Kitano Takeshi

Mannerist Aestheticism

Mannerist Style • Mannerism - the aesthetic style that uses exaggerated and artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) expression to produce drama, tension, exuberance and grandeur in painting, and sculpture.

• Mannerism was born as a reaction to harmonious and naturalist ideals of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo.

• Rafaello

Madonna in the Meadow

• Parmigianino

Madonna with a Long Neck

Kitano’s Mannerist Style Conventional filmmaking ⇔ Mannerist filmmaking • STORYTELLING •

Medias res

(Latin for ‘into the middle of the things’) - is a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning (

ab ovo

, or

ab initio

).

• e.g. Martin Scorsese’s

Goodfellas

and Quentin Trantino’s

Pulp Fiction

(Classic beginning of a film: Alfred Hitchcock,

Strangers in Train http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bjA-4no1ZY

Kitano’s Mannerist Style Storytelling • Radical ellipsis • Ellipsis (Greek for ‘omission’) - a narrative device: omitting a portion of the sequences of events, allowing the reader to fill in the narrative gaps. • Kitano omits significant portions of narrative.

• e.g. Ozu Yasujiro’s films and his own,

Kikujiro

Kitano’s Mannerist Style Storytelling • Constant narrative diversions • Episodic storytelling which is only loosely connected with the main story line.

• The longest diversion is the middle part of absurd episodes are accumulated.

Sonatine,

in which time seems to have stopped and almost

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Mise-en-scene of Kitano’s films: creation of ascetic and clinically clean atmosphere • Stillness, silence, emptiness, nothingness • Empty sea, empty land, empty school ground, empty swimming pool

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Empty sea in Okinawa

Boiling Point

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Empty beach

A Scene at the Sea

Kitano ’ s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Empty road and beach

Sonatine

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Empty school ground and underpath

Kids Return

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Empty sea with Horibe and empty lake with Nishi and his wife

HANA-BI

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Empty swimming pool and empty river bank

Kikujiro

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Empty snow-capped mountain top and empty path in autumn colours

Dolls

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Static composition - a shot in which nothing moves as if frozen.

• Small subject sizes and protracted shots • e.g. Murakawa’s men aftermath of the bombing of the Anan’s office

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Mannerist distortions of the cinematic conventions • Spatial treatment and screen composition • e.g. medium shot of three people with unusually large head space in

Boiling Point

• e.g. medium shot of the killer whose face is cut by the top edge of the screen

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Unconventional composition • Main figures and objects placed in the dead centre of the frame • Textbook composition - main figures and objects must be placed slightly off-centre, particularly in a widescreen format.

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Wim Wenders’ classic widescreen composition in

Paris, Texas

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Frontal shots - as if you were watching still photos.

• Long and medium shots are norm in Kitano’s early films. More close-ups in his later films, though they are not many.

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Frontal shots of Azuma

Violent Cop

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Frontal shots of Yakuza, and Uehara and Kazuo

Boiling Point

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Frontal shots of surfers, and Takako and Shigeru ’ s surfing board

A Scene at the Sea

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Frontal shots of Murakawa and an assassin

Sonatine

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Frontal shots of two kids

Kids Return

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Frontal shots of Nishi, and Nishi and his wife

HANA-BI

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • • Frontal shots of Kikujiro after seeing his mother and after saying farewell

Kikujiro

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Frontal shots in

Dolls

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Is there such a thing as ‘Kitano Blue’?

• Conscious use of thick blue colour

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Conspicuous since

Sonatine

• Aesthetic and atmospheric rather than symbolic meaning

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Blue first used unconsciously and unintentionally later became a benchmark of Kitano’s film.

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Kitano began to use colours more strategically after

HANA-BI

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène • Minimalist visual style: simple settings (empty space); simple compositions (frontal shots); simple camera movements (static shots); long take • Minimalist visual style renders Kitano’s films pensive mood

Kitano ’ s Mannerist Style; Montage • Editor since his second film,

Boiling Point

• Languid pace, relying on long takes → pensive mood • Effective use of dissolves and overlaps

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Montage • Jagged editing ignoring continuity - A scene abruptly cut in the middle of an action - A scene abruptly begin in the middle of an action → Estrangement (

endfremden

) effects → Preventing the audience from psychologically being involved in actions → Action ends abruptly, refusing to show the emotional reverberation caused by it. Emotional reticence

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Montage • Frequent use of cross-cutting • Contrast and correspondence • Horibe is painting a lyrical picture while Nishi is painting his police car in

HANA-BI

• Azuma is playing baseball while his sister is gang-raped by yakuza in

Violent Cop

Reference to Other Films • Kitano refers to and quotes from other films, works of Ozu, Coppola, Kubrick, Cimino, Fukasaku, etc.

• Static shots and frontal composition • Cross-cutting • Representation of violence • • Stanley Kubrick’s

An Clockwork Orange

and Kitano’s

Violent Cop

(openings) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWLByMshYIU

Reference to Other Films • Static shots and tranquility • Associated with Ozu’s films

Reference to Other Films • The opening of lifted up from

Violent Cop

, in which a homeless is attacked by the youth was directly

An Clockwork Orange

Reference to Other Films • Kitano’s violent cop is Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971)

Reference to Other Films • The Russian roulette scenes are taken from Michael Cimino’s

The Deer Hunter

(1978)

Reference to Other Films • Kitano owes a lot to Fukasaku’s Yakuza films – particularly

Yakuza Paper

• Crooked camera angles and mannerist representation of violence