Kikujiro

Kikujiro (1999) is yet another one of Takeshi Kitano’s departures from expectations. It followed the international success of Hanabi, which won top prize at the Venice Film Festival. Hanabi was another violent film populated with yakuza. Kikujiro is probably as close as a traditional film that Kitano could make. This film is a road film where an ex-yakuza, Kitano, takes a young boy on a trip during the summer vacation to try and find his mother. The boy’s mother has remarried and has another child, but it seems that the boy has gained a father figure through the experience. There’s a dreamlike sequence that has performers doing a modern Butoh dance that prefigures the dancing in Zaitoichi. It is an interesting evolution in the career of an auteur. His variety of genres and experimental foray draw a comparison to Soderberg.