Hi, this is Yumo. I’m writing articles hoping to talk about films from different countries around the world. I hope after reading this, you will want to take a look at the movie or give me some feedback. But it’s totally fine if you decide to close this halfway…
For this first article, I decided to go with Kikujiro, a 1999 Japanese film directed by Kitano Takeshi. On Rotten Tomatoes, its Tomatometer is 61% and the audience score is 92%. Kikujiro is the name of one of the two protagonists, and the name of director Kitano’s own father as well. This is a touching road movie about summer and childhood.
Director Kitano has got a distinct style consistent in his films: in his films, you can see his obsession with crime dramas, the humor he passes to his films as a famous Japanese comedian, his high self-restraint from showing tenderness, etc. For me, Kitano can be regarded as a true auteur because of his style and the fact that, for most of his films, he writes the screenplays, directs them, edits them, and even acts in them.
After winning the Golden Lion in 1997 with his crime drama HANA-BI (also called Fireworks), Kitano departed from his original crime theme and directed this warm, touching film Kikujiro. The film features a quiet, lonely boy Masao going on a road trip to Toyohashi looking for his mother. Worrying about this kid’s safety, his former neighbor makes her husband, Kikujiro, go with this boy. Kikujiro is a middle-aged man who seems to be unreliable and ill-tempered.
There are two routes you can take while watching this film. One route is from the perspective of the little boy Masao. For Masao, this is a movie about childhood and growing up:
Perhaps, the most memorable scenes in this film are those of Masao running. He runs home at the beginning of the film; he runs out for Toyohashi only to be stopped by a group of bad kids; he also runs across the bridge after the trip ends—he runs to almost every destination when he is alone. Kids are energetic. They can’t hide their thoughts. They are also so fascinated by the world that they can’t wait to be occupied by new things.
We can never know whether Masao learns anything during the trip. However, he meets a lot of people, good or bad, during the trip. He has the rich summer he longed for. After he bids farewell to Kikujiro at the end of the movie, he runs again. In scenes of Masao running, the camera frame tends to be still, and the shots tend to be long takes. In this ending scene specifically, the frame is permeable. All these distance the audience and seem to reinforce our role as a critical observer of reality: we know that the kid has a great summer and he can’t wait to head to the next event. But at the same time, he can never relive this summer again.
Growing up is like constantly running towards the future. We meet people and then bid them farewell, just like this summer trip Masao had. There really isn’t much we can do about it. Except to take those memories with us and run towards new events.
Another approach to interpret this movie is through the lens of Kikujiro. From his perspective, this is a road trip about returning to childhood and reflection on family relationships.
It’s not difficult to tell that longing for and finding the mother figure is an important covert plot of this film. Kikujiro is a loser when confronted by his wife. However, he argues back when his wife shows contempt for his mother, even though Kikujiro was abandoned by her and has never seen her. Near the end of the trip, Kikujiro decides to visit his mother in the nursing home for the first time. Yet he dares not to confront her. So he only sees her through windows.
Delving a bit more into Kitano’s relationship with his own mother, we know that they never have a warm, loving relationship most families have. Their relationship is more like a rivalry and his mother never explicitly reveals to him her tenderness. Therefore, what Kikujiro does near the end of this movie feels more like a reconciliation–admitting that his mother is a scar on him that can never heal. When Kikujiro can’t conceal the importance of his mother to him anymore, he is just like the little kid Masao–sensitive, vulnerable, and longing for unconditional love.
Except for the reflection on the mother figure, it’s also worth looking into Kitano’s idea of the father figure. Kitano named this movie with his father’s name and played this role. For Kitano, his father is almost absent from his life in childhood. He was illiterate, often drunk, and abusive. Yet he is timid and unconfident when he is sober.
During the trip, Kikujiro is just like the father figure of Masao. He shows up when Masao needs him and tries to give Masao the best summer experience. The scene when Kikujiro jokes about becoming Masao’s step-father is very interesting. Because Kikujiro/Kitano himself doesn’t have a good father, he is so happy to just think about being Masao’s father and giving this kid what he failed to have.
Yet this father is not perfect. Kitano acknowledges it multiple times in this film through plots and how he acts Kikujiro. We see Kikujiro scolds Masao and prioritizes his own desire. At the beginning of the film, I even dislike Kikujiro. Why is this father figure set as below average? Why does Kitano decide to act Kikujiro himself? I’ll leave you to find your answer to it.
Anyway, for me, Kikujiro contains a lot of fun and relaxing experiences that only summer can bring us. It’s an inspiring and touching film that I’d like to summarize as running with scars on one’s knees. Kitano is also a director who gets his own style, his humor, and his poignancy.