There are basically three separate stories told in the film. The first follows a pair of lovers who run into trouble when the male, Matsumoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima) leaves the woman, Sawako (Miho Kanno). This causes Sawako to make an attempt on her own life, which fails, and results in her finding her way into an asylum -- and that's exactly where Matsumoto later finds her on the very same day he realizes what he's done and runs out on his current wedding plans with another woman to go and search for her. The second story is about an aging Yakzua boss (Tatsuya Mihashi) who left his ladyfriend one day on a park bench, he thought for good. Fifty years later he returns to that park only to find that she is still there awaiting his return. The third story follows a Japanese singer who, at the height of her popularity, gets facially disfigured as the result of a very unfortunate accident. She's obviously not too happy about this, but a multitude of her fans keep her going through their undying devotion.

There's not a lot of dialogue here, and the stories on the surface are quite simple. The actors, when you pay attention to some of their movements, expressions, and dialogue do act very much like dolls throughout the film. If the story doesn't work for you, and for a lot of people it just plain will not work at all, the visuals Kitano has conjured up for this film are so gorgeous that it makes the film worth sitting through anyway. If you can't get into the symbolism or metaphors that are littered throughout the movie, the cinematography from Katsumi Yanagashina is so stunning that you can chuck all of the dialogue and storylines out the window and it is still easily enjoyed as a delicious piece of eye candy. The landscapes and sets used for the production are incredibly lush and colorful with a very large portion of the area in which the movie was shot covered in thousands of red leaves. This gives the movie a very theatrical look, and when set beside the bright whites of the snow covered areas, makes for quite a pretty visual contrast.

What makes Dolls less a snooty and pretentious art-house project and more a fascinating and personal work isn't so much what Kitano tells us but more aligned with what the viewer brings to the experience. Yes, Kitano does lay on the symbolism and the sadness thick and heavy and this was very obviously quite a personal project for him rather than a commercial one like his recent updating of Zatoichi (which, by the way, I thought was horrible and nothing more than mass marketed pap).

But how much you get out of it will depend almost entirely on what your own life experiences have taught you about love and loss. If you're one of those rare people who have simply hopped and skipped through life without a care in the world and never had your heart broken, this movie isn't going to speak to you, Turn the volume down and put on a record or something and just enjoy the visuals. But if you've ever had your heart crapped on by someone you cared about, and you're willing to relate your own experiences to those portrayed by the ‘dolls' Kitano orchestrates like a puppet master, then you'll probably take get a whole lot more out of this film, and as such, it will be a more emotional experience. It's hardly a happy movie, but it's a very well made one that reaches Bergman-esque levels of melancholy and does so with such beauty that it's bound to have an impact...

Final Thoughts:
Those expecting a bleak Yakuza film like Kitano has delivered in the past or a mainstream action film like he kicked out with Zatoichi will be in for a bit of a surprise, but in all likelihood it will be a very pleasant one. Dolls comes highly recommended.

The major thrust of the story concerns Matsumoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima). He is a proper scumbag. What? (Yeah, a rotten, cheating scumbag.) He agrees to an arranged marriage with the boss' girl even after he had just announced his marriage to Sawako (Miho Kanno). Understandably, she is annihilated by this news and attempts suicide. Discovering what has become of Sawako, Matsumoto flees his marriage ceremony to be with her. Their former romance continues in a very bizarre fashion.

But that's not the whole story. There is a yakuza boss Hiro who left his love in the lurch when he decided to better himself. She vowed to wait for him... and 30 years later, in their favourite park, on the day she always waits. There is also the heartrending story of life of pop starlet Haruna who is disfigured in a car wreck... her number one fan Nukui makes her feel a lot better with his gut-wrenching act of devotion. And still there's Matsumoto and Sawako - they call them 'bound beggars' - staggering to their final destiny.

As Kitano describes in his interview...his films are usually a blue-grey palette - but not this one. Dolls gleams with light and colour and cinematographer Katsumi Yanagishima brings out the best of the Japanese seasons and scenery. The musical score by Jô Hisaishi is decidedly American Beauty in atmosphere, minimalistic and romantic with a staunchly Japanese flavour...

