Works by Takeshi Kitano.
In middle school, when I was still watching a movie in the video studio, I often saw signs such as "Jackie Chan's works", "Tsu Hark's works", and "Wang Jing's works" on the screen. It was very "style". It means that the film will undoubtedly and naturally reach a certain level. Now, an audience who often watches movies will have a rough and simple impression of more filmmakers. For example, "Iwai Shunji's work" is associated with youth, beauty, and confusion; "Quentin Tarantino" is associated with violence and black humor. , Decent narrative structure; "Wang Jiawei's works" are associated with petty bourgeoisie, blurred images, and exquisite dialogue.
There are occasional exceptions to this association, but not too many.
"Summer of Kikujiro" is an exception for Takeshi Kitano. There is no sudden violence in the film, no blood and gore, and no endless cruelty. Instead, it is warm and sensual.
The real boy of elementary school has been living with his mother-in-law. The summer vacation is coming, and the partners are all going on vacation with the parents. The lonely real boy wants to find a mother he has never met. He is walking with him, a middle-aged but still Idle rascal. One is a child who has not been polluted by the adult world at all, and the other is an adult whose soul is blinded by too much worldly dust. The child does not represent goodness, his behavior comes from simple and immature nature; adults also do not represent evil, years have never given him the power of evil, but only made him powerless.
The two people who were almost in chaos in their souls went on the road together. They have passed many people and things, and have had different feelings and gains, but I believe they will still return to the place where they started in the end. This gentle and emotional journey will not make the two people's future lives more orderly or more significance. Those real feelings and gains, together with the same real sadness and helplessness, will be left in that summer-not very hot, not very warm, not very cool, not very desperate, not very memorable. Summer is not very easy to forget.
The journey of the real boy looking for his mother is difficult. Fortunately, the weak warmth of a few good-hearted people helped the little real boy strengthen his belief in searching. However, when he discovered that his only address had nothing to do with his mother since some time ago, all the difficulties and joys suddenly lost their meaning, and the real man turned around in sadness and disappointment and stopped moving forward.
It was after the meaning of the journey was annihilated that the real man and his companions met other people "on the road", and their journey also had no important purpose (perhaps like the real man, they all had a certain definite , But the address is lost, changed, or incorrect, in short, it no longer has any guiding significance). A group of free adults worked hard to give the child a little warmth and laughter, and at the same time looked for a little bit of comfort to each other.
The joy does not come from the things we want to find, but from the little body temperature we ask for each other after we turn around. It is precious because it is accidental, short-lived, and fragile.
Kitano said that he wanted to make a bright movie, a movie about "I still have to live". We saw that all the characters continued to be on their own "track", and none of the works by Takeshi Kitano where a person chopped his fingers, cut his belly, or shot himself. It's just that this clarity has always been consciously maintained within a certain cramped possibility. It was carefully filled into a short journey by the director to show that life may not be splendid, but it can still be so bright after all.
If sadness becomes the unpredictable background of life like the black sky, at least we can not stare at the endless night sky for a long time, but pursue the scattered and disorderly distant stars and appreciate them shining brightly in the gaps of darkness.
Is this statement too pessimistic?
But it may have been Kitano's maximum optimism.
Attached:
1. Another highlight of the film is the music of Japanese soundtrack artist Joe Hisaishi. He has played the music for many cartoon films of Hayao Miyazaki, including "Nausicaa" and several other films of Takeshi Kitano. In the soundtrack made by Joe Hisaishi for "Summer of Kikujiro", his personal favorite is "Twilight of a Boy".
2. At the end, I understood why this film is called "Kikujiro Summer"
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