Sonatine
By Patrick Z. McGavin
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Born in Tokyo in 1947, Kitano is a hugely popular figure in Japan as a result of his work as a stand-up comedian, television personality, poet, essayist, novelist, cartoonist, newspaper columnist, musician, and painter. Since 1989’s Violent Cop, Kitano has directed, written, and edited six more films. He’s starred in all but two of these under his stage name, Beat Takeshi (derived from his start in show business: he was half of a comedy team known as the Two Beats). Despite his popularity, his films have been commercial failures in Japan, something Kitano attributes to overexposure (he appears on seven different weekly TV programs). But more likely his lack of commercial success comes in reaction to his sharp and often angry critiques, if not outright denunciations, of Japanese culture, in particular its emphasis on social conformity. Kitano’s artistic breakthrough, Fireworks, received rapturous reviews in Europe and America and won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, but apparently made no impression at home.
In that context, Sonatine clearly functions as a rough draft for Fireworks. Sonatine marks the point where Kitano broke free of narrative limitations and exploited his background and training as a comedian for serious ends, especially in his deadpan arrangements and cutting, where the violent juxtaposition of images and sound is both surprising and emotionally devastating. Kitano plays Murakama, a skilled and highly efficient yakuza who is ordered by his superiors to intercede in a dispute among rival clans in Okinawa. In an early fight scene, the camera focuses on the yakuza crime boss, who keeps a poker face while the action swirls around him. Kitano’s work revels in such absurdity, a slapstick that’s almost shocking in its shifts of tone. Later in the film, Murakama interrupts a man sexually assaulting a woman. The predator calls the yakuza a pervert and puts a knife to his neck. When Murakama shoots him twice in the stomach, the man utters: “This is a sick joke.”
Significantly Sonatine, released here under Quentin Tarantino’s Miramax imprint, Rolling Thunder, was made before Kitano’s near fatal August 1994 motorcycle accident, which rendered the right side of his face partially paralyzed. His performance here is both more animated and expressive than in Fireworks. There’s also a far more explicit sense of personal failure and vulnerability. (“I’m not tough,” he tells a female admirer, “I learned to shoot fast, because I get scared very quickly.”) During his recovery, Kitano took up drawing; his pointillist works, done in felt-tip pen, are effectively deployed in Fireworks to comment on the action, or to foreshadow it. Sonatine lacks the concentration and intensity of Fireworks, but it anticipates the later film.
