Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine upends and subverts all
expectations of a yakuza (Japanese mob) movie. For example, here’s some
dialogue you might not expect to hear in a serious gangster movie: “You call
that dancing?!... I’ll join you.” There is violence to be sure, but the main
character, Murakawa (Kitano himself, who also writes, directs, and edits), has
grown bored with the gangster life and with violence. The film sees acts of
violence as Murakawa sees them: unexciting or even dull. Rich in the quiet
mundanities that happen in every job and life, no matter how thrilling certain
jobs or lives may sound, Sonatine is far from dull. This is a peculiar
and beguiling picture that doesn’t explain any more than it feels necessary, thus drawing us into the world of a criminal in limbo.
Using his stage name “Beat Takeshi”, Kitano plays the
midlevel Tokyo yakuza boss Murakawa who has been assigned by the boss of the
entire crime syndicate to mediate a gang war between two rival clans in
Okinawa. Murakawa and his lieutenant think there is something fishy about the
Okinawa job, but he and his crew go nonetheless. After a restaurant shootout
that is simultaneously surprising and subdued, Murakawa and his crew are taken
to a beachfront house to lay low. As they bide their time the movie becomes
something quite special.
Sonatine is a movie about waiting. In Okinawa a young
gangster plants and bomb in a building and runs back to the car with his partner.
Nothing happens. They wait and still nothing happens. The next scene has the
entire gang outside of the building bored with waiting. Several scenes later,
the bomb finally goes off to little consequence. The gangsters may be bored
with their situation but there is not a dull or boring moment in the movie. It
never treads water though it is about people doing exactly that. Instead, Sonatine
comes to life in these moments.
The most oddly comedic, beguiling, and even enchanting scene
happens when the gangsters are at the beach. They’ve grown bored with playing a
children’s game where paper figures “fight” when you tap the edge of a board
with you finger, so they act out a life size version of the game in the sand, hopping as though they are paper figures. Kitano ramps up the camera speed for
added comic effect but also their unnatural movement emphasizes the odd
situation these characters find themselves in: there’s nothing to do, but
they’re still there.
Takeshi Kitano began his career as part of a comic duo (this
is where he picked up the nickname “Beat Takeshi”) and he puts his comic eye to
great use. When the gangsters are in a house with no water, they run outside
when it starts to ran, soap themselves up, only for the rain to stop. The shootout I mentioned earlier is so routine to Murakawa that his blank
expression is comical. The jokes don’t hit like jokes in a comedy, the
action scenes don’t hit like scenes in an action movie, but still Sonatine
is engaging on a few different levels. This movie goes from violent to darkly
comic to lightly comic to meditative and back again with each tone flowing
smoothly and naturally into the other.
This
movie takes place in a peculiar universe: indifferent but jovial. When Miyuki, a local Okinawa woman interested in Murakawa, asks if she can come visit again, he says “you can, but
you won’t, bitch,” so passively there’s somehow nothing aggressive about it.
Later when she takes off her top offering herself to him during the brief
rainstorm he smiles and says “Indecent exposure is fun.” In the intervening
time they’ve connected on a more mental, less physical level. While watching Sonatine I was reminded of
the HBO series The Sopranos, specifically an episode where Tony and his
loyal but goofball captain Pauly have to hideout after a body is discovered.
That series focused on what happens between the thrilling and violent moments
of the criminal life. Predating The Sopranos by six years, Sonatine
does the same. It is a meditation that allows itself to wander and play in the
sand.
