"Called ""the world's most original action auteur"" by the Village Voice, Takeshi Kitano is already legendary in Japan, where he is known both for his inventive films and for his legendarily caustic alter ego, comedian Beat Takeshi. In the United States, his stylishly noir aesthetic has both influenced and been admired by such directors as Martin Scorcese and Quentin Tarantino. His emotionally intense yet lyrical films have won him worldwide acclaim and honors, including the Grand Prix for Hanabi [Fireworks] at the Venice Film Festival. Now, the long-awaited Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano offers a collection of essays on the internationally acclaimed film director by Casio Abe. Despite his impact on contemporary cinema, very little critical work on Kitano's films exists in the United States. Abe's book, originally published in Japan, combines a detailed look at Kitano's filmography with an incisive critique of the consumerist culture which Kitano's films play against. It is also purportedly Kitano's favorite book on his own work. This translation of Abe's writings on Kitano has been updated with articles that discuss Kitano's most recent releases, up to and including Dolls (2002), as well as extensive appendices and footnotes. Abe is one of Japan's preeminent cultural critics, and his book gives a rare and insightful look into the workings of one of the largest media cultures in the world. This will be the first book devoted exclusively to Kitano's work to be published in the United States. Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano is the first volume in Kaya's ""Wicked Radiance"" series, which examines the work of a new wave of Asian filmmakers who are reshaping contemporary cinema."
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quite Good,
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This review is from: Beat Takeshi Vs. Takeshi Kitano (Paperback)
The first Kitano Takeshi film I watched was Kikujiro in one of my Japanese classes. Entranced by the delightful film, I decided that I wanted to watch other works by this comedic director. Hoping for a similar sense of enjoyment that I experienced while watching Kikujiro, I purchased A Scene at the Sea and Fireworks. Let me say that what I experienced watching these two films were quite different than the one I had watching Kikujiro. A Scene a the Sea is probably one of the most minimalist films that I have ever seen in both dialogue and action, but watching it was like being in a quiet meditation for one-hundred minutes and small parts of the film, such as when Takako folds Shigeru's clothing or when the "Orange Woman" repeatedly asks a number of people to peel her fruit, are quite heartwarming. The ending of the film left me a bit melancholy, but it was tinged more with nostalgia than sadness. I then watched Fireworks which is a film that must be experienced more than once because the duel stories of Nishi and Horibe overlap more than one thinks upon the initial viewing.
Since then I watched several other Kitano Takeshi films and have enjoyed each in a different way be it the aesthetic beauty of Dolls or the ribaldry of Getting Any?. However, besides reading some short articles by Beat Takeshi that were, of course, more for fun than scholarly intent, I had yet to read a scholarly tome concerning Kitano's body of work. Therefore I was very pleased to read the announcement that Abe Casio's study Beat Takeshi vs. Kitano was going to be released in English. This was back in 2002 and so I waited and waited for the book to be released and after quite some time had passed, I forgot about it. However, one day, while randomly surfing the Internet, I came across the book and saw that it had been released, so I quickly ordered it and read it. It is quite good and I believe that both Kitano enthusiasts and Japanese film fans and scholars should read it. Abe's book is separated into two halves. Being that the book was originally released in 1994 and Kitano had only directed four films, Violent Cop, Boiling Point, A Scene at the Sea, and Sonatine, so the book at first glance seems to be less than comprehensive work, however, with ample information concerning Kitano's work as an actor, Many Happy Returns, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and his television work, Abe fills this supposed void. At any rate, the second half of the English edition of the book contains a number of articles concerning Kitano's later films, Getting Any?, Fireworks, Kikujiro, Brother, and Dolls. As made obvious by the title, Abe contrasts the dueling personalities of the larger-than-life comedian Beat Takeshi and the more subdued, almost gloomy persona embodied within the filmmaker Kitano Takeshi. Much of the earlier parts of the book mainly consist of Abe's diatribes against Japanese television which he views as nothing more than a vapid waste of time consisting