Visually one of the most outstanding films I've ever seen is the Japanese film 'Dolls'. My top favourite for last year's Intl Film Fest, this film says so much with just colours and its stunning cinematography. The film basically contains 3 different stories and it started with an arranged wedding. The groom ran away from it and visited his ex-girlfriend in the asylum who went mad when he was forced to marry into a rich family.There wasn't much dialogue between the 2 characters as they embarked on the most bizarre journey, with the female lead always in a daze that the male lead had to tie a red string on her hand to keep her from wandering off. 6 They walked thru spring, summer, autumn and winter all the while intersected with 2 other side stories. One is about a woman who waited for her lover since teenage years till she's about 40+, preparing bento lunch for him everyday and waiting for him at the park. He finally came one day but ….sigh….The next story is about a popular singer and her number 1 fan, the pretty girl got disfigured one day and her fan, in order to meet her, decided to blind himself with his last vision of her poster. Pretty strong love huh….We've reached winter and that's when the female lead finally remembers the guy and the scene was so heartwarming. She just cried and u can just feel their love after going through so much. Seasons transit in such way that they walk from red leaves to snow ground in a step, very beautifully done and the colour motif is splendid from bright red to pure white.**Magical Journey**

Visually, Dolls is a meeting between the style of Kitano's "Fireworks" and "Scene at the Sea" with that of Yimou Zhang's "House of Flying Daggers" (what with the crazy colour saturation and all). It was slow, well directed, and beautifully shot, with at least passable acting and intermittent scripting. Watching this movie is like seeing three lovely, modern Japanese short stories intent only upon evoking a mood. It isn't for everybody, but art lovers of various stripes will find something to appreciate in it.It contains 3 stories, running concurrently, told in a very confusing series of flashbacks which nearly devastate any sense of time. There is a simple and obvious thematic connection between the three tales; each focues on tragic, personal, and eccentric love. Even so, the way the stories are intertwined seems forced and flimsy. And none of the endings are very satisfying. Both the slow pacing and the many-layered memory-based flashbacks set a nostalgic, almost mournful mood, but can also alienate the audience. The film never really hits a rhythm, and the flashbacks have nothing to distinguish them from what is presently happening in one story or another."Dolls" would benefit from repeat viewing, but it's a little too much to be watched any time soon after seeing it. Also, a more thorough understanding of Japanese culture and, specifically, the bunraku (Japanese puppet theatre) which underlays the movie (both as an art and as regards the specific story focused upon in the bunraku scenes included in the movie) would make the piece more immediately accessible. There are some things I picked up on, thanks to my limited knowledge of Japan, that I doubt most non-Japanese people would know of, but I am certain there is much I missed along those lines.I'm a big fan of Kitano's work--his writing, his directing, his acting in Japanese movies, his comedy, his paintings are all impressive in their own ways--but I would not recommend this movie to most people, including the man's own fans. With that in mind, it's still worth watching in its own manner.

A filmmaker friend and fellow has recommended I watch this film. I have never seen any of previous works of Takeshi Ketano before, however heard about him plenty. Let me tell you, what a journey this movie has been for me.First of all, everyone speaks of the aesthetics of DOLLS, which I completely agree with. The movie is perfectly crafted even though at times it seems like a cat jumped on the AVID keyboard and created a few jump cuts by an accident, which was really cool. Obviously, under Ketano's precise eye, nothing is a mistake.The visuals of this film tell the story, not the words. Its a first film of a kind where you can completely shut the sound off and get the story nonetheless. With an amazing craft, Kitano explores silence, by that focusing your attention into whats on the canvas. At times, you can freeze frame and just look at the picture as if its a painting. Kitano goes into an exploration of human psyche on such deep levels that sometimes I felt like I was finding out new things about myself. Choosing themes carefully, he delivers a story about human beings and their emotions and what these emotions do to the human beings. At times, looking at us as if we are microbes under Kitano's camera-easque eye of a microscope, he adds elements into life as if on Petri's dish and sees what grows out of it, knowing that some "microbes" won't stand the chance of surviving the newly added obstacles.Just like Japanese poetry, the movie doesn't make sense at times, and yet remains purely a joy of a visual sight. Also, I was truly touched and amazed by the connection with the color red. He connects to the meaning of the rope, which is limitation and humiliation, and by coloring other objects in red he suggests that those elements are "a rope" to some of the characters just the same. The lady who waits for her boyfriend to come back wears a red hat, and she is bound to waiting for him forever. Also, the red takes over the character of the mute girlfriend of the main character, and eventually she all dresses in red, by that becoming even more of a DOLL than she was before. She surrenders herself to the "slavery" of the rope and it grows into her.In the end, I think this movie is not about one thing in particular, but more of a David Lynch approach to storytelling. Its in the abstract formulas which you can not comprehend fully, but certainly get the idea. Its in the depth of our minds where the subconscious would have to translate the pictures we see into personal meanings to ourselves.DOLLS is an intellectual paradigm, a true cinema, a MUST to watch.Thank you Tony for your wonderful suggestion! 9/10

***SPOILER*** Takeshi Kitano proves himself a multifaceted filmmaker with this tragicomic look at the debilitating power of love. While love is the one real tie that binds (in the case of the co-dependent couple here, quite literally- or metaphorically, depending on how one chooses to look at it), Kitano never loses sight of the fact that it's also a symbiotic sadness that permeates the soul. Ambrose Beirce, if memory serves, once referred to love as "a temporary madness." Moving moments are allowed to run their course on screen, to the often bitter end(s). (The finale lends new weight to the phrase "the old ball and chain." Though it leaves you hanging, it doesn't...) Another fine example of Neo-Asian art.