Word: zatoichis
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...cinemavens at the Toronto International Film Festival talk about movies with a connoisseur's urgency and will pick a fight over pictures that may never grace a cineplex. Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi, with the star-director playing Japan's legendary blind swordsman, provoked one such debate. Some said it was too faithful to the old Zatoichi movies to be a true Takeshi film, others that it was too Takeshi to be a true Zatoichi. (No matter: the picture still won the People's Choice plebiscite...
...Zatoichi is Takeshi Kitano's first foray into directing a samurai film, but he's long been familiar with deadly weapons. A look at Kitano's best?and bloodiest?movies...
...Kitano started the new Zatoichi by leaving his hair the decidedly unsamurai blond shade he'd recently dyed it. "I think that if I tried to imitate Katsu, then a viewer would have a lot of problems with it," says Kitano. "So I thought I should make everybody think it's a completely different thing." So what else sets Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi apart from its 26 predecessors? The auteur explains: "Throughout the film there is a feeling of fast action at the contemporary speed of the modern film." Translation: everything from the electron-quick fights to the rapier-thin...
...film's plot is as streamlined as its combat. Zatoichi (Kitano) wanders into a village beset by gangs, one of which has hired a lethal samurai (Tadanobu Asano) to wipe out its enemies. Meanwhile, a geisha assassin and her brother, a female impersonator, seek revenge on the criminals who slaughtered their family. Zatoichi ends up in the middle. This is a film designed to get to the payoff as fast as possible, and that payoff is bloodier than a hematology convention. Hyperviolence is not new to the Zatoichi oeuvre, but Kitano does Katsu one, two or 11 better. To Kitano...
...Tokyo stage, where the Stripes were performing routines from the film. A crowd of young things stomped along while the Stripes tapped in a blue-lit fever dream. Shintaro Katsu's shuffling samurai couldn't have felt further away?or so close. For all their differences, the two Zatoichis share the same spirit as their creators: independent, charismatic, innovative. Kitano's Zatoichi succeeds, not by obliterating Katsu's character but by giving it a new Beat. The winning result (the film had critics swooning at the Venice Film Festival last week) is as cutting edge and timeless as the samurai...