Dolls

Takeshi Kitano, Japan, 2002

Comment

Takeshi Kitano, started this film as a pictorial exploration of colour, which is exemplified in the bonded lovers section. Kitano is both a film maker and a painter. This section of the film explores the journey of two unhappy lovers who voyage aimlessly through Japan, crossing landscapes and seasons. In this excerpt Kitano makes use of the colour pallets of autumn and winter in nature to create genuine cinematic paintings. Following the balance between the green of the trees and the red / orange of the autumn leaves, each shot is a different pictorial proposition based on the two same colour tones. Thus he composes a veritable series of ‘variations’ in the form of a series of tableaux on the same coloured motif.

At the end of the extract he chose a shot which starts with a rope on the ground, sweeping up the last leaves of autumn, from autumn to winter within the snow covered landscape. For this last shot he rediscovers the red dress of the woman in the dark jacket, thereby removing all the colours to arrive at an image composed of white, grey and black.

 

Keywords

symbolic of the seasons.