Tony Takitani

After seeing "Tony Takitani," it's like I just ate something I have never tasted before, and it left some strange taste in my mouth. Even though I can't say I like what I just ate, but it tastes so interesting that I wanna to taste it again if I get the chance. That's how I feel about this poetic Japanese film.

The film is very slow, like watching a flower blooming on a drizzle day, the film never wants to rush into anything. Tony Takitani is a loner, he is always by himself, until he finally met a woman Eiko. Eiko is a perfect housewife, making Tony forgot about what being alone means. But Eiko has one problem: she can't stop shopping for clothes. What is Tony gonna do about it? What's the consequence might be? I will leave that to you to see the film. But to me, watching this film is not about the plot or the characters, which neither impressed me. The visual is the core of this film, that's what makes me reluctant to say this is a boring film. Quite the contrary. Sometimes, the film makes me feel like watching the animal world on PBS, with the never shutting up narrator. Why doesn't the film let the characters to talk, but constantly uses a voice over? I find it very annoying.

To people who never had sushi and sashimi, I always encourage them to try them, it will be nothing like they ever had before. So try to watch this film if you can have a chance. Just like sushi, I can't promise everybody will like it, but the experience is never to forget.

Visually, this film ranks with those of classic Japanese directors to a degree one rarely encounters today.

Every shot is a gem that reinforces the tight sterile world the characters inhabit.

The film narrative is a comment on the materialist obsessions of Japanese life, as well as the exclusion of the Japanese aesthetic--deriving from both Japanese fascism and the influence of Western culture.

I would certainly like to see more of Jun Ichikawa's films made available on video.

All of us have felt loneliness at one time or another. Probably not to the extent that Tony (Issei Ogata) felt. His father made sure he would be lonely by giving him an unusual name which prevented acceptance from the beginning.

After years of loneliness, he takes a beautiful wife (Rie Miyazawa). He is no longer lonely, but becomes fearful that he will experience loneliness again.

The beautiful piano music that plays throughout and the minimal sets remind us that loneliness is ever present. The film moves slowly, just as loneliness might move.

Tony is fairly happy after marriage, but another problem crops up. His wife is obsessed with clothes. We are talking Imelda Marcos obsessed. She is addicted to buying and it consumes her to the point that she cannot stop without withdrawal.

Her obsession causes her death and Tony is alone again. He struggles through the loneliness in strange fashion. We have moved from the action of his married life, back to the minimalism.

Jun Ichikawa did a magnificent job of using voice-over and music and set to create the perfect mood and a perfect retelling of Haruki Murakami's novel.

Every frame is like a painting. The film is like an art gallery, we walk through each scene with slow-tracking transitions while Sakamoto Ryuichi's hauntingly beautiful piano score plays. The faint colors of Tokyo has never been so breath-taking.

After watching, I felt alone, cold and inspired. Strictly for audiences who are open to new things, because this is likely the first movie you'll see of this kind. Don't expect a complicated storyline, this is an observant piece of cinema focusing on the study of characters. It moves slow but is never boring. Be patient and just enjoy what is shown to you on the screen.

This is how you really tell a great story visually. Mr Ichikawa Jun should be the man to adapt all of Murakami's stories.

*whew* It's been a while since I've been this intoxicated by a film... at least not since February's Nobody Knows.

Tony Takitani is a beautiful poem to loneliness.

The eponymous character is a quintessential loner. As the prologue informs us: His father, a WWII vet who pretty much left most of his soul in POW camp, was not much of a father. His mother died a few days after his death. He has been self-sufficient for most of his life.

We see him mostly by himself, alone near his desk, sketching drawings of motors, engines, amongst other mechanized structures. As the omniscient narrator tell us: Tony doesn't understand the fascination over paintings imbued with passion and ideology. It is certainly fitting for a man bereft of any human connection with another individual to identify with the colder, impersonal realm of mankind.

His lonely streak finally ends when he meets a woman at work. She is pretty, approachable, and most importantly of all, attracted to Tony. After a semi-rocky courting, they finally marry. Tony relishes in this foreign arrangement, but this exchange of intimacy with another person has Tony terrified. He is terrified because, as the narrator informs us, he might be lonely again, regressing back to his former state of isolation.

Maybe I'm too hypersensitive for my own good, but I wept a little when I heard these words. I felt that it could've not been a more articulate way to express the vulnerability of humans, especially the ones living in this modern age. Tony is aware of the cruel, unrelenting nature of time: Just as his mother died within days of childbirth and his father barely escaped the "thin boundaries of life and death" in POW camp, he can easily lose all this one day.

As it is, the inevitable does happen. I shall not reveal the unfortunate fate of Tony's wife and of their relationship, but the biggest rift in their marriage is her shopaholic tendencies. As she, herself, summed it up during their first encounter together: clothes help alleviate the emptiness she feels. After Tony's delicate mention about her habits, she frustratingly tries to restrain herself, only to surrender to the compulsions. In lesser hands, this subplot could've been ripe for (unintentional) camp, but in director Jun Ichikawa's hands, this consuming dysfunction only adds more layers to the film's restrained and somber mood: Tony's wife is not in control of her actions, which in turn, diverts his state of love and companionship to loneliness, once again.

With his wife gone, Tony becomes downtrodden, and then obsessed. In a Vertigo-esquire twist, he hires a woman who is the spitting image of his wife to take care of the house while wearing his wife's fashion couture wardrobe. The hired housekeeper's reaction to the extensive collection of wardrobe is more or less, abnormal--and of which, unexpectedly serves as a waking call for Tony.

Tony realizes that the only way to obliterate the obsession of his wife is to obliterate all of her clothes. As The Christian Science Monitor pointed out, one of the underlying themes of the film is "the complex relationship between objects and memories." As the narrator aptly tell us: the clothes are like lurking shadows; ghosts, if you must. What was once worn by a breathing, living body has now been only relegated to the closet. Tony could not bear looking at the clothes without thinking about her.

His father, the one who has long neglected him, passed away not much longer afterwards. Tony does the same thing to his father's belongings (a trumpet and a collection of records): he obliterated them. For what good are objects if they only remind one of pain? One could argue that although Tony and his wife shared different feelings about objects (she wanted to obtain them, whereas he wanted to obliterate them), they had one thing in common: both internalized objects into their inner selves.

The relationship humans have with objects is only a secondary theme. The film, for the most part, is simply about loneliness and how an individual such as Tony deals with that state of loneliness.

As you can tell, I love this film (otherwise, I'd probably not write so damn long). But this film is not for everyone. A couple in the movie theater gave up within twenty minutes into the film. A lady in front of me told her companion (when the movie was over) that she was tempted to sleep throughout the showing.

But if you are a sucker for atmospheric portraits of loneliness, slow and beautiful pans, and crazy about the empty urban architectural spaces in Edward Hopper's painting, then please, by all means, see Tony Takitani.