Things I Watched: This Takeshi Kitano Double-Bill of Kids Return and Kikujiro

I open this post by mentioning the lamentable point that I haven’t watched many films lately. Why?, you, the beautiful and intelligent reader, are inevitably asking. Well, because I’ve been confined to a small bedroom back at my dad’s and haven’t had access to my big screen TV. I am, after all, a man who eschews small screens as the pinnacle of film-watching when a big screen a-beckons. I'm okay with it.

But it's all about to change because I just subscribed to MUBI. If you haven’t heard of that before it’s a fantastic thing. It's a bit like Netflix, if Netflix had a good choice of foreign films rather than literally zero. MUBI’s mantra is that it features a new film every day - the catch being that there are only ever 30 films available at one time. This means that if you’re unorganised, or maybe just forgetful, then there’s a good chance you’ll miss that Swedish masterpiece you kept meaning to watch.

This week, I took the opportunity to watch two films offered as part of the service, both by Japanese filmmaker, Takeshi Kitano. The first was Kids Return, a low-budget feature about two high-school dropouts. The second was Kikujiro, a sweet story about a friendship between an ex-gangster and an impressionable young boy.

Both films share a strong essence of humanism and a careful understanding of their subjects. In Kids Returns, Kitano centers the proceedings on the failure of the Japanese school system with a story of two young, rebellious teens who nurture each other’s anti-authoritarianism and petty attitudes towards life.

In Kikujiro, Kitano prompts us towards feelings of melancholy with a powerful story about an abandoned boy who teams up with a hard-nosed ex-gangster, played by Kitano himself. A lot of attention goes into the relationship that develops between them and it leaves us with a potent message about how people change and support one another despite their differences.

To be honest, Kikujiro is easily the more accomplished of the two films but both are great in their own ways. They show us what it means to be human without falling into cliche or stereotype. They also reflect a lot of concerns about ordinary people, as well being comic in their own sardonic way. While MUBI doesn't currently offer much by way of Asian cinema, I'd definitely welcome more films like these ones.

Here's hoping!