From Aaron Gerow's excellent book on Kitano Takeshi, in reference to Sonatine:
Ueno chastises another critic for attempting to reduce the film to various conceptual meanings. 'Viewing a film is to have your existence in some way threatened', he asserts. Ascribing meaning to a film is to him a self-defence mechanism, one that not only avoids the work, but also, by implication, the assault that Kitano launches.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Film and meaning
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2 comments:
Interesting! Obviously reducing a film to its "meaning" is simplifying things, but what is the alternative form of criticism that Ueno promotes? How does he propose to talk about Sonatine?
I'm not a specialist on Japanese film criticism. But what I've gathered is that the lack of meaning in Sonatine, is perceived by Ueno as removing the layers attached to actions, images, and so on to reveal only what is underneath - and that is pure cinema.
Another critic/scholar mentions that the lack of aestheticization in the film, is a fight against such values associated w/ mass media and also to representations of Beat Takeshi's body in such mass media.
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