gackt_army | Bunraku Review :) (Reply)

I had the priviledge of watching Bunraku yesterday at the Mumbai Film Festival. These are my impressions of the film.

Bunraku – My Impressions

I really really enjoyed this film. In many ways, it was my kind of a movie. It’s unique at many levels, and G has done a fabulous job in it. Totally worth it!

Hmm… I don’t know where to start, actually, because I just have so much to say, and yet, I know that I will not be able to do justice to my impressions. Oh well, a very good place to start is always the beginning – and for us Dears, it all begins and ends with… GACKT.

Gackt was glorious. Absolutely glorious, delightful and utterly charming. His delivery of lines – both in English as well as Japanese – was clear and comprehensible, his acting was great, his fight sequences were razor sharp and smooth and he looked beautiful and very very elegant. You must have noticed, in the pictures from Bunraku that his make-up did not make him look too dolled up – rather, he looked his age. His clothes showed off his broad shoulders and slim waist, while at the same time, the high pony which bobbed up and down during fights, made him look totally kawaii. :) I’m not commenting here on his acting and fighting, since that needs some amount of spoilers. Just wanted to add here that GACKT has as long and important a role as Josh does. He is NOT a sidekick, like many would like to believe (LOL, can you imagine G taking on the role of a sidekick?!) and i don't understand why his name was often missing/occured later in the cast list - yes such things do piss me off. (=_=) I admit that Josh has more lines in English, but that is mainly because he is definitely more comfortable with the language, and it is an English film, after all.

The moment he came on the screen he took my breath away. He literally left me gasping – and I had grand plans of wolf-whistling at him, LOLOL, but my lungs did not have the requisite amount of air needed for a whistle. I really couldn’t believe that I was sitting in India, among Indians, watching G on the big screen. It’s an indescribable feeling – of joy, shock, gratitude (to whom? I dunno, LOL) and god only knows what else – all mashed together into a big lump at my throat. LOL, and my friend banluvsnat, who is also a fan of G, squealed, “umm…. I hope I don’t start nosebleeding… I can totally feel it starting!” hehe, in fact, we had great fun fangirling through the movie, and…er... kinda missed an important revelation at the end of the film about Josh’s character because we were busy discussing the important topic of the ‘mystery of GACKT’s adorably glompable eyes’ *headdesks*. :P after the movie the two of us were in a kind of a happy daze. There was a little bit of unpleasantness at one point, though, when this idiot sitting behind us asked the inevitable ‘is it a guy or a girl?’ question. My friend replied with a sharp ‘he’s very much a guy’. A little later, after Yoshi’s first fight sequence, the same joker behind us said, ‘Whooooaaaaa…. That was great…. especially for a girl.” To which my friend loudly commented, “Why do we have to sit in front of dumbasses?” LOL! Anyway, we didn’t let him spoil our fun, and I dare say even he got absorbed into the movie after a while (I know coz his comments were way too loud *rolls eyes*).

ANYWAY. About the film…. It’s a visual treat, like everyone has said till now. Hmm… I really don’t know how to go about writing this without spoilers. Especially since spoilers have a very different meaning in the context of this movie. As amaia has correctly pointed out, this movie doesn’t have much to offer in terms of plot…. Most of you already know the plot through reading summaries. The ‘spoilers’, therefore, would be not about content, but ‘form’. The unique element of this movie – the element which actually makes it a must watch – is the style/look of the film.

Bunraku – with (probably) SPOILERS

The film’s look is unlike anything I have seen before – and I had watched Sin City, especially to ‘prepare’ myself for this film, LOL! Every shot is saturated with colours, and each set is breathtakingly beautiful. What makes it odd and unique is that while the background seems to be made of beautiful coloured paper – sometimes painted, sometimes origami-ed – including a gorgeous paper painted moon; yet, the ‘real’ props, like real sakura trees or bars and even real human beings, blended in seamlessly with the paper background. The intense colours and the un-realistic setting, stylized acting and the deliberately simplistic plot of good vs evil gives the film a graphic novel feel. In fact, at one point in the movie it does turn entirely into a graphic novel. The opening, showing why exactly the world had outlawed weapons, started with an actual bunraku-like puppet show. Also, the subtitles in the Japaneseparts were written in a comic book style, which looked really really nice.

