Cast: Takeshi Kitano, Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe, Ken'ichi Yajima, Aya Kokumai
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Language: Japanese
The violence isn’t disturbing, the fun at the beach isn’t monotonous, the ending isn’t nervous.
Early on in the film Murakawa tells his friend that he’d like to retire. He’s tired of the job that gets his men killed.
Takeshi Kitano is Murakawa in the 1993 film ‘Sonatine’. He also wrote, directed and edited this crime film. But in unimaginable ways, this film sidesteps from the notion of a gangster / crime film.
Kitano is a yakuza in ‘Sonatine’. Obviously, violence is in his blood. But ‘Sonatine’ is not a regular mobster story. When he’s ordered to take his men to solve a dispute between two yakuza clans, Kitano shakes the idea off immediately, but is forced to go. Kitano isn’t in favor of losing his men on missions. He has already lost three of his men on one such mission. He doesn’t want that to happen again. Still he takes his men to the place where he’s told to go.
On this mission, too, too many of his men get killed. Kitano, with the remaining members of his group, decides to flee to a secluded spot for a couple of days until the dust settles.
We are watching a gangster movie, after all, yet we are treated to a film which is heavier than the usual lengthy dialogues and the ear-clogging action sounds associated with this genre. Death is closing in on them like ribs onto the heart, nevertheless, these five men dance under the moonlight, play silly pranks on each other, bathe in the rain water, entertain themselves in a ring match (highly recommended on a night out with friends and family). This ring match is certainly no duel. Two young men enter a ring made of fallen leaves and bizarrely and unnervingly entertain the group. A woman who’s smitten by Kitano’s fearlessness finds her way into the narrative; perhaps to add some flesh over the bone of the story.
While the group is enjoying at the beach, I was thinking of the similarity between the waves of the ocean and the lives of the yakuza. At one time, they might be powerful sucking in whatever comes their way; a moment later, they are nowhere to be seen. A fresh wave occupies its place.
Kitano, with Joe Hisaishi’s music, gets a grip on the goings-on in ‘Sonatine’. Kitano smiles every now and then – be it despair or stupidity, funny or afraid. The violence isn’t disturbing, the fun at the beach isn’t monotonous, the ending isn’t nervous. The smile he so confidently wears is his only expression throughout the movie. That’s the cynosure surrounding the mist of Takeshi Kitano’s version of a yakuza’s life.
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