Dolls

It takes a while for DOLLS to sink in. Not because of the complexity of the stories intertwined through the film but because of the sheer emotional impact virtually every scene carries with it.

I won't go into details about the three stories but I can say that, above all else, DOLLS is a lesson in love and anguish and it is by far Kitano's most powerful work, even more so than Hana-bi.

I'm baffled by the negative reviews I've seen of this film since it was first aired. I wonder if it might be a case of the viewer needing to understand the way Japanese often tend to act and feel when faced with difficult or unbearable situations and without that understanding you might question if people would ever really act the way they do in DOLLS. The answer is that often they really do.

I've considered Kitano a master film maker for a long time now. The man has only ever made one film that can't be considered good (the embarrassingly poor Getting Any?) and I consider Hana-bi in particular to be one of the finest films ever made. But Dolls almost functions at another level. I don't know how often I will watch it because it genuinely is emotionally draining but this is simply a brilliant piece of film making. The cinematography is exquisite. The acting is fantastic, especially Miho Kanno who gives such a tragic, beautiful performance while hardly saying a world throughout the film. And above all, the emotional bond forged with the viewer is beyond any I think I've ever seen on film.

Anyone who truly loves film should see Dolls. Actors should see Dolls if only to see how little you really need to give in order to portray real emotion. Directors should see Dolls and learn from a master. I genuinely believe Kitano will go down in history as a genius film maker. Dolls may well be his masterpiece.

In "Dolls" Takeshi Kitano moves away from his peculiar ultra violent cinema and gives us his most poetic and introspective movie. He resorts to the crossing-stories structure to tell us three tales about love and regret, about doing anything for the person you love (and I mean ANYTHING). Calm, almost without dialogs, full of symbols and metaphors, every shot looks like a postcard. The minimalistic soundtrack and the amazing photography (wich stands out every single colour on the screen) catch you as you follow the tragedies that hide in every one of the stories. Kitano expands his horizons and demonstrates that he's a hell of a talent no matter what the genre is.

PS: not recommended for the impatient.

My rate: 8/10

"Dolls" is a gripping lesson in film as a visual medium, even when exploring territory that Beckett and Bergman handled verbally.

Takeshi Kitano wrote, directed and edited with astonishing beauty and poignancy, way beyond the audience pleasing romp of "Zatôichi: The Blind Swordsman." With minimal dialog, he is in a great partnership with the breathtaking cinematography of Katsumi Yanagishima, which uses seasonal changes as powerful visual and emotional metaphors as did "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom)," and the moody music of Joe Hisaishi, which effectively switches back and forth from traditional to Western instrumentation, as the film opens with a Bunraku puppet theater performance and then the stories of three casually intersecting couples gradually enact the sensibility of this what I presume is a traditional tale. The senses are so powerfully called upon that when two blinded characters stand in a rose garden I practically smelled the flowers.

While I am sure I missed a multitude of references and symbols, particularly colors, to elements of Japanese culture past and present, the very powerful themes of the spectrum of ambition destroying love such that love becomes a guilt-filled responsibility at one extreme and obsession at the other are similarly hauntingly recalled in Western culture, such as in old English ballads and more contemporary versions like "The Long Black Veil" and Springsteen's "Reason to Believe." I also felt resonances from "Waiting for Godot" to classics sensitively sympathetic to love-tossed women as "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina."

Flashbacks are used powerfully in a Joycean stream of consciousness way, so that we see the memories, dreams and disturbing nightmares of the characters'associations, literally showing us the Faulknerian dictum that "The past is never dead. It's never even past." This adds considerable emotional build-up for each character as they restlessly return to geographies with meanings to their lives and we gradually see what they were like before their current emotionally (or in some cases physically) stunted states so we heartbreakingly understand their personal iconography, particularly for those two unforgettably bound beggars.

There is no Hollywood happy endings for these couples, only acceptance of the fates they have consciously and willingly chosen and committed themselves to. But their resignation is thrillingly moving in its very graphic representation.

Told through a mixture of old Japanese culture and contemporary film- making, the three separate love stories overlap and interweave cleverly but subtly, too.

Without any sullying from saccharine sweetness or melancholy, all three tales strain the credibility of what we would normally think a person's love for another would go to. But, that's the beauty - this is a dream- felt movie, exaggerating hardship and our emotions to emphasise that extraordinary bond that love can be.

It's all interconnected by symbolisms and the extraordinary cinematography of Katsumi Yanagijima has us shimmering and floating in rose gardens, amongst autumnal leaves and under cherry-tree blossom. It is here that we take breath and sigh, after the often difficult human journeys we've just seen the characters go through. We cannot help but feel that we have journeyed with them - and perhaps suffered too.

To me, it's the first story of the jilted bride who's rejection sends her insane and the subsequent redemption and dedication from her boyfriend to the extent that they become homeless that it the most moving. Their story united the other two stories and adds symbolism at the end. The tale of the ageing Yakuza who finally feels that he needs more than his violent lifestyle to exist as a human being and the fanaticism for a young pop singer also paint vivid pictures on Japan's social and cultural agenda.

It did remind me of south Korea's 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...' in that often idyllic and contemplative gestures and activities are interspersed with morally questioning random acts that leave cavities in people's lives and the atonement needed to rectify them; or at least to try to, in a soul-satisfying way.

Takeshi Kitano proudly presented Dolls in the last Venice festival, where it received bad critics and reviews from the so-called cinema intellectuals and movie critics (I'd rather called them dollar-seekers). A few months later it was premiered in the Sitges Cinema Fest, I didn't expected too much, I was too wrong.

Dolls is a great movie about true love and the meaning of life. It's perfectly directed, it's perfectly acted, it's... perfect? May be, of course it depends on you. 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 (my biggest and greatest inspiration) manages to exploit aesthetics without loosing the plot.

This is not the first time that Kitano tries to explain a story with images, in Ano natsu ichiban shizukana umi (A scene at the sea) tried something similar, but didn't fully succeed.

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.

10 out of 10