Customer Reviews

Dolls

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Based on the themes and aesthetics of Bunraku, traditional Japanese puppet theater, "Dolls" is a deliberate attempt to blend an ancient Japanese art form with modern technology and sensibilities.

Like "Double Suicide," another Japanese film based on Bunraku, the film begins with the puppets on stage being manipulated by their handlers, then transitions intolive actors. Also in common with "Double Suicide," the film is highly stylistic and modern while retaining the pace and tone of the old-fashioned story telling.

"Dolls" in all covers three stories: Matsumoto and Sawako, the happy couple who's meddling parents as well as their own poor choices leads to tragedy. Hiro, the stereotypical aging Yakuza gangster, kind to children yet ruthless to his enemies, seeking to find a love that was lost to him long ago. Haruna, the once popular singing idol, who's features were marred in an accident and is now lonely and alone, allowing no one to see her face.

As with most Bunraku stories, each is a tale of the tragedy of love, and how exquisite love is often accompanied by exquisite pain. The agony and the ecstasy. But because this is Japan, these fierce emotions are bottled up inside the characters, who show their outward masks attempting to betray nothing of their true feelings. The true story is only available to those who can read between the lines.

In the end, however, what drives "Dolls" is not the story, but the artistry of Kitano's camera. Some of the splendid scenes and colors in "Fireworks" find fruition in "Dolls." He claims that each shot can be framed as a piece of art. The changing colors reflects the traditional Japanese aesthetic of the four seasons, and of the changeability of nature and life. It is a beautiful film.

Some have difficulty accepting Kitano Takeshi as anything other than a violent action director, and those people might have a hard time with the slow pace and brilliant images of "Dolls." It is definitely not going to be everyone's favorite, but it is one of mine.

For the most part, I believe, when one thinks about the films of Kitano Takeshi one either thinks about such violent yakuza/police films such as _Violent Cop_ or _Firewoks_ or a more humorous Kitano in films such as _Kikujiro_ and _Getting Any?_. However, with this 2002 film, Kitano pushes the envelope to something new and melancholy.

The film begins with a performance of Bunraku, Japanese puppetry. Although the performance is lovely, one wonders what does it actully have to do with the film? This becomes evident when Matsumoto is introduced. Matsumoto is a low ranking salaryman, but one who has a great opportunity to get his foot into the world of Japanese business when his boss asks him to marry his daughter. The girl seems pleased, The girl's parents seem pleased, and Matsumoto's parents are overjoyed because the marriage would equal higher social status not only for their son, but them also. However, there is one major problem: Matsumoto is already engaged and in love to the cute Sawako. However, because of familial pressures, Matsumoto concedes to marry the boss's daughter. As a result, Sawako attempts to commit suicide.

However, Sawako survives her suicide attempt, but is left in a near vegetable state. She does not speak much, and when she does it is usually to inanimate objects. She also has the tendency to wander off, which Matsumoto tries to remedy with by tieing her to a red string which he also ties around his waist. At first they are quite sedentary , but soon they begin wandering the country, eventually dressed in the robes resembling those of Burraku puppets.

The movie does not only center around Matsumoto and Sawako. There is also an old yakua boss, who returns after 30 years to find that the girl he once loved still returns every saturday to a bench in the park to bring him lunch. There is also the sad case of a pop idol who maimed her face in an accident, and the fan who loves her regardless, even going to the extreme to prove his devotion.

Dolls is a fantastic film. Very slow paced, but extraordinarily rich in scenery and subdued emotion. The camera work is lovely, and Japan's changing seasons are given full attention. Autumn's maples are truly fabulous.

Throughout Dolls you feel as if you are observing the life of two Banraku dolls on an inner journey to escape the prison of their reality as they tell their story through three couples who seem to be struggling with similar themes and emotional issues.

This almost silent contemplative art is much more poetic than dramatically complex and yet intricately woven so as to mingle the dreams and imaginings of six souls longing for completion.

