetry, the movie doesn't make sense at times, and yet remains purely a joy of a visual sight. Also, I was truly touched and amazed by the connection with the color red. He connects to the meaning of the rope, which is limitation and humiliation, and by coloring other objects in red he suggests that those elements are "a rope" to some of the characters just the same. The lady who waits for her boyfriend to come back wears a red hat, and she is bound to waiting for him forever. Also, the red takes over the character of the mute girlfriend of the main character, and eventually she all dresses in red, by that becoming even more of a DOLL than she was before. She surrenders herself to the "slavery" of the rope and it grows into her.
In conclusion, it's a masterpiece you shouldn't forget. Kitano is one of the greatest directors nowadays and this movie proves it. Whether you are a hardcore Kitano fan or just enjoy films, watch it, you won't get disappointed. "Dolls" is an intellectual paradigm, a true cinema, a MUST to watch.

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