\n\tKokuho, which takes its title and its novelistic sweep from a recent work of fiction about the rarefied world of kabuki, begins in the mid-1960s and ends 50 years later. Steeped in modern Japanese history without explicating it, director Sang-il Lee\u2019s feature is propelled by operatic intensity and visual poetry. It unfolds over three mostly riveting hours, with only occasional jagged lapses in narrative momentum. Through its twinned stories of aspiring actors \u2014 one born into the kabuki tradition, one an outsider determined to climb its ranks \u2014 the movie blends backstage melodrama, succession saga and making-of-an-artist dynamics. At the center of its superb cast, Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama deliver exquisitely layered performances that interweave offstage characterization and onstage theatricality.<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter the crime drama Villain<\/a> (2010) and murder mystery Rage<\/a> (2016), Kokuho is Lee\u2019s third adaptation of a novel by Shuichi Yoshida. Japan\u2019s official submission to the Oscars\u2019 international feature category, the film took its stateside bow at AFI Fest before it begins a limited-release run in mid-November.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tKokuho\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n \tTransporting and operatic.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: <\/strong>Friday, Nov. 14 (Los Angeles); Friday, Nov. 21 (New York) \n\tWorking from a screenplay by Satoko Okudera, Lee focuses on onnagatas \u2014 the male actors who have played female roles in kabuki since 17th-century shoguns forbade women from performing. Within the story, there\u2019s no questioning of this tradition, feminist or otherwise \u2014 there\u2019s only its pursuit and the esteem in which the onnagatas\u2019 artistry is held. <\/p>\n \n\tThe double-edged sword that Kokuho examines is about character trajectory, not social conventions. Its title is a term that means \u201cnational treasure.\u201d When one character refers to an onnagata this way and says, \u201cHe\u2019ll leave nothing except his art when he dies,\u201d he means it as a sad commentary. But Lee and Okudera also mean it as the highest compliment. Even as the movie acknowledges the vanity of actors \u2014 \u201cgreedy creatures,\u201d by one character\u2019s estimation \u2014 it pays tribute to their hard work and how much of themselves they give, at least to their audiences. Strangers, of course, are easy.<\/p>\n \n\tBefore Yoshizawa and Yokohama step into the central roles at about the 40-minute point, the main characters are teenagers, exceptionally well played by Soya Kurokawa and Keitatsu Koshiyama. The film opens with a rare snowfall in Nagasaki, and its haunting allure becomes a motif of the film, lightly used and effective. During a New Year\u2019s banquet held by a yakuza (Masatoshi Nagase), a visiting kabuki actor, the renowned Hanjiro Hanai (Ken Watanabe<\/a>, who starred in Rage as well as Lee\u2019s 2013 remake of Unforgiven<\/a>), perceives notable talent in his host\u2019s son, 14-year-old Kikuo (Kurokawa), who performs a female kabuki role with energy and commitment.<\/p>\n \n\tA year later, after Kikuo\u2019s father has been murdered and the boy has tried and failed (offscreen) to avenge him, his stepmother (Emma Miyazawa), in hopes of putting him on a path away from crime, sends him to Osaka to apprentice with Hanai, who is part of a lineage of kabuki actors known as the House of Tanba-ya and now heads the bloodline. Hanai\u2019s skeptical but accommodating wife, Sachiko (Shinobu Terajima), agrees to essentially adopt Kikuo and help train him. (In a heartbreaking aside, the boy notes that his birth mother died from \u201cA-bomb disease.\u201d)<\/p>\n \n\tSachiko\u2019s son, Shunsuke (Koshiyama), is the same age as Kikuo and they have similar physiques, with the notable difference that Kikuo\u2019s back is covered with a yakuza tattoo depicting a fierce eagle-owl. Their sibling rivalry is instant, but so is their partnership and mutual encouragement as they train together under the exacting tutelage of Hanai.<\/p>\n \n\tHis methods, physically rough and verbally insulting, wouldn\u2019t pass muster today, and raise a few eyebrows in 1965, but Kikuo, blossoming under the attention and disregarding the bruises, considers him an \u201camazing\u201d teacher. Hanjiro Hanai gives him the stage name Toichiro Hanai, placing the orphaned yakuza\u2019s son in his kabuki lineage as Sachiko looks on with concern. Whether Kikuo is a kabuki natural or merely more ambitious than Shunsuke \u2014 or, as Sachiko later declares, a \u201cfilthy thief\u201d \u2014 his mentor recognizes courage as well as ability in him. But the path is hardly a smooth one.