of little more than talk shows, travel shows, and cartoons. However, he also writes that television is dangerous because of its collective desire to homogenize a nation. It is within this miasma of pop-culture vacuity that the former manzai comedian Beat Takeshi raised to stardom, but he, along with his comic troop the Takeshi Gundan, or Takeshi Army, was able to prevent himself from being homogenized by his refusal to play along by television's rules. However, because it is a tremendous force, Takeshi was not able defeat television, so when opportunity to direct Violent Cop knocked, Takeshi jumped upon it. Without worrying if his films would be hits, it was nearly impossible for any Japanese film to do well during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kitano, as a director, was able to put his thoughts on screen, especially his relentless fascination with suicide. Quite wordy and academic in nature, the names Walter Benjamin, Kierkegaard, Orikuchi Shinobu, etc. pop up quite often, one sometimes has to wage battle with Abe's words to find his main ideas, but the book is a valuable and welcome edition to ones Japanese film bookshelf.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Takeshis!,
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This review is from: Beat Takeshi Vs. Takeshi Kitano (Paperback)
Casio Abe, Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano (Kaya, 2003)
Either Japanese film criticism is an entirely different beast than its western counterpart, or Casio Abe is the downright oddest film critic I have ever come across. Not that this is a bad thing; his impressionist takes on the films of Takeshi Kitano are quite fun to read, and this book, I'll say from the outset, is a must for Kitano fans-- but as you'll learn pretty quickly (as in, in the translator's foreword), Casio Abe does not watch films like the average film critic. Indeed, he watches films like the average film fan, and because of that, he tends to be kind of obsessive, even when he's getting the details wrong (a habit for which, it should be noted, Abe never, ever apologizes-- he's one of those "the facts get in the way of the truth" types, I guess). After a long introductory essay in which Abe traces Kitano's television career and explains his thesis that Beat Takeshi (Kitano's television persona, and the name he acts under in most of his films) is set against Takeshi Kitano (the director) in just about every way possible, he dives right in, devoting one essay/chapter to each of Kitano's films. The original book covered only the first four, having been released in 1994, and these essays are much longer and more in-depth than the ones that were added for the book's 2003 release (the chapters on Kikujiro and Brother, for example, are less than six pages, while Abe's examination of Sonatine runs thirty). Despite Abe's rather lackadaisical method of film viewing, there can be no denying from word one that this guy takes Kitano seriously as an auteur; like Tom Mes' wonderful books on Takashi Miike and Shinya Tsukamoto, that such a book exists at all with Takeshi Kitano as its subject is a very welcome thing. And as far as that goes, Abe's topics are much the same as those one finds in any other book of film criticism-- themes that move from film to film, notes on small character quirks (for example, Abe's observation that for most of A Scene at the Sea, the two main characters never face one another-- a detail I'd completely missed), that sort of thing. But there's an exuberance to Abe's writing that one doesn't find in most film criticism, just as there is with Mes. Perhaps it comes from taking a director who isn't considered all that hot in his home country and treating him like he is (in some sort of transgressive sense)? I don't know, but in the intervening fourteen years, Abe has certainly been proved right, as Sonatine (and Kitano's later films Hana-bi and Kikujiro) has started finding its way onto critics' thousand-best-films-ever-made lists. There can no longer be any doubt that Kitano is, in fact, a serious, and very good, filmmaker. Abe just saw it before everyone else did. And now that Kitano is finally gaining some appreciation in the west, you can get your hands on this little book and find out what all the fuss is about. (Or you could just go rent Kikujiro.) *** ½
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Resource for Understanding Takeshi's Films,
By
This review is from: Beat Takeshi Vs. Takeshi Kitano (Paperback)
This book is full of interesting reviews of most of Takeshi's films, everything from Violent Cop to Dolls. It presents engrossing ideas of the duality of self and the masks Takeshi wears for his public. While being perhaps a little too worshipful of the director/superstar, it is none the less thought provoking and thorough. Worth every penny.
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