Review "Achilles and the Tortoise" by Takeshi Kitano

Ali and I saw this film in Mestre with Raph, who came down from Geneva for the weekend. The Venice film festival process is interesting to examine - it is more or less a moneymaking machine (Don't know who for, the Venice city council I assume) - with the public, press, industry folk all paying for the privilege of doing deals with other industry folk and watching some moofies. I guess the stars are the only ones who don't have to pay. There are about 20 films in the competition, but they show other films which are being released this year, such as the Coens' "Burn after reading", shorts, re-prints of classic films (such as "The bicycle thieves") and tie-in with other film festivals (Such as the Udine Far East film festival contribution "Monster X strikes back: Attack the G8 summit!"). All up that means that about 30 films are showing each day on the Lido, 4 on Venice and 4 in Mestre (on the mainland). The films that are screened on the Lido usually screen in Venice and Mestre the following day. That's why we found ourselves in Mestre on a Saturday afternoon watching "Achilles and the Tortoise" by Takeshi Kitano. Good aspects of being in Lido to watch the film are that the cinema is quite new with good aircon and comfy seats. Another bonus of the Cityplex Palazzo in Mestre is the high-class gelateria two doors down from the cinema (GROM - highly recommended!). The cinema itself was very stark - you get your tickets on the street from a window, tiny candy bar, then go upstairs straight to the projection room. No chairs, nowhere to wait, nothing to read. Very accommodating...

Takeshi Kitano's "Achilles and the Tortoise" is the latest in his current series of "sentimental" films (Margaret Pomeranz's word) which can be described as slow-moving and dreary sketches of ordinary life (in Japan, anyway). I disagree - the films that Kitano makes have the quality of expressionist paintings - and a bit of wikipedia searching showed that since a motorcycle accident Kitano has taken up painting and his recent films contain his paintings. In A&T the paintings are the film, it's subject is a man whose only aim in life is to make art: painting, drawing, sculpting obsessively. If anything the film shows how oblivious the artist is to everything else in life - the great changes in Japanese society from the artist's birth in the fifties through to now, when the film ends.

The artist is the son of a wealthy Japanese silk merchant, a patron of the arts whose house is filled with modernist paintings and regularly visited by modernist painters. The boy spends all of his time painting and drawing: chickens, rabbits, trains (a surprising flashback to the art brut experience). The artist's social status makes him an untouchable - allowed to wander out of class 'to go drawing' whenever he wants to. It's obvious the boy has talent, the paintings are bright, expressive and juvenile but clearly they have merit.

The artist's situation changes suddenly when the silk business collapses and the creditors step in - his parents go harakiri and the artist suddenly finds himself living with an unpleasant uncle
doing farm chores and denied his pastels. Even in this environment the boy finds bohemian friends and manages to find plenty of opportunities to do art. After a couple of months, the uncle has had enough and the artist gets shipped off to an orphanage in the city. The artists return to the city is closed by the death of his bohemian friend - a half-blind peasant who sits besides the fields and draws day after day - who's hit by a bus.

The overwhelming frequency of suicides in the film is startling. This may be from the cultural aspects of suicide in Japan, or a larger reference to the practice of art as a consuming passion, one which sees them close to the edges of society, acceptability, sanity. The film is a very personal and emotional view of a life lived with passion and determination - the artist is consumed by his work and it oftens drives him to the limits of survival...his university street art period in the 70's, and later experiments in shock art with his wife being very funny episodes in the film. The appearance of the Tokyo Shock Boys repeats this theme of people committing themselves viscerally to their passions - or alternately of people being consumed by their passions, losing reason and ending up dead in a bath while trying to find inspiration from oxygen deprivation. Takeshi straddles this line - while showing huge sympathy and solidarity with the artist and his wife he also acknowledges their daughter's shame, distance and embarrassment deriving from the antics of her certifiable parents.

The title of the film, "Achilles and the Tortoise" refers to a greek philosophical conundrum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_the_tortoise) which is used as a metaphor for chasing an unattainable dream. Ultimately it is the unreasonable that makes things interesting, that produces change and confronts the assumptions and complacency of our lives. Kitano's film is certainly sentimental, but it is equally beautiful and heartfelt. In my opinion it would have been one of the contenders for best film or at least best screenplay.