Charisma

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Jordan

Well, this is certainly a tough nut to crack. I have yapped on about the virtues of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films and his style, it's taken pretty far here and leave the audience with a real head scratcher. This film requires much effort on the part of the audience, not just to interpret what's going on thematically but also contextually. Kurosawa likes to give the audience the bare amount of scenes necessary to get the story points across and leaves us with the heavy lifting of filling in the gaps.

But once you get your head around that, you are still left with a film that seems to be aiming for something specific but doesn't give nearly enough clues as to how to interpret. I read it was about politics after scrambling online the last time I saw it to get some sort of meaning out of it. So I watched it again with that in mind and it fit together rather well, however I feel like I could have read pretty much anything into it.

What I do love about it, apart from his stilted style, is this set up and some of the discussion it creates. There is a tree called Charisma and various groups or individuals are at odds over how to deal with it. Our protagonist (the great Kôji Yakusho) enters and they all try and persuade him to join their cause.

Whilst there is a lot I like about the film I think it's pretty much purely metaphor. Whereas in Pulse or my favourite, Cure, he manages to craft real characters with their own stories you can get emotionally invested in, that is lacking in this film.

It's one that'll be sure to cause debate when viewed and contains an ending I still can't quite fit into any of my theories. Very interesting but flawed.