Tony Takitani

*whew* It's been a while since I've been this intoxicated by a film... at least not since February's Nobody Knows.

Tony Takitani is a beautiful poem to loneliness.

The eponymous character is a quintessential loner. As the prologue informs us: His father, a WWII vet who pretty much left most of his soul in POW camp, was not much of a father. His mother died a few days after his death. He has been self-sufficient for most of his life.

We see him mostly by himself, alone near his desk, sketching drawings of motors, engines, amongst other mechanized structures. As the omniscient narrator tell us: Tony doesn't understand the fascination over paintings imbued with passion and ideology. It is certainly fitting for a man bereft of any human connection with another individual to identify with the colder, impersonal realm of mankind.

His lonely streak finally ends when he meets a woman at work. She is pretty, approachable, and most importantly of all, attracted to Tony. After a semi-rocky courting, they finally marry. Tony relishes in this foreign arrangement, but this exchange of intimacy with another person has Tony terrified. He is terrified because, as the narrator informs us, he might be lonely again, regressing back to his former state of isolation.

Maybe I'm too hypersensitive for my own good, but I wept a little when I heard these words. I felt that it could've not been a more articulate way to express the vulnerability of humans, especially the ones living in this modern age. Tony is aware of the cruel, unrelenting nature of time: Just as his mother died within days of childbirth and his father barely escaped the "thin boundaries of life and death" in POW camp, he can easily lose all this one day.

As it is, the inevitable does happen. I shall not reveal the unfortunate fate of Tony's wife and of their relationship, but the biggest rift in their marriage is her shopaholic tendencies. As she, herself, summed it up during their first encounter together: clothes help alleviate the emptiness she feels. After Tony's delicate mention about her habits, she frustratingly tries to restrain herself, only to surrender to the compulsions. In lesser hands, this subplot could've been ripe for (unintentional) camp, but in director Jun Ichikawa's hands, this consuming dysfunction only adds more layers to the film's restrained and somber mood: Tony's wife is not in control of her actions, which in turn, diverts his state of love and companionship to loneliness, once again.

With his wife gone, Tony becomes downtrodden, and then obsessed. In a Vertigo-esquire twist, he hires a woman who is the spitting image of his wife to take care of the house while wearing his wife's fashion couture wardrobe. The hired housekeeper's reaction to the extensive collection of wardrobe is more or less, abnormal--and of which, unexpectedly serves as a waking call for Tony.

Tony realizes that the only way to obliterate the obsession of his wife is to obliterate all of her clothes. As The Christian Science Monitor pointed out, one of the underlying themes of the film is "the complex relationship between objects and memories." As the narrator aptly tell us: the clothes are like lurking shadows; ghosts, if you must. What was once worn by a breathing, living body has now been only relegated to the closet. Tony could not bear looking at the clothes without thinking about her.

His father, the one who has long neglected him, passed away not much longer afterwards. Tony does the same thing to his father's belongings (a trumpet and a collection of records): he obliterated them. For what good are objects if they only remind one of pain? One could argue that although Tony and his wife shared different feelings about objects (she wanted to obtain them, whereas he wanted to obliterate them), they had one thing in common: both internalized objects into their inner selves.

The relationship humans have with objects is only a secondary theme. The film, for the most part, is simply about loneliness and how an individual such as Tony deals with that state of loneliness.

As you can tell, I love this film (otherwise, I'd probably not write so damn long). But this film is not for everyone. A couple in the movie theater gave up within twenty minutes into the film. A lady in front of me told her companion (when the movie was over) that she was tempted to sleep throughout the showing.

But if you are a sucker for atmospheric portraits of loneliness, slow and beautiful pans, and crazy about the empty urban architectural spaces in Edward Hopper's painting, then please, by all means, see Tony Takitani.

I'm a big Murakami fan and was fortunate to see Issey Ogata live in Chicago a decade ago. When I read this story, about six weeks before seeing the movie, it struck me as an atypical Murakami story, but then I'm not sure what's typical of his work, anymore. It does revisit his theme of the disappearing wife/girlfriend, but not in quite the same way as "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" or "Dance, Dance, Dance." There's jazz. There's a WWII P.O.W. thread. There's a vehicular accident. There's a guy who seems to be living on the edge of his own life. All regular Murakami themes, but for some reason, when I read this story, it struck me as operating on a different plane from most of his other stories, maybe because it lacked the high-energy freaky magical realism of "Wind-up Bird Chronicle" or "Wild Sheep Chase." So while all these other flashy stories have been romping around in my imagination as potentially the first movie made from a Murakami work, this quiet and sad little tale snuck right past me.

Using Ogata in this story also seems atypical, not that I'm fully conversant with his career, but when I saw him, he was doing a one-man show of mostly hilarious material stretched out on the Lily Tomlin-Marcel Marceau continuum. He's also a lot older than Tony Takitani is in the early scenes where he plays him as a college student, and that's something Ogata doesn't do much to disguise. That may be the most typical Ogata thing in this movie. In the stage show I saw, he used minimal makeup and did all his character changes in full view of the audience, including the drag turn, and, dang, if he didn't look like Lily Tomlin's twin sister! It was nice to see Rie Miyazawa in two non-kimono parts. And this is seriously non-kimono. Having both leads play two roles apiece is charming and a great showcase for these talents.

I loved how faithful it was to the story as a literary object without being stilted. It was reminiscent of Paul Sills' story theatre and had the quality of a fable. It was both literary and cinematic, no easy feat. And, speaking of feet, Rie Miyazawa's are very expressive in this picture.

