Charisma (2000) |
| Cast: Koji Yakusho: Goro Yabuike Hiroyuki Ikeuchi: Naoto Kiriyama Ren Osugi: Nakasone Yoiko Doguch: Chizuru Jimbo Jun Fubuki: Mitsuko Jimbo |
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| Running time: 103 min. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa Scinario: Kiyoshi Kurosawa Release date: February, 2000 Official website Trailer Reviews: Midnight Eye Dreamlogic. net Cinema-Repose The Japan Times (by Mark Shilling) Toronto J-Film Pow- Wow New! |
| Yabuike (Yakusho) and a local botanist, Jimbo (Jun Fubuki) |
| By Aaron Gerow (The Daily Yomiuri, February 24, 2000) With stories of religious cults on the rampage, children killing children and schools falling apart filling the newspapers in the last couple of years, it is not hard to feel that the order of things has gone awry. Yet with the immensity of these problems, you still get the feeling that they might be changes brought on by forces beyond our control. Goro Yabuike(Koji Yakusho), the hero of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's magnificent new film "Charisma", is confronted with such a problem. The police officer tries to convince a man holding a Diet member hostage to give himself up but is given a note: "Restore the order of things!" Yabuike draws his pistol, but as if affected by the note, he refuses to fire. Wouldn't it be possible, he figures, to save the hostage-taker as well as the hostage? From the very beginning of this, one of the most intensely moral introspections in recent Japanese film, Kurosawa poses the problem: does one have to choose between one or the other dying or does the order of things allow for other options? This question he refines when Yabuike, thrown out of not only the police force but in some ways also society, wanders into an otherworldly, almost allegorical forest where a similar ethical drama unfolding. Nakasone (Ren Osugi) and his men are trying to replant the forest, but all their saplings are dying. They think the cause is mysterious, almost lifeless tree called Charisma, which is being meticulously cared for on private property by Kiriyama (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi), a former patient at a sanitarium, now in ruins, nearby. Mitsuko Jimbo, a local botanist, confirms this theory to Yabuike: the tree, brought in by the former sanitarium director, is alien to this region and is poisoning the ecosystem. If you want to save the forest, you must kill Charisma; if Charisma is to live, then the forest will die. Yabuike is thus confronted with one of the central dilemmas of human society: is the individual more important than the group? or can these contradictory elements somehow coexist? ........... ********************************************************************* Mr. MARK SCHILLING's comment about Koji Yakusho is brilliant! "With the broadest range of any Japanese actor working today, Koji Yakusho is well equipped to portray Yabuike's slow coming to awareness, while never losing sight of his common man appeal. Nonetheless, his Yabuike is not a hero in the usual sense. He also has blood on his hands -- and knows no easy way to cleanse it." |
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| Yabuike starts taking care of a tree, called "Charisma". |
| Yakusho and the director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. |
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| The director of CHARISMA is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who worked
with Yakusho in CURE and NINGEN GOKAKU (License to Live).
CHARISMA is based on a scenario Kurosawa wrote several years ago. With it he won a scholarship award at the Sundance Film Festival directed by Robert Redford. |
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| Interview with Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Midnight Eye: March 20, 2001) Kiyoshi Kurosawa talks about "Cure", "Charisma", "Kairo", "ko-rei, "Barren Illusion" , and Koji Yakusho |
| Updated on January 14, 2009 |