Tony Takitani
by Jun Ichikawa
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Issei Ogata, Rie Miyazawa, Shinohara Takahumi, Yumi EndoDirector: Jun Ichikawa
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 75 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-01-31
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Strand Releasing
Movie Reviews of Tony Takitani
Movie Review: Murakami, perfectly translated to the screen
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a stylish and spare film that does a fantastic job of bringing the Haruki Murakami short story to the screen. Ryuichi Sakamoto's equally spare piano-based soundtrack is equally evocative and well suited to help tell this melancholy tale of love and longing. I wasn't sure what to expect, but ending up loving this moving film.
Now to get Peter Jackson to shoot his version of Murakami's "Hard-Boiled Wonderland"!
Summary of Tony Takitani
Tony is an illustrator who's been alone all his life.until he meets Eiko, a beautiful woman who transforms his life. The only problem is that Eiko is a compulsive shopper with a penchant for high end couture that leads to darkly satiric consequences.Sound and visuals are what movies are made of, yet in Tony Takitani, director Jun Ichikawa somehow communicates primarily through feeling. This is a work of profound, aching sadness, made exquisite more by what isn't heard and seen than what is, as Ichikawa brings writer Haruki Murakami's short story to the screen with a sense of restraint, apparent in every aspect of the process (storytelling, acting, music, cinematography), that transforms the usual cinematic experience into something much closer to a prolonged meditation. Issei Ogata plays the title character, son of a jazz musician who gave Tony his strange, Americanized name. Like his father, who is no more fit to be a dad than Tony is to be a son, Tony lives a life of total solitude. But solitude isn't the same as loneliness, as the middle-aged man learns when he meets and marries the much younger Eiko (Rie Miyazawa). At that point, as we're told in voice-over (a wonderfully low key performance by Hidetoshi Nishijima, who actually does more talking than the characters themselves), the newly-content Tony now is beset by feelings of terror and dread as he imagines what life would be like without her. But Eiko is no more connected to the real world than Tony, and her addiction to designer clothes ("they fill up what's missing inside me") eventually leads to tragedy. That happens in a sequence that might be amusing, in a black kind of way, in any other film, but not in this one. As it is, it triggers some rather strange behavior on Tony's part, as well as his return to a state of impenetrable, ineffable melancholy. Tony Takitani is not a warm experience. The dialogue is spare, the scenery severe, the colors muted, and Ichikawa's directing, though masterful, keeps us at arm's length. But there is greatness in this beautifully-rendered, 75-minute movie. --Sam Graham
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