There is a contrast of serenity with conflict and it feels like the couples in the story are playing out the stories told by the Dolls. In one gorgeous scene the couple bound by a red cord dress like the dolls and that makes the ending highly evocative and memorably poetic in the most intriguing of ways.

While viewing this movie you may feel more inclined to write poetry or phrases and have strange thoughts like: "I am tied to your heart with a crimson rope. When you fall, I trip so easily over myself." In a way, you write many of the words of the script in your own mind and in that way make the movie your own. At the moment where they fall down a hill, you also see the puppets and it feels like the puppeteers are controlling the couple's life in reality.

Dolls is an especially serene and visually stunning contemplative moment of art. The trees bursting with autumn grandeur are beautifully filmed and the red rope is strangely interesting as it trails along the ground, picking up leaves or pulling across snow or keeping the couple together even in chaotic dreams. The pacing is especially relaxing and you are left in an almost mysteriously silent mood.

~The Rebecca Review

Wonderful movie! Very emotionally touching and you can really feel for the characters. And yes, at some points, it's quite a tear-jerker.

Matsumoto left his job on his wedding day to return to his true love Sawako, who in despair at his decision to marry another girl (the daughter of his boss) for parental approval tried to kill herself. She failed, and her attempt left her speechless, emotionally vacant, and prone to bizarre behavior like shoplifting. But he devotes himself fully to her, and throughout the film the two lovers reconnect not only literally but also metaphorically when, bound by a red cord around their waists, they wander together as "bound beggars" throughout the four seasons of the year. In a parallel love story, the old man Hiro reflects on how he left his girl for a job when he was as young (the opposite of Matsumoto's choice). He too reconnects since when he left decades earlier his lover promised to wait for him every Saturday with a box lunch. True to her word, Hiro finds her waiting, in the same dress and in the exact same place. In a third story, a famous pop icon Haruna is disfigured in a car accident, and agrees to meet an infatuated groupie, Nukui, who blinded himself out of devotion to her. Tragedy, tenderness, devotion, and brutal murders characterize all three stories. Dolls was an official selection at film festivals in Toronto, London, New York, and Cannes. The visuals in this film are stunning, but I am sure that the cultural subtleties and symbolism are lost on viewers like me who do not understand Japanese culture well enough. In Japanese with English subtitles.

The best thing about this movie is its breathtaking cinematography. The shots, colors, composition, everything, makes it one of the most visually interesting movies I have seen in some time.On another level, the story is great. Its about the tragedy of love but it is done in a very unique way. These three stories (tied together by a red chord) touch on variety of human emotions. This is a must see in my book.

This movie was beautifully filmed and directed. The story line is great the three stories of love and sadness are very moving, recommend this movie to all. Great movie!!!

The beauty of this movie is beyond belief. Every scene is like a painting. The loves stories take you deep into the dark heart of love. The movie follows three love stories that go through the seasons. The stories end-up intertwined. Just brilliant and beautiful.

With the influx of MTV-style editing and pacing into practically all of today's storytelling mediums, Takeshi Kitano's DOLLS is a remarkably quiet film. It harkens back to a more patient time, and challenges its audience with non-linear storytelling and vague visual metaphor. Equal parts Yasujiro Ozu and Seijun Suzuki, DOLLS is aimed at the patient intelligent filmgoer. The explosive violence of Brother or Zatoichi is no where to be found; comedic moments are few and far between. Kitano chooses to focus on the tragedy of life and love instead of death or revenge, and his deliberate style paints a picture worthy of hanging next to any classic Japanese fable. Fitting, since one such fable sets the film into motion. Meido no Hikyaku (The Courier from Hell), a landmark bunraku-japanese puppet theater-play by Japanese dramatist Monzaemon Chikamatsu, tells the story of a lowly courier who steals public funds to free his lover from her life of prostitution. Betrayed by a friend, Monzaemon and his lover flee to his hometown, hoping to die there together. This tragic pair inspires three interwoven, non-linear modern stories that echo the emotion and tragedy of Chikamatsu's tale; at times, like gods, the puppets watch over or directly influence the `real world' events.

