Takeshi Kitano
Zatōichi

Everyone goes on about Tarantino's Kill Bill, then Kitano simultaneously makes this and... silence. Eloquent.

It's one thing to tell stories about swords, another to "be" the "sword." Strike, parry, thrust, and it's over, the camera stays still, the action unfolds in a few moments. And even better: film the darkness of the action, extinguish the candle, and relight it to collect hands and anatomical parts from the floor and admire the cuts on backs and abdomens, unlike "the mark of Zorro."

While Tarantino builds up hype with implausible schizophrenic movements, Kitano not only brings dynamism to action with biomechanical realism but also weaves in Greek tragedy with almond-shaped eyes, perfectly synthesizing the old saga of the wandering masseur.

Fistfights, for those who have experienced them, last as long as they last, two or three hits, and it's over; either one falls to the ground, or gets hit and gives back, or is interrupted by companions, but it always lasts a breath. And Zatoichi "cripples" that hand, he cripples it.

The anarchy of revenge served up by Hollywood is a big sham. Anarchy doesn't plan actions; it vigilantly waits for the moment of divine dispensing. Zatoichi, with the fortune of blindness, shows us that vision is deceitful, making a virtue of impairment to unearth the world's miseries, lining up all the ego-retinas and literally dissects them with his deadly bamboo stick, even curing some congenital astigmatism instead of using a laser, as if he were Goemon from Lupin III.

Let's thus resolve the waste of time spent on those ridiculous cinematic pastimes, convulsed in their ineptitude, the Japanese gives us a "cut" with the straight double-edged katana that when utilized involves both cerebral hemispheres, further stimulated by the appearance of two mysterious geishas.

Beat Takeshi doesn't even consider Rashomon, where the merciful Kurosawa chronicled distorted realities; here, he wastes no time and in pure ecstasy resolves in detachment all the hums that guide Zatoichi in impersonal victory, including the final stumble.

And the "all together" closure of the dance, that irresistible tip-tap that crosswise pays tribute to the youthful master Senzaburo Fukami, exorcises the interpretations each of us has on the human comedy: we are all in the same boat, guys... Let's love one another.