Takeshi Kitano
Kids Return

Kitano works to show us that those inquisitive phrases like "every missed opportunity is lost," "the show must go on," "you only live once," "hard work and sacrifice," are smoke and mirrors that instill projections of confessions on perspectives of transferring our energy to others, with a tacit agreement that burdens us with most of the compensation we will have to face.

The childhood of the eternal "return" absorbs the blows of the "journey of our life" and the purple bruises exorcise the superstition that color holds over artists. Entangled in handling random death, Kitano with his cabaret performer's skin is trained in the mockery of the mirror, so that his absent vampirism does not reflect expectations of ephemeral triumphs. He is the jester who mocks, he is Buddha guffawing with laughter, he is the cynicism of Diogenes who snubs Alexander the Great.

And the measure of greatness is always under control if you are in the company of Takeshi because he always shows you that the true triumphs lie close to the ruins. The gym with its aerobic odor and crime with its anaerobic penchant mark the heartbeats of life's deception when the goals are material.

But the tranquility of knowing that the last suit we will wear will have no pockets cradles us in a zone of non-thought where defeat is the path to evolution. Joe Hisaishi's fundamental musical contributions accompany those steps ecstatically.

The sedimentation of the consciousness of existing without the measure of time gratifies the sacred boredom of the eternity hullabaloo and nullifies temptations to persist in challenges, where surrendering to our inner God is the true victory.

The protagonists ultimately understand the gag of a delusion of omnipotence that baffles like an uppercut and knocks you to the ground with its crumbling altars that shoot point-blank, and they are ready, "forever young," to get back on the roller coasters with a different cunning to box paradisiacally against humiliations by opening their chest to be hit by the true "bullets": "You think it's over for us? Idiot, it hasn't even begun!"

We always go in circles until we stop and it's the circle that then spins. Everything begins again...