DRAMA; 2hr 54min (Japanese with subtitles)
STARRING: Ryô Yoshizawa, Ryûsei Yokohama, Ken Watanabe
Mirror image: from left, Yoshizawa and Yokohama
When 14-year-old Kikuo (Soya Kurokawa; Yoshizawa in later years) is taken under the esteemed wing of kabuki master Hanai Hanjiro II (Watanabe) after Kikuo’s father is murdered by a rival Yakuza at a New Year’s Eve shindig gone horribly wrong in 1964 Nagasaki, the night will shape both their lives.
Originating in the 1500s, the heavily stylised Japanese theatre art of kabuki is a state of performative grace in which men also play women’s roles, training in movement and song with the rigour of Olympic athletes. Having been blown away by Kikuo’s NYE performance, Hanai is in thrall to his natural talent (and so he should be — both Kikuos are feline phenoms).
With Hanai’s teenage son, Shunsuke (Keitatsu Koshiyama; Yokohama as an adult), a beyond-grateful Kikuo immerses himself in the surreal loveliness of alternate kabuki worlds. For Shunsuke, kabuki is a generational family business. To earn his place in it, outlier Kikuo must push himself with every nerve and sinew. The two boys learn to move onstage as one fluid creature, although their attitudes are polar opposites: to Kikuo, complacency equals exclusion, while hard-partying crown prince Shunsuke is more likely to get wasted. But the prince is nowhere near as secure as he arrogantly believes. By 1980 he is out of the picture and the charity case is its new shining star — for as long as the caprices of fate will have him.
In director Lee Sang-il’s grand-scale take on decades of rivalry and greed, inspired by Shuichi Yoshida’s 2018 novel Kokuhō, the staged performances play out in exquisite settings with which dullsville daily life can never compete. Kokuho translates as national treasure, which, as Japan’s most financially successful live-action film, this classy blockbuster already has shaped up to be. Every frame is as perfectly composed as the art of Kabuki itself. But the pursuit of beauty spares nobody — neither in reality nor its heightened ideal. For those driven to be the best, fixation equals drastic sacrifice.