The three stories themselves are, at best, standard. The characters are pulled directly from the shelf. Their relationships are predictable: a woman destroyed by her lover's parents' lust for their son to marry up the social ladder; a yakuza boss and the brief love of his youth, meeting after decades of separation; a pop idol and her most obsessive fan. As the stories progress, paralleling each other in various, sometimes symbolic, manners, we are never intellectually surprised by the proceedings. Yet, through manipulation of this predictability, DOLLS devastates emotionally. Like the best fables, the surroundings are familiar, but the path is jarring. Technically, Kitano effectively experiments with Eisenstein's Soviet Montage Theory. Juxtaposition of images, both for symbolic and practical storytelling purposes, is in large part what makes the film so poetic, haunting, and effective. The seasons, whose colors are captured with staggering beauty by Katsumi Yanagishima (Battle Royale, Go, all of Kitano's films except Violent Cop and Hanabi), are as crucial and focused upon as any of the characters.

Perhaps the film to most appropriately compare with DOLLS is Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. Both films are giant leaps into artistic experimentation by directors most well known for striking realism. Both move slowly, conjoin multiple stories and focus as strongly on symbolism and nature as on any storyline. Dreams is an undisputed masterwork, but Kitano's film takes more risks-almost all of which enhance the film-and achieves a greater sense of whole than Kurosawa's. It is interesting that Kitano followed up his biggest cinematic gamble with his most commercial and, arguably, most entertaining film to date (Zatoichi). This should not be surprising, however, coming from Japan's most consistently unpredictable auteur. DOLLS requires intense viewer patience, but for an audience open to the film's challenges, Kitano's film proves immensely rewarding.

A truly great film. Kitano has always been one of the most remarkable of film artists: a moving combination of extreme violence and extreme tenderness -- sort of a Japanese mixture of Peckinpah & Max Ophuls. Who else, other than Nicholas Ray, can claim such a range? "Dolls" -- released to empty houses back in 2002, and finally making it to the cinematically barren shores of the USA in '05 -- is Kitano at his most tender. Three stories are interwoven, and the dolls of the title refer, of course, to those among us -- a vanishing breed -- whose depth of love is just too strong for the world. They live in a world beyond ours. Characters such as this once held a prime place in the focus of world art. (Balzac made a career of them.) No more, outside of hearts such as Kitano's. Much, I imagine, in this movie comes from his life. The aging Yakuza(wonderfully played by Tatsuya Mihasi)is Kitano the guilty husband. The lonely celebrity disfigured by car accident leads back to Kitano's near-death in a motorcycle crack-up. Perhaps the lonely woman embodied by Chieko Matsubara and the main character Sawako is the director's dual valentine of apology to his loyal wife. Where it all comes from doesn't really matter. What does matter are some of the most moving moments in modern cinema: the fade out on the groupie madly in love with the pretty pop star, as he rocks out, headphones on, alone in his bedroom; the moment of recognition by Mihasi as he sees Chieko Matsubara still waiting, years later, at their chosen bench; Sawako holding up her angel necklace, as she and her lover gaze back into time, seeing the moment when the necklace was first given to her; the groupie and the pop star "smelling the roses"; the incomparable moment when Matsumoto, Miho Kanno's betrayer, realizes his fate is forever linked with hers, and he leads her toward the road they must take together. Kitano's films have always been about the struggle to protect love(romantic and fraternal) through violence. "Hana-bi"(literal translation: "Fire Flower") is the greatest of these works. Here, there is no violence. Only the sadness at the end of all roads taken to embody love, at the cost of everything else. The music by Joe Hisaishi and the photography by Katsumi Yanagishima are beyond compare. An absolutely must see film.