Dolls

Strange and far from perfect, but an amazing cinematic experience. Takeshi Kitano is best known for his yakuza films, but, with Dolls and Zatoichi, I think he's moved beyond and become a more well-rounded artist. Dolls is a highly aestheticized film that intertwines three stories about undying, insanity-causing love. The structure is very strange, and it doesn't work perfectly. One story, the most effective one in my mind, about a man who tethers himself to his brain-damaged ex-fiancée, takes up the most screen time. However, most of that screen time is devoted just to watching the two stumble solemnly through the seasons of the year. It becomes quite poetic, and a good excuse for creating gorgeous visual compositions. The other two stories take up relatively little screen time, and feel more prosaic (though with a definite tinge of myths). One involves a yakuza boss who, nearing death, visits a park bench where he used to meet his sweetheart when he was a young man – and finds her still waiting for him. The third tale involves a man who is obsessed with a pop star. When she is injured in a car accident, he is not allowed to see her disfigured face. So he removes his own eyes in order to spend time with her. The secondary stories are far less satisfying than the tale of bound beggars, but the three stories do meld into a very satisfying whole. The film also seems to hint at more, and a second viewing might tie everything together much for satisfactorily. It's visual beauty is only surpassed by its highly advanced editing rhythms, and perhaps also its exquisite score, by Jo Hisaishi, frequent collaborator of Hayao Miyazaki.

If only the wonderful Bunraku doll theatre that opens Kitano's movie would've stayed on... This arty celebration of pure and true love and the impossibility to retain it is filled with luminous tableaux and symbolic images, but to what effect? Two of the three slightly intertwined story lines (with the main thread of the roped up lovers being the exception) are simply maudlin and offer neither emotional nor intellectual resonance. It's surely wonderful to look at and some small moments delight, but in retrospect, the pic's haphazard content and all too precious style result in a deeply flawed pretence of high art. 5 out of 10 Saturdays on a park bench

What was this ? This isn't a movie this an incoherent mess of some scenes. It was awful, do people in Japan or any country act the way the bunch of dysfunctional lunatics in this crap fest act ? No ! They most certainly don't. This isn't about love it's about stalking and acting all crazy in the name of love .

I have seen quite a few of Kitano's movies and liked most of them very much (with the exception of VIOLENT COP), so my expectations for this film were very high. Perhaps that is some of the reason I gave this film such a low score--I know he is capable of so much better. The movie is a series of interwoven vignettes about fanatical devotion. While all of these have interesting aspects, the vignettes are chopped apart and you see bits and pieces of each segment throughout the film. However, the sum of all these parts didn't, for me, create a satisfying whole. I just found that apart from being a very pretty film, there just wasn't much to it. I recently read that in recent years director Kitano has taken up painting. This is obvious in the use of colors (particularly bright reds) and images, but the film completely lacks EMOTION. Most of the actors act like zombies--and is highly reminiscent of Kitano's acting in VIOLENT COP (aside from when he was beating the @&%$#* out of people, he, too was a zombie). Now I am not talking about needing lots of emotion but this movie had almost none! Zombies do not equal art. With a little life pumped into it, this could have been a much better film.

Being a huge fan of Takeshi Kitano since his very first works I found "Dolls" a great disappointment. This film intertwines three stories inspired by Bunraku, traditional japanese marionette's theatre. It should be an ode to eternal love and its overwhelming importance over success in life but it fails because of Kitano's "poetic" narrative style. "Dolls" finally provides only a slight amount of supposed to be beautiful images, stunning colors, cheap symbolisms and nothing more. We are in Japan so there are also cherry blossoms, almonds in flower and snowy mountains, like in the most banal segments of Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams". It seems that too many awards in western film festivals deprived Kitano of his dry, cruel humour and gave him in change the sloppy, sugary look at life we saw in "Brother" already. Unlike "Silence at the sea" and "Hana-Bi", "Dolls" lacks that laconic and unsentimental way of depicting feelings which was one of Kitano' trademarks. Acclaimed as one the most original authors of the earliest nineties, after receiving the "Leone d'oro" for "Hana-Bi" Kitano started releasing films which seem unintentional spoofs of his previous works; he's maybe becoming that kind of director who is not satisfied with making films: he wants to deliver some true "art". Arty must be the most appropriate word for this misfire. Boring is the second most appropriate. I gave it 5/10 only because I don't want to inflict a too low rate on a such a great director's film.