Kitano initially sat out to make a film with beautiful colors and about people who loved each other. But as the idea progressed, the project began involving the motifs of Chikamatsu, narrative elements of Bunraku theatre, Japanese symbolism and rituals, the seasons, color-coding – all to carry a single memory from Kitano’s childhood. Kitano complicated matters further, by, as always, experimenting with new approaches to narrative structures and ellipses.

On the surface, Dolls is an allegory about love, with the typical Kitano motif of balance, here between giri (duty) and ninjô (passion). Below the surface, Dolls is a celebration of love, life, death, nature, examination of Chikamatsuian fatalism and shinjô versus Kitano’s fatalism and much more.

With so much crammed into one film, it is hard not to be flawed, and Dolls is a flawed film, it would be wrong not to admit it; even Kitano is unhappy with the result. But it is hard to put the finger on any one thing and say, "this is why it fails". Perhaps it is so, because it doesn’t fail. Perhaps we say it fails, because we are used to one form of Kitano and he wants to renew himself constantly. Perhaps we expect too much, perhaps we expected to little, perhaps a lot of things. But fact is, that regardless how flawed it is, regardless of all the perhaps’, once one decipher its codes, it all comes together in something so beautiful, so overwhelming, that one can’t do anything that to give in.

But how does one rate Dolls? Should I consider the casual viewer, who ignored and dismissed it? Should I approach in favor of those who will decode / have decoded it and thus is drawn to its sheer genius? Should film which demands dedication from its viewers be rated lower or higher than film that just entertains? It all comes down to the question, "How does one rate art?"

Where the casual viewer ignored and dismissed it, those decoding it can’t seem to let it go and constantly return to marvel at its sheer genius. I decided not to rate it, but let what Tony Rayns wrote about Kitano, in Sight and Sound (6/03), end this brief review, as Dolls for better and worse is a piece of art.

"The sheer idiosyncrasy of the film bespeaks the singularity of the position Kitano has carved for himself as a director… He makes the best he's able to of each project that comes his way, greeting successes with self-deprecatory modesty and shrugging off failures while gearing up for the next one."

Early reports on the film drew comparisons between "Dolls" and "Magnolia" and though that's accurate in some respects - both films employ multiple, thematically-linked storylines - it's also quite misleading. "Dolls" is a very quiet, subtle film, a meditation on love gone wrong. Kitano tells a trio of stories here, two of which are embedded in the first. The film's core is the story of Sawako and Matsumoto, a young couple of Japanese lovers engaged to be married despite their poverty.

Things fall apart when Matsumoto is matched up with the daughter of his firm's owner. Though he initially resists the match, pointing to his prior engagement and the strength of his feelings for Sawako, he eventually yields to the pressure of his parents and the lure of a comfortable life. Matsumoto breaks his engagement with Sawako and enters into a new engagement with his boss' daughter. The morning of his wedding, two friends arrive at the ceremony, pull him aside, and tell him that Sawako has attempted suicide and is in the hospital.

Feeling horribly guilty, Matsumoto leaves his new bride at the altar and goes to the hospital to see Sawako, now catatonic in her grief. He discharges her from the hospital and makes it his mission in life to care for her even though this costs him his job. The two of them, now homeless, wander throughout the country, tied together at the waist to prevent Sawako from wandering off.

As the couple, now something of a folk legend called the Bound Beggars, moves through the country, Kitano cuts away to tell us the stories of other similarly tragic figures that they come across. The first is of an aging yakuza crime lord slowly coming to the realization that he threw away the best part of his life when he left the lover of his youth to go and make something of himself. Meanwhile, the lover returns weekly to the park where he left so long ago and waits for him to keep his promise and come back to her. The second story deals with a Japanese pop star who has survived a horrible car accident and now lives in seclusion so that nobody can see the damage done to her face, and the adult groupie who has spent years worshipping her from afar.

To say any more about the individual stories would be a disservice to the film, but they are truly haunting and beautiful.

"Dolls" is a bittersweet, tragic film. Though we're given absolutely minimal information on the characters, the performances are so strong and subtle that you have no problem believing one hundred percent that these are real people on the screen. Their pain is palpable, as are the bursts of hope and joy that flash throughout. The pacing, though much slower than what North American audiences are used to, is absolutely perfect and the visuals are simply stunning. This got a standing ovation when the closing credits rolled and absolutely deserved it.