Prince Tai
2020.10.20 Core Coursework
The movie "Kiujiro's Summer" was released in 1999.
This is an emotional comedy with absurd and road elements, and it was written, directed, and starred by Takeshi Kitano himself.
The film tells the story of Kikujiro, a middle-aged man who is idle, and a lonely elementary school student who has lost his parents, Masao, to find the latter's long-lost mother. The man in the movie is a small child, and the only one who accompanies him is his grandmother. And Kijiro is a man with a lot of bad habits (gambling, tattooing, gangsterism). But with the development of the film, these two people who have nothing to do with each other, slowly changed from being detached to a relationship similar to father and son.
The film can be divided into five parts. (1) All the classmates went out with their families for the summer vacation, but Zheng Nan has no parents. While packing the photo album at home, Zhengnan saw his mother's photo and his current address. (2) On the way to look for his mother, Masao met Kijiro, so the latter's wife asked her husband to take the child with him. (3) On the road, Kikujiro lost all his money gambling, and had to keep trying to get a ride, or asked for money to cover the toll. (4) Zheng Nan found his mother, but learned that she has a new family and a new child. Masamune is sad. (5) Because of a similar experience, Kikujiro felt the same, so he tried every means to make the little boy happy.
The film's protagonist, Kijiro, shares the same name as director/star Takeshi Kitano's father. From "Take Kitano's Autobiography: I Don't Want to Die in a Boring Life" (2015), I learned that Kitano's father only spoke to Kitano three or four times in real life (pp.21-24). And Takeshi Kitano wanted to play the role of Kikujiro himself. I think he wanted to experience the state and way of his father's life.
There is not much difference between Kikujiro's lifestyle in movies and in real life. They are all reticent and cynical, except that the real Kikujiro loves a domestic abusive wife and mother, and is often drunk (these can be found in "Takeshi Kitano" (pp.21-24)), which does not exist in the movie. I think the reason Kitano chose this way is because he had idealized fantasies about his father.
In this movie, I liked the scene where Kijiro and Masao puncture someone else's tire on the road and run away, because I think they did what I (a fifteen-year-old middle school student) wanted to do but didn't dare to do. I think the film itself is too absurd and bizarre and lacks a climax, but after reading "Take Kitano's Autobiography", I found that Kijiro in the film is very similar to Kitano's father, and I also understood the hidden meaning of the film.
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