:
Issey Ogata,
Issey Ogata,
Rie Miyazawa,
more...
:
Jun Ichikawa,
Jun Ichikawa
see all cast/crew...
: Strand Home Video
: Foreign, Japan
: 75 min.
: Japanese
: English
see additional details...
Recently Rented By highgrove
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A man who has lived a life of emotional isolation discovers the dark side of falling in love in this drama from Japanese filmmaker Jun Ichikawa. Tony Takitani (Issey Ogata) is the son of a Japanese musician with a passion for jazz who spent most of World War II in Shanghai, and was later sentenced to a stretch in prison following the war. Tony was named in honor of an American serviceman who befriended his father, but his name also earned him the suspicion of his classmates, and he had few close friends as a child, a situation aggravated by the death of his mother. While Tony displayed great technical skill as an artist, his work lacked feeling, and he ended up pursuing a successful career as a technical illustrator. One day, Tony meets Eiko Konuma (Rie Miyazawa), a beautiful woman working with one of his clients, and he is immediately entranced. Feeling as if he's found his soul mate, Tony becomes fully inspired for the first time in his life, and soon asks Eiko for her hand in marriage. Eiko accepts, but before long Tony discovers she has a financially ruinous fondness for expensive designer clothes. When Tony asks Eiko to cut back on her shopping sprees, it triggers a series of events which show Eiko isn't all Tony imagined her to be, and throws his new satisfaction with life into turmoil. Tony Takitani received its North American premiere at the 2004 Vancouver Film Festival, and was also screened as part of the World Cinema series at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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| Ah, Tony...
by talltale
January 11, 2006 - 4:41 PM PST
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5 out of 6 members found this review helpful
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All about belongings, loss, loneliness and depression (is there a more depressed civilization than Japan? Or is it just their movies?), TONY TAKITANI is a very small jewel, the value of which will depend enormously on the patience of the viewer. Barely 70 minutes long (plus credits), it moves at a stately pace, with the performances, direction, writing and wonderful music (by Ryuichi Sakamoto) all adding to a graceful, quiet whole. Or hole, depending on your judgment. The characters alternate between narrating the story and speaking the dialog; the palette is mostly drained of color; and the images, while never sharp, are not quite fuzzy. What happens is obvious but strange, and by the end a tiny step may have been taken by the protagonist. Or maybe not.
I can't say I enjoyed this movie but I found it interesting and thought/feeling-provoking. How depressed IS Japan? And what might America have to do with that depression? Tony gets his name from his dad's American friend, just after the war, and his wife is clearly a product of the current consumer culture. Other hints are dropped--but so quietly and about so many different things. "Tony Takitani" is not to be compared to almost anything else, I think. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 7.20)
49 Votes
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