The movie "Achilles and the Tortoise" became my first experience of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) , finally after three years of life in Toronto. Directed by Takeshi Kitano, a.k.a. Beat Takeshi as a Japanese actor and a comedian, who is also a Golden Lion winner of the Venice Film Festival in 1997 with "HANA-BI." I grew up with watching him on TV as a comedian, and his way of humor including lots of bad words entertained kids so much, like some schools and PTA had banned their students and kids watching his shows. Many kids were against it and therefore it became a kind of social issue at that time in 80's.
* One of his comedy shows was broad casted in U.S. in 2003 with its English title "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC)," and "Takeshi's Castle" in U.K., Germany, and Philippine, "Humor Amarillo" in Spain. So you can probably watch some of them on YouTube. This show made almost every family in Japan laugh so much and his image better.The title of this movie comes from the one of Zeno's paradoxes, "When the tortoise starts running one interval ahead than Achilles who is an immortal and able to run really fast, the tortoise would never be caught up by him." In the reality, he would, eventually, but in the world of the consciousness of sub-one which is infinity, he would never. This is the paradox.
* * Zeno : An ancient Greek natural philosopher of the Eleatics, born in Elea, South Italy (around BC 490 - 430).
[ About the movie ]
The story is about a man, Machisu, (named after a famous French painter "Henri Matisse") who loves drawing and painting, and wants to be a famous as an painter, and his wife, Sachiko, who understands and supports him devotedly. Even though his life as a son of a rich guy and could anything that little boy wanted was totally changed to the opposite, when he had to go through his parents' death. Since then, only he has focused was to become a famous painter, as his parents were dreaming of with him.
The movie is divided into three parts; his childhood, adolescent years, and adulthood, and each of them have some paradoxes (I'm not going to spoil those juicy parts Pepe, like I almost did to Ruben last time about "Kite Runner"!!). What interests me is, that you might be able to guess that Achilles could be Machisu, but the tortoise can be anything, depending on how you feel about these paradoxes. There are plenty of elements that you can think of as the tortoise; moreover, those the tortoises-to-be can give you each different themes what this movie tried to tell you.
OK, I will give you only one sentence that you might will miss from one scene. When you watch this movie, this sentence probably will not have its subtitle since this is not a spoken line. One of Machisu's painting has a caption says "Belief brings possibility." To me, this can be both, true and false. If you don't believe what you can, you will never achieve the point you were dreaming of; however, you might not achieve ever or you can not know when you will achieve. Possibility is only possibility forever when the percentage is less than 100. You are not sure if possibility turns out to be fulfillment, other than you strongly "believe"the possibility of fulfillment.I heard some applauses when the movie started to show the end roll; moreover, I heard some people (both in Japanese and English) said that they did not understand at all. This kind of style can create mixed reputations or reviews, because of the answer or theme of the movie is not crystal clear, like his other movie Dolls(1987). It is not like Hollywood blockbuster movie which tells you easily what is good and what is bad so you have to think about it or just push away to think.
Anyway, only one thing I am sure is, that I can not be like Sachiko, the wife of Machisu. I probably would feel that I can not help Machisu like she did, if I were her. I would understand what he loves and wish I could help him using all of the things and emotions I have. But I would get scared of the reality. I can not even imagine how deep Sachiko loved him..
I liked this movie. This could not be my favorite of Takeshi Kitano's work unfortunately; however, the style of using children brilliantly in his movies has still remained and the music is also very, very beautiful and matches the atmosphere. I was relieved that Kitano did not use his favorite (so as mine!!) composer Joe Hisaishi who has also created Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli world with his beautiful, nostalgic aria and harmony. The new composer Kitano chose for this movie is Yuki Kajiura who works for many TV advertisements, game softwares, and some animation films, I think she succeeded to make fans of Hisaishi's music in Kitano's movie satisfied as keeping Hisaishi world by using the same style of harmony he uses (mix uses of the 6th, 7th, and 9th cords with the basic triad, and uses of the Musical mode). I'm going to buy this soundtrack CD for sure!!Let me know when you watch this movie, so we can discuss about it!!
