Kitano Takeshi

Mannerist Aestheticism

Mannerist Style

• Mannerism - the aesthetic style that uses exaggerated and artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) expression to produce drama, tension, exuberance and grandeur in painting, and sculpture.

• Mannerism was born as a reaction to harmonious and naturalist ideals of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo.

• Rafaello Madonna in the Meadow• Parmigianino Madonna with a Long Neck

Kitano’s Mannerist Style

Conventional filmmaking ⇔ Mannerist filmmaking • STORYTELLING

• Medias res (Latin for ‘into the middle of the things) - is a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning (ab ovo, or ab initio).

• e.g. Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Quentin Trantino’s Pulp Fiction (Classic beginning of a

film: Alfred Hitchcock, Strangers in Train http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bjA-4no1ZY

Kitano’s Mannerist Style Storytelling

• Radical ellipsis • Ellipsis (Greek for ‘omission’) - a narrative d

evice: omitting a portion of the sequences of events, allowing the reader to fill in the narrative gaps.

• Kitano omits significant portions of narrative.

• e.g. Ozu Yasujiro’s films and his own, Kikujiro

Kitano’s Mannerist Style Storytelling

• Constant narrative diversions • Episodic storytelling which is only loosely conne

cted with the main story line.• The longest diversion is the middle part of Sona

tine, in which time seems to have stopped and almost absurd episodes are accumulated.

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Mise-en-scene of Kitano’s films: creation of ascetic and clinically clean atmosphere

• Stillness, silence, emptiness, nothingness• Empty sea, empty land, empty school groun

d, empty swimming pool

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Empty sea in Okinawa

• Boiling Point

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Empty beach

• A Scene at the Sea

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Empty road and beach• Sonatine

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Empty school ground and underpath• Kids Return

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Empty sea with Horibe and empty lake with Nishi and his wife

• HANA-BI

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Empty swimming pool and empty river bank

• Kikujiro

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Empty snow-capped mountain top and empty path in autumn colours

• Dolls

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Static composition - a shot in which nothing moves as if frozen.

• Small subject sizes and protracted shots• e.g. Murakawa’s men aftermath of the bombi

ng of the Anan’s office

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Mannerist distortions of the cinematic conventions

• Spatial treatment and screen composition

• e.g. medium shot of three people with unusually large head space in Boiling Point

• e.g. medium shot of the killer whose face is cut by the top edge of the screen

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Unconventional composition• Main figures and objects placed in the dead

centre of the frame• Textbook composition - main figures and objects

must be placed slightly off-centre, particularly in a widescreen format.

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Wim Wenders’ classic widescreen composition in Paris, Texas

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots - as if you were watching still photos.

• Long and medium shots are norm in Kitano’s early films. More close-ups in his later films, though they are not many.

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots of Azuma

• Violent Cop

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots of Yakuza, and Uehara and Kazuo

• Boiling Point

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots of surfers, and Takako and Shigeru’s surfing board

• A Scene at the Sea

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots of Murakawa and an assassin

• Sonatine

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots of two kids • Kids Return

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots of Nishi, and Nishi and his wife

• HANA-BI

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots of Kikujiro after seeing his mother and after saying farewell

• Kikujiro

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Frontal shots in Dolls

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Is there such a thing as ‘Kitano Blue’?• Conscious use of thick blue colour

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Conspicuous since Sonatine• Aesthetic and atmospheric rather than symb

olic meaning

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Blue first used unconsciously and unintentionally later became a benchmark of Kitano’s film.

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Kitano began to use colours more strategically after HANA-BI

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Mise-en-scène

• Minimalist visual style: simple settings (empty space); simple compositions (frontal shots); simple camera movements (static shots); long take

• Minimalist visual style renders Kitano’s films pensive mood

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Montage

• Editor since his second film, Boiling Point

• Languid pace, relying on long takes→ 　 pensive mood

• Effective use of dissolves and overlaps

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Montage

• Jagged editing ignoring continuity- A scene abruptly cut in the middle of an

action- A scene abruptly begin in the middle of

an action→ 　 Estrangement (endfremden) effects → 　 Preventing the audience from psychologically being involved in actions → Action ends abruptly, refusing to show the emotional reverberation caused by it. Emotional reticence

Kitano’s Mannerist Style; Montage

• Frequent use of cross-cutting • Contrast and correspondence• Horibe is painting a lyrical picture while Nishi

is painting his police car in HANA-BI• Azuma is playing baseball while his sister is

gang-raped by yakuza in Violent Cop

Reference to Other Films

• Kitano refers to and quotes from other films, works of Ozu, Coppola, and Kubrick

• Static shots and frontal composition• Cross-cutting• Representation of violence• Stanley Kubrick’s An Clockwork Orange and

Kitano’s Violent Cop (openings)• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWLByMshYIU