Takeshi Kitano's sixth film, Kids Return, is a cinematic
tale about Shinji (Masanobu Ando) and Masaru (Ken Kaneko), two high-school
dropouts, growing up in a Tokyo suburb. Shinji and Masaru are playful,
self-centred and irresponsible. They wag school, ridicule their teachers
and bully other students, and spend most of their time at the local coffee
house and noodle shop. Shinji pursues an amateur boxing career, but does
not have the strength or determination to succeed amidst the cutthroat
competition. Masaru joins a yakuza gang, quickly rising in the
ranks of the local mob, but due to his lack of discipline, he too soon
loses his position. Three years later, Shinji and Masaru meet again and
return to their old school.
Kids Return follows the success of
Violent Cop (1989), Boiling Point (1990) and Sonatine (1993), and continues to
explore the themes across most of Kitano's films: male friendship and
moral dilemmas. A bleak picture of growing up in Japanese suburbia, Kids Return
focuses on the life of two outsiders, those who reject
the mediocre norms that rule the Japanese society and deliberately choose
the path of 'losers.' Situated in the school grounds, the local coffee
house, noodle shop and boxing gym, the film maps the tough Tokyo
neighbourhood in grim colours. Shinji and Masaru are growing up bereft of
teenage idealism, a sense of belonging or direction. Kitano continually
emphasises that his heroes are striving to be excellent, but the society
has left them with few appealing options. Their high school offers limited
chances for 'success' and those who do not make the best of their scarce
possibilities are branded 'idiots.' The teachers observe their pranks with
a sense of indifference, shrugging their shoulders and leaving them
unpunished, while the two boys wonder around local shops, cheap
restaurants and cinemas, looking for excitement and a sense of purpose.
Shinji's and Masaru's friendship seems to be the only lasting legacy of
their teenage years. When they finally decide to part, the only regret
about moving on is that they lose each other's company.
Kitano's compassionate view of the two high school dropouts evokes
numerous correspondences with the works of Vigo, Melville (whose films
profoundly affected Kitano's gangster milieu) and Truffaut. However, his
serio-comic style simultaneously reveals a ferocious critique of the
profoundly Japanese stereotypes of success: "I wanted to show how
mediocrity will always succeed in Japanese society. If you don't go
against the rules, if you go with the flow, you will achieve a certain
level of success, an easy living." (1)
Defying social stereotypes, Kitano's heroes ironically become entrenched
in equally constricting codes of behaviour, ruling the boxing arena and
the criminal underworld. Shinji is shown how to elbow and head-butt the
opponents in the ring and decides to ignore his coaches' demands for a
healthy life style. Masaru quickly learns about the shallowness and
cowardice of the wise guys. When he finally decides to speak up against
his bosses, he receives a severe beating and is promptly expelled from the
gang.
However, not everything seems bleak in Kitano's film. The director
combines the scenes from his characters' lives with the stand-up routine
of a pair of their fellow students, hoping to make it big in the future.
The narrative follows their gradual progression in the world of show
business, as their audiences grow bigger and the reactions to their jokes
become louder. Jovial and rebellious, Shinji and Masaru are also seen as
destined for new opportunities in life, yet Kitano implies that their path
is definitely more uncertain. Riding through the old school yard, at the
end of the film, Shinji asks Masaru whether he thinks they are finished.
Masaru responds: "Stupid. We haven't started yet."
Taking on the roles of director, scriptwriter and editor, with style
and precision, Kitano again exercises total control of his film. His
poetic storytelling, economic dialogue, rich cinematic material and
meticulously detailed editing, demonstrate a highly idiosyncratic
narrative style. Kitano interweaves different narrative levels combining
flash backs with snippets of the past and present and placing high demands
on the audience. Structured as a reminiscence of high-school days, Kids
Return demands almost theatrical detachment from the performers in the
leading roles. Ando and Kaneko perform their roles with a strong sense of
restraint. This is best seen in the dialogues between the two
protagonists. Framed in long, static shots in which, similar to other
Kitano's films, his protagonists do not pronounce their lines to but at each other. Ando and Kaneko make most of their puzzling and
captivating conversations, using pauses to accentuate a strong sense of
withdrawal and enhance the dramatic moments in the story.
Katsumi Yanagishima's photography captures the claustrophobia, monotony
and drabness of Japanese suburbia with a meticulous sense of detail. The
cold apartment blocks, school grounds, classrooms and small neighbourhood
shops convey a sense of urban melancholy in the environment where
conformity is everything. Joe Hisaishi's expressive, dream-like musical
phrases, on the other hand, place emphasis on the unvoiced emotions of
Kitano's characters, their poignant reminiscences of the end of childhood
and their sudden and intense emergence in the world of adults. Kids
Return once again demonstrates Kitano's uncompromising ethical stance,
one that gained him international recognition. It simultaneously follows
the exploration of major themes in his work that will powerfully resonate
in his most recent films, Hana-Bi (1997) and Kikujiro
(1999), manifesting the sheer depth of his talent and his meticulous
control of the filmmaking process.