IFFR 2009: ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE Review

If there was one thing missing from this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, it was anime. Last year had slim pickings, but this year there were none at all! Closest came the Thai picture "Nak", but that one is closer to Pixar's usual fare than anime.
So my first laugh in "Achilles and the Tortoise" was an early one, as the prologue has some Greek philosophers explaining the film's title and motto by way of a short anime sequence.

That's just the first few minutes though, but the cartoon shows that using a certain logic may have you ending up never quite reaching your goal. The rest of the movie is an extremely long example of that statement, at the same time skewering the world of painted art.

It's also the third film in a row in which Takeshi "Beat" Kitano is skewering himself. "Takeshis" took care of his fame as an gangster actor, "Glory to the Filmmaker" saw him poking fun at himself as a director, and in "Achilles and the Tortoise" he puts huge questionmarks on the value of paintings in general, and his own in particular.

And while the joke of Kitano "Beating" himself has grown even older since his earlier movie, the statements he makes here concerning art tend to stick around until long after the movie ends...

More after the break.

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The Story:

A rich Japanese factory owner is obsessed with collecting art, and this influences his young son Machisu to become a painter. Because nobody dares cross his father, the boy gets nothing but praise for his paintings, but this changes when the factory goes bankrupt and his parents commit suicide.

Growing up in an orphanage, all Machisu wants is to paint. Throughout the rest of his life he wants to create a great piece of art, but gets to know up-close what damage the pursuit of such a wish may bring. For what exactly is great art anyway?


The Movie:

Takeshi Kitano has been creating paintings for as long as he has been known as an actor. Now of course it might be quite desirable for some people to have a real "Kitano" hanging on the wall, but that poses some questions. Is such a painting valuable because it's a work of art? Or is it valuable only because it was drawn by a famous actor?

I can imagine Takeshi Kitano himself wondering about these things, but wouldn't have expected him to give the world an answer in a meticulously drawn out fashion, using a two-hour long movie.
And he is absolutely merciless, with his message being: Fuck Art If It's Only For Art's Sake.

As a child I was taught that something was art if it could convey an emotion from one person to the next. That might be wrong though: the Machisu character in the movie seems to think that art is art when it is recognized as such, and is making you rich and famous. All through his life he hunts for the secret to creating such art, but like Achilles trying to overtake the tortoise he fails to reach it. For even though he moves faster than his moving goal, each time he arrives at the spot where "art" was when he looked at it, "art" seems to have moved a tiny bit further...

The movie shows through example after example that the monetary value of art is only there if some fool can be persuaded to pay it. For Machisu, never quite getting the idea right, the quest for art turns his life into an endless string of disasters which cost him his friends, his money, his loved ones and his health. He is a walking magnet for tragedy who stubbornly refuses to see the light.

All this could have become a gloomy affair, but Kitano has infused his film with a very dry and often black sense of humor. Many characters behave like caricatures, and many of the paintings (all made by Kitano himself!!) are clever reworkings of famous pieces of art. As such I think the movie might be an in-joke delight for people who know much more about painted art than I do, for I recognized only a few of the paintings but do not doubt far more of these homages have been hidden within.
Also, the antics of a group of art-students who want to create "radical" art are hilarious and contain several of the film's best jokes.

But as the movie proceeds, and proceeds, and proceeds to tell you the same statement over and over, Machisu gets older and finally ends up being played (dare I say "portrayed"?) by Takeshi Kitano himself. Is he saying his art might have been worthless if not for him being famous for something unrelated? You bet he does!

But is he believing that, or just saying it as a huge Andy Kaufman-esque joke aimed towards the audience? Only Kitano knows...

Al of which certainly is interesting, but the film gets mighty slow after the halfway point. Then again, by relentlessly and endlessly hammering the point home he does add power to his statement.


Conclusion:

As the third part of a self-mocking trilogy "Achilles and the Tortoise" may be a bit long in the tooth, but as a standalone film about the perceived value of art it has quite some interesting things to say. Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, but the film seriously doubts the sanity of both the beholder and those who wish to please the beholder. At least when it comes to paintings, because with movies it's a totally different story, right?

Right...?

The audience rewarded "Achilles and the Tortoise" with yet another 4 out of 5, and all Kitano fans I spoke with praise this as one of his best.
In any case it's recommended, but art lovers should get a lot more out of it than I did, even though they should beware at the same time!