'Kokuho' GKIDS Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Kokuho, which takes its title and its novelistic sweep from a recent work of fiction about the rarefied world of kabuki, begins in the mid-1960s and ends 50 years later. Steeped in modern Japanese history without explicating it, director Sang-il Lee's feature is propelled by operatic intensity and visual poetry. It unfolds over three mostly riveting hours, with only occasional jagged lapses in narrative momentum. Through its twinned stories of aspiring actors - one born into the kabuki tradition, one an outsider determined to climb its ranks - the movie blends backstage melodrama, succession saga and making-of-an-artist dynamics. At the center of its superb cast, Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama deliver exquisitely layered performances that interweave offstage characterization and onstage theatricality. Related Stories TV Emmys: 'Tokyo Vice' Star Ken Watanabe Enters Lead Actor Race, Contrary to Widespread Reporting (Exclusive) TV How 'Tokyo Vice' Captured More of Japan's Capital City on Camera Than Any TV Show Has Before After the crime drama Villain (2010) and murder mystery Rage (2016), Kokuho is Lee's third adaptation of a novel by Shuichi Yoshida. Japan's official submission to the Oscars' international feature category, the film took its stateside bow at AFI Fest before it begins a limited-release run in mid-November. Kokuho The Bottom Line Transporting and operatic. Release date: Friday, Nov. 14 (Los Angeles); Friday, Nov. 21 (New York)Cast: Ryo Yoshizawa, Ryusei Yokohama, Ken Watanabe, Min Tanaka, Soya Kurokawa, Keitatsu Koshiyama, Mitsuki Takahata, Nana Mori, Shinobu TerajimaDirector: Sang-il LeeScreenwriter: Satoko Okudera; based on the novel by Shuichi Yoshida 2 hours 55 minutes Working from a screenplay by Satoko Okudera, Lee focuses on onnagatas - the male actors who have played female roles in kabuki since 17th-century shoguns forbade women from performing. Within the story, there's no questioning of this tradition, feminist or otherwise - there's only its pursuit and the esteem in which the onnagatas' artistry is held. The double-edged sword that Kokuho examines is about character trajectory, not social conventions. Its title is a term that means "national treasure." When one character refers to an onnagata this way and says, "He'll leave nothing except his art when he dies," he means it as a sad commentary. But Lee and Okudera also mean it as the highest compliment. Even as the movie acknowledges the vanity of actors - "greedy creatures," by one character's estimation - it pays tribute to their hard work and how much of themselves they give, at least to their audiences. Strangers, of course, are easy. Before Yoshizawa and Yokohama step into the central roles at about the 40-minute point, the main characters are teenagers, exceptionally well played by Soya Kurokawa and Keitatsu Koshiyama. The film opens with a rare snowfall in Nagasaki, and its haunting allure becomes a motif of the film, lightly used and effective. During a New Year's banquet held by a yakuza (Masatoshi Nagase), a visiting kabuki actor, the renowned Hanjiro Hanai (Ken Watanabe, who starred in Rage as well as Lee's 2013 remake of Unforgiven), perceives notable talent in his host's son, 14-year-old Kikuo (Kurokawa), who performs a female kabuki role with energy and commitment. A year later, after Kikuo's father has been murdered and the boy has tried and failed (offscreen) to avenge him, his stepmother (Emma Miyazawa), in hopes of putting him on a path away from crime, sends him to Osaka to apprentice with Hanai, who is part of a lineage of kabuki actors known as the House of Tanba-ya and now heads the bloodline. Hanai's skeptical but accommodating wife, Sachiko (Shinobu Terajima), agrees to essentially adopt Kikuo and help train him. (In a heartbreaking aside, the boy notes that his birth mother died from "A-bomb disease.") Sachiko's son, Shunsuke (Koshiyama), is the same age as Kikuo and they have similar physiques, with the notable difference that Kikuo's back is covered with a yakuza tattoo depicting a fierce eagle-owl. Their sibling rivalry is instant, but so is their partnership and mutual encouragement as they train together under the exacting tutelage of Hanai. His methods, physically rough and verbally insulting, wouldn't pass muster today, and raise a few eyebrows in 1965, but Kikuo, blossoming under the attention and disregarding the bruises, considers him an "amazing" teacher. Hanjiro Hanai gives him the stage name Toichiro Hanai, placing the orphaned yakuza's son in his kabuki lineage as Sachiko looks on with concern. Whether Kikuo is a kabuki natural or merely more ambitious than Shunsuke - or, as Sachiko later declares, a "filthy thief" - his mentor recognizes courage as well as ability i