JAPAN CUTS July 10- 21, 2023. REVIEWS

[Chris Knipp]

TAKESHI KITANO: KUBI (2023)


A LAKE OF COSTUMED CORPSES IN KUBI

Kitano returns to the screen with a wildly violent samurai drama that is eye-popping but hard to follow

Siddlant Adlakha's review of this film for IndieWire, published for its Cannes Premieres release, is hard to beat. He praises the film, but points out that its complications drag the viewer down. It's odd, or interesting, for its "queer" aspect: it seems there is information that now can be revealed that samurais had a gay streak, and there are some messy wet male kisses. It's not clear that this adds anything.

Adlakha notes that in 1993, when Akira Kurosawa was still around, he remarked that when Kitano made a samurai film it would "surely rival" his own Saven Samurai, and this is very much not true; all we can say, as Adlakha does, is that Kubi "is not entirely without merit." But in this genre a miss is as good as a mile, and we are sorely in need of another truly great historical Japanese action film where the violence is exciting and stirring and also fully makes sense within a clear and compelling dramatic structure.

All we can say here is that the action is frequently bloody, including a knife-twisting, bloody gay kiss, and that there are many, many beheadings, probably a record number, with the full-on knife-in-the-neck shot and the head falling down off the shoulders, over and over. Oda Nobunaga (Kase Ryo) is shohwn as the first great unifier of Japan, as he has been before, and he is hunting down his rebellious vassal Murashige Araki (Endo Kenichi), helped by the "diligent, straightforward" (Adlakha's words) Akechi Mitsuhide (Nishijima Hidetoshi) and the more laid back Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Kitano himself). These three are involved in some kind of gay love triangle. Again it is not clear this adds anything. It would require a better director and a better film (and probably a lot of historical invention) to make it seem compelling and central.

The IndieWirereview summarizes that Kubi "isn’t so much about queering samurai ambition as it is about likening it to a sexual urge," but this is a distinction I'm not sure I grasp. Mostly the movie is about wanton violence, at which Kitano excels. It works better in his gangster movies where it is a kind of shock and shtick. Here is is a reminder that a better grasp of the historical context is lacking that would make a good film. IndieWire gives Kubi (which means "neck" but also "neck bag," a thing to carry severed heads as evidence) a "C+." Enough said.

Kubi, 131 mins., debuted in Premieres at Cannes 2023, also Philadelphia, Tokyo, Taipei, Torino, and Macao International Queer Film Festival. Screened for this review as part of the 2024 Japan Cuts series, Jul. 10-21, in New York.