Akiresu to kame

Takeshi Kitano’s Akiresu to kame (Achilles and the tortoise) is a film about a struggling artist who only wants to make a name for himself but ends up in disaster. He listens to the art dealers, the critics and the teachers, and loses track on what he himself wants to do. The situation escalates in a typical Kitano way and he goes more and more overboard. This is a drama and a farce at the same time, making fun of the fine art establishment and the art education, but at the same time ironizing Kitano himself – the art in the film is really his.

I would recommend this to any budding artists.

Kore-eda Hirokazu: Still Walking

Kore-eda Hirokazu’s new film Still Walking was the film I was most curious about during this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival. Of course, there was the Kitano Takeshi film and you never know what he is up to, but Kore-eda is someone who always manages to surprise me, and always in a good way. The first film I saw by him (during the Helsinki Film Festival of 1999) was Afterlife, a strange little film about what goes on after death – apparently, you rehearse your most favourite memory and recreate it to live with it for eternity – and I loved it. The following Kore-eda films moved me as well, in different ways. This writer-director never repeats himself.

Still Walking is a family drama which takes place in the home of an elderly couple during just one summer’s day. The couple’s two living children have arrived with their families; the eldest son, a victim of an accident 10 years past, is mentioned often. The emotions and the small struggles of family come into play and soon we find out all kinds of details about the family we are watching; some significant, some small. Nothing dramatic happens. But the small things that happen are so real that one cannot help but feel them with the characters.

I complained a couple of days ago after seeing Non-ko that Japanese filmmakers rarely have believable female characters. Kore-eda’s masterful writing and directing cancels my complaint. He has based the main female person in the film, the old mother, on his own mother, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more – well, alive – film character in a Japanese movie. The other ones are completely believable as well, as are the relationships between them. Kore-eda’s quiet style and beautiful yet simple imagery underline the simple yet so complicated storyline. He has managed to catch a day of life, normal life. If this is the only good film I see this year, it is enough – it is wonderful enough to stay in my mind for years.