Ember's analysis
- Pacing
- Measured
- Intensity
- Moderate
- Complexity
- Labyrinthine
- Violence
- Mild
- surreal
- witty
- detached
- arthouse movie night
- surreal cinema marathon
What critics said
Critics divided over its deliberately vague and detached narrative, while recognizing its ambition as surreal comedy and formally complex self-reflexive cinema.
What sets it apart
May contain story progression spoilers
Takeshi Kitano plays Beat Takeshi and Mr. Kitano, turning his own showbiz identity into the film's central subject.
The shy cashier Kitano is a blond lookalike of celebrity Beat Takeshi and imagines becoming him.
After the two men meet, Kitano appears to hallucinate about becoming Beat, producing an intentionally vague and detached narrative.
Auditions, television work, celebrity routines, and multiple role pairings expose performance as both subject and structure.
Films like Takeshis', and why
Being John Malkovich
surreal self-reflexivity, identity doubling, and playful instability between performance and reality
Adaptation.
metafictional celebrity satire, fractured realities, and eccentric black comedy
Mulholland Drive
doppelgänger themes, dreamlike ambiguity, and psychologically disorienting surrealism
8½
self-referential filmmaking, absurd comic detachment, and deliberately opaque narrative construction
Movie Details
- Director
- Takeshi Kitano
- Release Date
- 2005-09-02
- Runtime
- 108 min
- Rating
- 6.1 / 10 (92)
Cast
- Takeshi Kitano
- Kotomi Kyono
- Kayoko Kishimoto
- Ren Osugi
- Susumu Terajima
- Tetsu Watanabe
- Akihiro Miwa
- Naomasa Musaka
- Koichi Ueda
- Kanji Tsuda
Common questions
- What is Takeshis' about?
- A celebrity and his anxious lookalike drift through a hallucinatory comedy about fame, performance, and the unstable boundaries of selfhood.
- What is Takeshis' like to watch?
- Ember's analysis rates the pacing of Takeshis' as measured, its intensity as moderate and its storytelling as labyrinthine.
- Is Takeshis' violent?
- Only mildly. Ember rates the violence in Takeshis' as mild.
- What did critics think of Takeshis'?
- Critics divided over its deliberately vague and detached narrative, while recognizing its ambition as surreal comedy and formally complex self-reflexive cinema.
- Which films are like Takeshis'?
- Films with a similar feel include Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., Mulholland Drive, and 8½.
- How long is Takeshis'?
- Takeshis' runs 108 minutes.