Director Jun Ichikawa demonstrates a uniquely idiosyncratic film-making style somewhat reminiscent of Yasujiro Ozu's work in his constant use of lengthy medium shots shot at waist level, as well as a certain narrative sensibility that focuses on elliptical episodes to unfold a story in a subtly uneventful manner. Unlike Ozu, however, Ichiwara verges somewhat toward contrivance in unspooling his tale, one that feels more like a paean to Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo". However, the Freudian subtext and Baroque melodrama of that classic have been submerged in favor of glacial pacing and implied emotionalism.

The title character with the staccato name is the only son of a renowned jazz trombonist. He grows up to become a lonely technical illustrator who obsesses over his work and remains content in his solitude. He finally meets Eiko, a beautiful, demure woman with an even greater obsession - an uncontrollable desire for designer clothes. Upon his insistence, they marry and live happily for a time, so much so that he realizes he can never live without her. True to Murphy's law, tragedy strikes, and the plot turns on what Tony does next to fill the void in his existence. Based on a short story by popular writer Haruki Murakami (who wrote the intriguingly surreal "Kafka on the Shore" released last year in the US), the 2005 movie effectively captures the author's highly stylized world, in particular, Tony's solitude in a series of lingering silences and mundane activities punctuated by acts of quirky behavior.

The beautifully muted cinematography is by Taishi Hirokawa, and it reminds me of Gordon Willis's work on Woody Allen's "Interiors". Similar to the Bergmaneque feeling of that film, Hirokawa achieves a consistent aesthetic that matches an art design that sees characters occupying clean white and gray spaces rendered with a soft graininess. Moreover, the camera moves gradually though pointedly from left to right as transitional devices to move the story's action forward as if following a horizontal timeline or looking though a series of slides. The technique is intriguing at first but eventually feels contrived, just like the literary conceit of having the characters finish the narrator's sentences (Hidetoshi Nishijima provides the penetrating voice narration throughout the story). There is also a meditative, Windham Hill-esquire music score by the estimable Ryuichi Sakamoto, which aptly captures the evocative nature of the story structure.

The acting is unobtrusive to fit the mostly quiet atmosphere. In true Hitchcockian fashion, Ichikawa has his two leads play double roles - Issei Ogata plays Tony and his jazz musician father, and Rie Miyazawa plays Eiko and Hisako, the woman who responds to Tony's ad. Truthfully, neither makes that vivid an impression in either role, and that is part of the problem I have with the film, the lack of indelible characters to inhabit the hermetically sealed world that Ichikawa and Murakami have created. The paper-thin plot yields very little opportunity for emotional payoffs, and there is little that remains resonant after all is said and done. Even at a brief 75-minute running time, it feels like slow going and lingers with a vague sense of hopelessness. By the way, the DVD has no significant extras.

All of us have felt loneliness at one time or another. Probably not to the extent that Tony (Issei Ogata) felt. His father made sure he would be lonely by giving him an unusual name which prevented acceptance from the beginning.

After years of loneliness, he takes a beautiful wife (Rie Miyazawa). He is no longer lonely, but becomes fearful that he will experience loneliness again.

The beautiful piano music that plays throughout and the minimal sets remind us that loneliness is ever present. The film moves slowly, just as loneliness might move.

Tony is fairly happy after marriage, but another problem crops up. His wife is obsessed with clothes. We are talking Imelda Marcos obsessed. She is addicted to buying and it consumes her to the point that she cannot stop without withdrawal.

Her obsession causes her death and Tony is alone again. He struggles through the loneliness in strange fashion. We have moved from the action of his married life, back to the minimalism.

Jun Ichikawa did a magnificent job of using voice-over and music and set to create the perfect mood and a perfect retelling of Haruki Murakami's novel.

This film, minimalist in the best possible sense, is a lyrical study of isolation and loss. Tony Takitani (Issei Ogata) grows up the loner kid of a jazz-playing, loner father. Like his father, Tony masters an art, drawing, and eventually becomes very successful. Early in his adulthood Tony has a few failed romances but never considers marriage until, in middle age, he meets a woman fifteen years his junior, the sight of whom for the first time adds an unshakable pain to his profound solitude.

A long sequence of aged Japanese photographs acts as a prelude to the film, telling in a few minutes the story of Tony's father. This section of plot takes up a much greater portion of Haruki Murakami's original short story, and Jun Ichikawa made a wise decision in reducing it, though utmost respect for the source material is in evidence throughout the film.

And then Tony's story itself begins, and if you are going to fall for this film, you do it then. From start to finish, really, the film is an episodic accumulation of small, deeply-touching scenes tied together by very simple yet evocative piano music and the enchanting voice of a narrator (Hidetoshi Nishijima) whose warm, thoughtful delivery makes one think of some poet of a bygone era.

Tony's courtship of Eiko and his subsequent troubles draw us closer and closer to this sad, beautiful soul until his loneliness finally becomes absolute. Ichikawa solidifies these intense layers of feeling with wonderfully basic techniques: stirring skylines and skyscapes used as backdrops; lovely, tangible environments; and discrete, minimalist camera angles--key conversations shot from behind the characters, over the shoulder, for instance. As a side note, the one film to which I can compare "Tony Takitani" is Laurent Cantet's "L'emploi du temps" (France, 2001), which has a similarly touching minimalism married to the intense inner lives of characters.

I was fortunate enough to see "Tony Takitani" at the 2005 Seattle International Film Festival, and of the films I have seen at the festival over the past decade, this ranks among my favorite three--the others being the 1996 Israeli film "Clara Hakedosha" ("Saint Clara") and 1999's "A la medianoche y media" ("At Midnight and a Half") from South America. I cannot imagine a better feature film to first bring the brilliant writing of Haruki Murakami to the big screen.

Note: Murakami's "Tony Takitani" was first published in English in the April 15, 2002 issue of The New Yorker.