<\/p>\n \n\tSounding a note of warning is a famous elderly onnagata, Mangiku (a compelling Min Tanaka), who tells Kikuo that his beauty might get in the way of his art. Watching Mangiku onstage is an epiphany for Kikuo, marking the end of the first section of the drama, which then jumps to 1972. Kikuo and Shunsuke \u2014 now played, respectively, by Yoshizawa and Yokohama \u2014 are young adults who have trained together as onnagatas. In pieces like Wisteria Maiden (title cards provide concise plot descriptions), bedecked in classic makeup and intricate costumes, they move with the discipline and symmetry of synchronized swimmers. Over Hanai\u2019s objections, the House of Tanba-ya\u2019s corporate benefactor (Kyusaku Shimada) books them into a large theater, and soon their onnagata-duo novelty has given them a kind of boy-band heartthrob popularity. <\/p>\n \n\tBut they\u2019re not exactly moving in unison offstage; Shunsuke is more attuned to the publicity game and the need for patrons. And he\u2019s increasingly aware that he might not have the innate talent of his stage partner.<\/p>\n \n\tEven Kikuo\u2019s girlfriend, Harue (Mitsuki Takahata), understands that she\u2019s no match for his all-consuming devotion to his art. When she and Shunsuke, seated separately in the audience, watch Kikuo perform the lead female role in Love Suicide, they know they\u2019re witnessing something cathartic and life-changing for him. This sequence, with its onstage vengeance, despair and keening dialogue, and its offstage look at how Kikuo\u2019s triumph affects the two people closest to him, is one of the most powerful in the movie. It\u2019s potently scripted (\u201cI want to be a real actor, not a pretend one,\u201d Shunsuke confesses tearfully), and the deft editing is by \u200bTsuyoshi Imai.<\/p>\n \n\tProduction designer Yohei Taneda (Kill Bill: Vol. 1, When Marnie Was There<\/a>) creates not just a broad variety of lived-in spaces within an extensive range of periods, but also the stylized, vibrant artifice of the kabuki stage sets. Likewise, Kumiko Ogawa\u2019s costumes include character-defining garments as well as elaborate getups for the plays, some of which are constructed for suspenseful onstage costume changes. The lensing by Sofian El Fani (Blue Is the Warmest Color<\/a>) captures the play of textures and light, with special attention to close-ups of the kabuki actors, their faces revealing so much through the mask-like makeup. Moving between orchestral swoons and more restrained, stripped-down instrumentation, Marihiko Hara\u2019s score is in sync with the heightened lyricism of the story.<\/p>\n \n\tAs it moves through the decades, the narrative is sometimes overheated, and the characters\u2019 twists and turns in the second half can be more jarring than gripping. But there\u2019s nothing predictable about the paths of Kikuo and Shunsuke \u2014 or that of any of the characters, a case in point being the way a businessman (Takahiro Miura) who at first treats Kikuo with disdain becomes an ally.<\/p>\n \n\tAs their characters each face struggles, triumphs and reversals, the two leads never falter. Playing a man so driven that he barely knows the child he had with a geisha (Ai Mikami) and later embarks on a possibly opportunistic romance with the daughter (Nana Mori) of an established actor (Ganjiro Nakamura, also the kabuki adviser for the movie), Yoshizawa is neither hissable nor pandering, but offers something far more interesting and enigmatic.<\/p>\n \n\tAs Kikuo\u2019s mentor and Shunsuke\u2019s father, Watanabe brings gravitas to a character no less flawed, and just as persuasive. Encouraging Kikuo to embrace art over his criminal legacy, he tells him that mastering kabuki can be his \u201csweet revenge.\u201d Maybe, in a sense, this is a crime saga after all, a story of codes of honor and loyalty. Above all, it\u2019s one of fevered beauty. The onnagata performances are played with power and elegance by Yoshizawa and Yokohama; their characters are brothers-in-art in the man\u2019s world of kabuki, embodying a ritualistic idea of womanhood that\u2019s otherworldly. The actors they portray are all the more fascinating for being merely human.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kokuho, which takes its title and its novelistic sweep from a recent work of fiction about the rarefied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,19,17,89156,327],"class_list":{"0":"post-152350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-ken-watanabe","13":"tag-movies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115460155811981538","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Cast:<\/strong> Ryo Yoshizawa, Ryusei Yokohama, Ken Watanabe, Min Tanaka, Soya Kurokawa, Keitatsu Koshiyama, Mitsuki Takahata, Nana Mori, Shinobu Terajima
Director: <\/strong>Sang-il Lee
Screenwriter:<\/strong> Satoko Okudera; based on the novel by Shuichi Yoshida
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t2 hours 55 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n