In the 16th century, Japan was torn apart by incessant wars between provincial governors. Everyone seeks to water the land of the other. Among them, Nobunaga is determined to take over the country after having watched several enemy clans. But one of his generals, invented a rebellion before disappearing. Furious, Nobunaga chose two of his faithful, Mitsuhide and Hideyoshi, to hunt down the traitor and attempt to capture him. And he promises that whoever succeeds the mission will become his successor. With KubiTakeshi Kitano signs a return to his first loves: the shabara.
It's not to an old monkey that we learn how to grimace
Takeshi Kitano is a man of many talents. First, there is the filmmaker with an inimitable style, a genre where black humour is systematically overwhelmed by violence. It is also his avatar Beat Takeshi, famous in Japan for his stripping humour (see the country report Arte). In Kubi, we find all his obsessions as the eccentricism of transvestites: a theme that appears with the figure of geishas since his adaptation of Zatoishi in 2003. After his Yakusa period (Aniki my brother, Outrage), it took a great gap of twenty years for the master of the sword to return to feudal Japan with Kubi.
In his new film presented for the first time in Cannes, Takeshi Kitano again takes on the role of an old warlord named Hideyoshi. He is called the Monkey, thanks to his cunning and his ability to reverse any situation. In the pure tradition of the director, we will find all the variations of characters in the image of the good, the beast and the hooker. Far from the honour of the warriors who are celebrated in many works, Kitano's world is always marked by the blunder and the primacy of personal interest over the collective.
It is the reign of treachery and the image of Zatoishi where everyone was looking to take the other's place, it's a musical chair game that we'll see again here. Wait for you to see your beheadings for the year! Nothing abnormal finally when you know the director's love for TV games like his competitive show Takeshi Castle which forged a part of his reputation in the 1990s and where, at the end of the show, there will remain more than one.
With your eyes closed, you see people better
Kitano thus declines all his register of protagonists with a trait of salient character for each of them: the old ninja became troubadour, the peasant who dreamed of being shogun or even the leader of the megalomaniac and bloodthirsty clan. It is also on this point that Kubi takes a less anticipated form with Nobunaga, which directly recalls the Marquis de Sade. Always humiliated, his guard abhorred him but everyone lends him allegiance (in appearance at least). Kitano will also represent a hidden side of the camaraderie: homosexuality. Quit to bring down the taboos that reign in this virile milieu idealized by valorous codes of honor today imbued with, it is also the story of an unfavorable bromance between two of its rivals...
At the age of 76, Kitano succeeded in embodying an old angry and unfathomable breaker, ready to mount incredible schemes to line one against another. Artificially complex, history is especially conducive to scenes with cascade twists even if you sometimes lose the thread. Whatever, Beat Takeshi gives to heart joy to singer the chanbara in all its seams. Nor will he hesitate to break the third wall with a gallery of characters, who lead their beatings by directly addressing grimaces to the spectator. It's because the director has nothing to prove, so just break the codes one last time.
Funny, joyfully gore and often striking in his dialogues, Kubi mocks the reception of the public with a realization that fits into a more classic setting. As for special effects, as for each of his films, there are cascades and battles performed mainly without digital artifice. This always gives a certain burlesque seal to the whole with a claimed hyperbolic side. Special mention to costumes always remarkably worked.
Man is a wolf for man
This permanent conquest of power is in the image of the entire life of one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Tokyo, then devastated by the American bombings that broke out of World War II. Fascinated by popular theatre, it is in the district of Asakusa, a landmark of cabarets and actors of manzai, that Kitano made his weapons and his first representations. In a way, it is each of these facets that find echo in Kubi, up to the gambling that nourish the dreams of grandeur of the little people.
As the Cannoese session ended with a tumult of applause from the public, Takeshi Kitano spoke, thanked the public and cowardly: « I'll come back with a better movie. ». Silence while Kubi might be the last announced feature of his career. Then he starts again, mysterious: « When it's over... ». Without being revolutionary or better than undestructible Zatoishi, Kubi is a successful satire of Seven samurai, synthesis of the life of a man faithful to himself and who has never ceased to mix actor and character in everyday life.
[...] KillerS7ven's criticism [...]
This film in costumes with murderous jokes diverts archetypes from the shabara to better decorate the cynical mechanics of power games. And in the continuity of his works on the Yakuza, ‘Beat « Historical » without morals or honour despite appearances and codes. Far from the epic, the filmmaker invites us to a tragic farce!