The look of each character – as you must have already noticed – is idiosyncratic. Each character is a stereotype – GACKT’s being the biggest cliché of them all, LOLOL – the good hearted, honourable, wide eyed and somewhat gullible samurai, who hates violence yet doles out large doses of it with great panache. The role seems to have been custom made for GACKT, as he mouths dialogues which seem to be lifted directly from his blog posts xDD. Also, he acted so well… there were these peculiar moments when he was almost like a chibi cutie-pie you’d want to glomp… quite like the G in the latest Wanda coffee CMs. On the other hand, there were those deadly, majestic and dignified bits, reminiscence of Fuurin Kazan, which made one realize why Guy Moshe chased G across the seven seas after watching him in the drama. Oh and! Significantly, Gackt’s role in the film is as long and important as Josh’s so I fail to understand why he is seen as a sidekick, or why his name is sometimes missing from the cast. >_<

Amongst others, the bar tender and Killer #2 stood out. Demi Moore, on the other hand, was so unnecessary to the movie that I feel sorry for her. I didn’t get to sleep last night coz I was travelling from delhi to mumbai, but it was only during her bits(tiiiiny bits they were, LOL, poor thing) that I found myself yaaaawning...I mean, admit it, who's interested in the WOodcutter and his girlfriend's family planning discussions? xD I also strongly suspect that her part was cut short in the editing, though I have no evidence, of course. She must be pretty mad, LOL. In fact, not just Moore but each character could be fleshed out more.

The movie itself is fairly clichéd … but deliberately so. I loved the self referential humour in the film, especially of the narratorial voice, who made it clear that he knew exactly how clichéd it all was (“and in all such stories, there’s always a silent stranger *Josh Hartnett’s introduced* …or... two silent strangers *Gackt is introduced*”). The actors’ mock-serious, somewhat theatrical acting added towards making this film lean more towards a parody of an action/gangster movie/western (one hilarious bit: Yoshi arrives for a fight which Josh is already fighting. Yoshi-‘don’t you wanna know why I’m late?” Josh-“Not really.”… a parody of various action movies which use the “you’re late!” line so frequently (Eraser, Shanghai Knights, to name a few). At another time, the tinny music from Mario plays in the background as Josh systematically kills through a maze of prison guards). These provided some great comic moments too.

The movie wasn’t allll awesome, though, I’ve gotta be honest xD. There were way too many fight sequences, and while some were a treat to watch – the one with the trapeze artist and josh, or the penultimate fights of Josh and Yoshi where they meet their match, to name a few – the others made the film drag a bit, and I felt that it would have been better if more of the film had been devoted to fleshing out the characters properly. The film was full of blood and gore, but all of it done in a very chic, stylish manner. All in all, it was quite a sanitized movie. Unlike the tasteless nonsensical gore fest that I ended up watching after Bunraku…. Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage…. *pukes*. Wish I hadn’t watched it. Anyway…

The ending has hints for a sequel, but I dunno if that’s possible, considering the fact that this film took two years to make. But this is a film definitely worth checking out, and I'm really hoping that they make a sequel (Josh and Gackt are brilliant together, believe me. No its not a yaoi fangirl's biased brain speakig, they really good!).

LOL, I’m already pining for the movie, I really really wanna watch it again! xDD … I’m definitely buying the DVD when it comes out. And hey! You know, I realized that this movie has great potential for some gorgeous merchandise. Oh well….

PS - a word about Kitano's 'Outrage'. i'm not randomly pulling dow the movie. I know he's a very famous film maker ... hell, he had the Indian audience roaring and clapping and applauding through the film.
But i think is is not really his best film. this film is about a bunch of Yakuza maiming, torturing and killing each other in a variety of creative and increasingly gory ways. while the film began with some twists and turns, it soon became totally predictable - as the bodies piled up, it became obvious that everyone was going to end up dead. Also, the killings were illogical - you wouldnt expect a bunch of Yakuza (every single one of them) to be so stupidly unprotected allll the time, allowing others to come and butcher them casually. That film was just... so not happening. *shrugs*

*goes off to dream about Yoshi and his bouncy ponytail*.