Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine: Manzai and Movies
Sonatine is a film made by auteur Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, who was a comedian before he ventured into the realm of the film industry; you may remember him as the host of hilariously violent TV show Takeshi’s Castle. Before that show, he was part of a successful manzai comedy act, manzai meaning a specific style of comedy in which two people deliver standup. In manzai, one of the comedians plays the ‘straight man’ — archetypically, and broadly, the voice of reason - while another plays the ‘funny man’ - who, as the name implies, acts as a somewhat air-headed foil and whose role is to bring a sense of chaos and ironic questioning to a range of topics.
Manzai traces its routes to the Heian period of Japanese history, which ran from 784 to 1185 CE, and is famed for being a period of peace and artistic flourishing; with uniquely Japanese culture waxing as Chinese influence waned. The early manzai practitioners are associated with the New Year festival, and they undertake to deliver messages from the gods during the celebrations in their typical comedic style. One can imagine how this would have gone; with, perhaps, reflections on the past year and predictions for the new, delivered to entertain, sweetening a potentially painful and anxious process and maximizing its potential as a source of fun and happiness instead of doom and gloom.
Centuries later, Kitano inherited the role of the funny man in his manzai act, there’s footage of him performing it online. I recommend you give it a watch, it’s pretty funny. Interestingly enough, Kitano became famous in Japan for adding an unfamiliar twist to the manzai paradigm. The funny man, or boke, would usually have been a bumbling, forgetful figure, whose role is to be chastised by the more respectable straight man, who represents the ‘respectable’ norms of society. Kitano and his partner Kiyoshi Kaneko, however, subverted this trend by having Kitano’s funny man have a certain mental soundness, and delivering sharp and slightly dark jokes - often about the several ‘protected’ groups of society, such as children and the elderly, who, while occasionally a nuisance to others, were rarely criticized due to constraining cultural norms. Doing so with an air of silliness, Kitano was able to break this taboo in Japan, much to his audience hilarity, all the while his partner Kaneko’s straight man is barely able to keep him in check, divided between shocked amusement and outraged shame.
There is a Netflix film entitled Asakusa Kid, which charts Kitano’s rise to stardom in the comedy theatre world, for further inspection.
Sonatine was released in 1993 and Kitano performed the role of director, writer, producer, editor and lead actor, cementing his position as a true auteur. He delivers a very personal vision in each of his films. He is a painter, and a dancer, excelling in both the visual and the physical arts. A unique thinker, a man familiar with bringing questions to an audience, of playing with their psyche and questioning their values.
The gangster film, and the gangster genre, is often one which explores our wish fulfillment, our fantasy of living out our wildest excesses or adventures, however violent or terrifying. In Sonatine, which focuses on a group of yakuza, it might be said that these gangsters are instead dulled, dreaming, sleep-walking characters who would ironically each relish imagining ‘our’ life, summed up in a word as ‘innocence’. It is a beautiful take on a genre often saturated in melodrama, suspense and dripping with a sense of, almost, voyeurism.
To enhance this examination, Kitano’s scenes are each paintings; the film itself can be considered as walking through an exhibition space filled with his works which join together to tell a brilliant story. The film is a composed study, metaphorical meaning dancing with the demands of plot and form. This isn’t to say it doesn’t have vitality; added to this pictorial posture is a vibrant and dynamic energy which yields much human depth and is a feast for our senses and minds. It is equally sad, funny, shocking, dream-like, exploratory, whimsical and horrific.
In terms of a sense of the story, we follow several yakuza gentleman on a journey away from the metropolitan heart of criminal Japan, away from their ‘ties that bind’, and, arguably, deeper into the core of their being. The plot features a deconstruction of their roles, choices and values, while forcing them to reckon with a past and the current state of things, also challenging their hopes and desires for the future. The amount of meaning crammed into every scene is breathtaking and watching them form a cohesive unit is a delight to behold. Sonatine deserves multiple viewings, to say the least.
I think Kitano as an artist is one of the best of his generation. In his manzai act, his role was to offer a twist to the norm, a unique view, and one which pushed the boundaries, in order to tap into the feelings and experiences of his audience; which, I think, takes real skill and character to be able to do. Mirroring the centuries-old roots of manzai, Sonatine offers insight and reflection on the now, and the past, and the future — The New Year — doing so in a deeply entertaining way. It is full of comedy and laughter, while also considering the nature of serious consequences which expose the gravity of honour or the harsh necessities of life.
Kitano’s personal story is one of growth and development, from apprenticing to master comedians in his younger years, to being a superstar in Japan, then transitioning into a filmmaking role, which many found bewildering - too much of a change, or simply not their preferred fare.
The concept of who you were and what you did to get there, what you are doing now and what you would like to do in the future is a deeply precious meditation in all of us, and it is one in which Sonatine thrives.
The poster for Sonatine features a skewered exotic blue fish, held aloft from the tip of a harpoon, surrounded by a deep red background. Kitano found this image striking and appropriate for the film, and I agree, in that, for me, the exotic blue fish primarily represents Kitano’s lead character, Murakawa, a senior yakuza member. As previously mentioned, the film’s depicts hardened yakuza characters as resembling dead men, and yet they nonetheless appear striking. They speak and move as numb and calcified; grim, set expressions, paradoxically weary yet with — ironically - overwhelmingly strong movements. Contrasted to this are the scenes in which these same men are changed, shown in a profoundly new light, exhibiting fluidity, vitality and lightness.
This concept can loosely inform a consideration of Kitano’s supposed transformation from ‘silly’ comedian to deeply philosophical and artistically profound auteur director: we are all both the manzai straight man and the funny man, torn between rules, expectation and demands, and individual freedom, frivolity and chaos. The collision of roles, along with their occasional harmony, can be seen in various ways throughout a life, creating many of the bright or shaded features in an individual’s personal history. Others’ interpretation and impression of this can be misguided or flawed, as can our own, and the disharmony of these pieces can create conflict. However, as we see the Yakuza’s innocence flourishing, perhaps a moral of Sonatine is to pursue virtue in all of the arena’s in our lives, without fear.
Breaking taboos (even for the Yakuza and Japanese comedy), honour, expectations, choices, practical demands, purpose, happiness and slow despair are all played out before us, both in the real world — in our lives, the lives of those around us, and those more unseen — and before us on the screen in Sonatine. Kitano found that the medium of film is another one in which he can present his charming and masterful vision, wrestling consummately with topics which deeply affect us all, challenging us to explore these matters for ourselves, ultimately bringing them to fruition in a piece of work which may last in our collective consciousness for centuries.
