Glory to the Filmmaker!

Takeshi Kitano, known by his stage name Beat Takeshi, is probably best known in the West for the various Yakuza movies he’s directed and starred in. The veteran Japanese actor has directed and starred in films like Violent Cop, Boiling Point, Brother and Outrage, owned the antagonist role in Battle Royale and even directed, wrote and starred in Zatoichi, a reboot of the old film series. The man has presence on and off the screen, his films characterised by ultra-violence, the mechanics of the Yakuza underworld, themes of nihilism and meaninglessness, and bouts of black humour, while his characters tend to be pensive, deadpan killers with strict codes of loyalty. In his home country though, Kitano is better known as a comedian and television personality, which is how he started his career. That might explain what exactly ‘Glory to the Filmmaker!’ is, a meta, bizarre cinematic diversion and return to his comedic roots, while also encompassing his career as a director, his image, the filmmaking world and what I guess he thinks is funny. It’s an absolutely insane film, one that feels like an excuse or outlet for Kitano to let out all the jokes and comedy bits he’s wanted to make.

The plot starts out meta before going completely off the rails. Famous Japanese director Takeshi Kitano decides to stop making ultra-violent gangster movies, pledging to expand his repertoire by moving away from bloody violence and branching out into other genres. The problem is he has no idea what sort of film he should make, being entirely clueless as to what audiences want to see. He tries his hand at almost every genre, from dialogue-driven drama, romance, tear-jerkers, horror films, ninja action movies and dramatic period pieces, and every single attempt ends in some sort of massive failure, be it boring scripts, nonsensical plots and characters or Kitano somehow accidentally reverting back to making movies about gangsters.

He eventually settles on making a big budget sci-fi disaster film, but upon realising that the disaster itself (the cliché of a meteorite heading straight for earth) isn’t enough to carry the film he starts to write in a group of ‘interesting’ characters, from a money-grubbing mother/daughter duo, a mad scientist and a peculiar man who can suddenly change into a metal dummy at will (played by Kitano). Things then get completely out of hand as the movie fills up with weird and wacky nonsense characters in bizarre, nonsense situations, the film devolving into nonsense sketch-like antics.

 

Glory is a film of two disparate parts, both of which offer substantially different kinds of humour. The first half is focused on the humour of film and genres, poking fun at the tropes and cinematic conventions that show up in movies. The second half is where things go off the rails completely, with a wackier, sillier, completely absurdist sense of humour. Unlike most other comedies, there isn’t any real plot. Kitano wanting to make a movie, but being unable to find success is the running drive through the first half’s collection of mini-films, but the second half has no such purpose, other than to just go for broke. You won’t understand why Kitano has teamed up with a mad scientist and is piloting a robot suit, but you probably don’t need to. As a result, the movie has an odd pace, and the complete lack of an actual narrative means it’s mostly just a series of ridiculous jokes until a big, ridiculous finale. It wasn’t an issue for me, but if you aren’t on board with the film’s type of humour then the movie might feel aimless.

 In the first half the humour largely comes from the various riffs and piss-takes (often earnest and completely straight) of various genre movies, from the interminably slow and dull talkie drama (mostly involving ordinary people sitting at a table and drinking while making mundane conversation), to the nonsense clichéd tropes of a ninja action movie. Some of it is absolutely sublime – his Japanese horror movie (involving a head-collecting killer wearing a traditional Japanese theatre mask) gets absurdly on-point when a shrieking girl in a bikini randomly appears from nowhere for no reason whatsoever. It’s also insanely funny seeing Takeshi Kitano himself in all these roles he’s painfully miscast in. His slouched posture and stoic stillness make every one of the romance films he attempts to make seem even more ridiculous. The weirdness and humour also comes in how earnest some of these ‘films’ are. The longest one by far is also (mostly) played completely straight, a grim ‘honest’, surprisingly/seemingly earnest drama set in a small town in the 50s that involves youngsters growing up amidst poverty and domestic abuse that takes a few sudden, somewhat unrealistic ‘dramatic’ leaps until the narrator puts a stop to it.

The second half is instantly far looser and more sketch-like in design as the characters and situations get wackier, the jokes get sillier and nonsense rules supreme. We get pratfalls, dumb puns, purposefully bad jokes, abundant slapstick and overwhelming absurdity. It’s hard to even describe some of the randomness that goes on. The already near-non-existent plot is quickly forgotten as we go about random little bizarre comedy bits following the strange characters. It ditches the movie-making premise the film started with entirely, with the narrator disappearing completely as actual characters appear (no matter how silly or ridiculous).  The initial disaster film plot is immediately discarded to follow its selection of weirdos. A lot of it is really just a series of sketches or comedy bits. For example, the mother/daughter duo attempt to skimp out on paying for a meal at a restaurant by placing a fake cockroach into their meal. Before they can complain a massive group of scary-looking gangsters try to pull the same stunt. When the two chefs come out they’re revealed to be absolutely massive wrestlers who absolutely pummel the crap out of the gangsters, destroying much of the restaurant in the process. Its bonkers crazy, has nothing to do with anything and signals the film’s shift in priorities as the two chefs perform wrestling moves (all sorts of faux-punches, tag-team swings and throws) in a part that feels ripped right from a comedy variety half-hour show. Which, as it turns out, might have been the entire point – Kitano was primarily a comedian before he became known as a maker of gangster/Yakuza flicks. This film seems largely made out of his desire to harken back to his comedy antics and goofy sense of humour.

Kitano and his dummy double get used in some funny moments, where his ability to switch at any moment being treated as a superpower. Even better are the scene where his steel double is meant to be doing something amazing or acrobatic, such as flipping through the air, and you can clearly see the film crew clad in black just rotating the dummy by hand. Kitano himself brings a surprisingly goofy humour to the film, breaking from his usual stoic demeanour to crack a little smile or engage in some nonsense pantomime or slapstick routine. It’s a lot of really silly, more often completely insane broad humour. That’s not to say there isn’t cleverness underneath it all with some subtle, understated visual humour jokes – for example, the mother/daughter duo’s clothes slowly switch over as the film continues until they’ve completely swapped outfits by the end. The cast do a really great job all things considered, playing their roles really well. In the first half everybody plays things perfectly straight which makes the various different genre films even funnier, while in the second half it’s nonsense ahoy, but the comedic timing and on-point absurdity is spot on.

 

Whether you’ll like Glory to the Filmmaker! or not is completely dependent on your sense of humour. It reaches pretty broadly, with an insane variety of nonsense on offer from wordplay, puns, slapstick, visual humour and more thoughtful references (there’re more than a few nods to some of Kitano’s other films). The differing styles of humour in the first and second halves make it a very real possibility that you might love one half and hate the other, and the switch from a more understated comedy to full-on silliness can be jarring since it happens so suddenly and thoroughly. But as a comedic distraction Glory to the Filmmaker is a lot of fun. It’s aimless, ultimately meaningless (whether or not the movie gets made or even exists at all is beside the point), but the experience is a fun one. It might even be a little autobiographical – most of Kitano’s filmography consists of Yakuza movies, so this is a noticeable departure, and the early premise of him trying to move away from gangster films, him struggling and failing and the sheer insanity that occurs when he really lets loose and does whatever might be true to life.