The film begins with a performance of Bunraku, Japanese puppetry. Although the performance is lovely, one wonders what does it actully have to do with the film? This becomes evident when Matsumoto is introduced. Matsumoto is a low ranking salaryman, but one who has a great opportunity to get his foot into the world of Japanese business when his boss asks him to marry his daughter. The girl seems pleased, The girl's parents seem pleased, and Matsumoto's parents are overjoyed because the marriage would equal higher social status not only for their son, but them also. However, there is one major problem: Matsumoto is already engaged and in love to the cute Sawako. However, because of familial pressures, Matsumoto concedes to marry the boss's daughter. As a result, Sawako attempts to commit suicide.

However, Sawako survives her suicide attempt, but is left in a near vegetable state. She does not speak much, and when she does it is usually to inanimate objects. She also has the tendency to wander off, which Matsumoto tries to remedy with by tieing her to a red string which he also ties around his waist. At first they are quite sedentary , but soon they begin wandering the country, eventually dressed in the robes resembling those of Burraku puppets.

The movie does not only center around Matsumoto and Sawako. There is also an old yakua boss, who returns after 30 years to find that the girl he once loved still returns every saturday to a bench in the park to bring him lunch. There is also the sad case of a pop idol who maimed her face in an accident, and the fan who loves her regardless, even going to the extreme to prove his devotion.

Dolls is a fantastic film. Very slow paced, but extraordinarily rich in scenery and subdued emotion. The camera work is lovely, and Japan's changing seasons are given full attention. Autumn's maples are truly fabulous.

Inasmuch as he has kept mostly to his unique style, Kitano has also tried things different, most noticeably in his 8th film, Kikujiro, a light-hearted story of the relationship between a man who is a bit of a rascal and a boy, under the popular highway movie formula. Conspicuously missing the usual violence or tragic tone in Kitano's films, Kikujiro is mildly sentimental, with considerable satire on the central character played by himself and reflecting, some say, much of himself. While Hana-bi (Fireworks) in the traditional Kitano genre is still his best work to-date, Kikujiro has had considerable success in trying something new and different. Dolls is a new attempt at the same thing. It is easy to agree that many of the traditional Kitano elements are no longer found in Dolls. It's harder to agree on what is new, and for what purpose.

People talk about Dolls as three stories. It is not entirely so, at least not in the sense of Amores Perrors (2000) which comprises three balanced, interwoven stories. In Dolls, the main story of Sawako and Matsumoto dominates. The episode of the pop singer disfigured in a car accident is only a brief interlude. The third story, about the yakuza boss, has a little more background but is still too scanty to be considered a parallel story. The connections between the three stories are quite haphazard.

A frequently applied angle in looking at Dolls is its beautiful cinematography, simply in terms of Kitano's desire to show the natural beauty of Japan in the four seasons. That Kitano loves to shoot the beauty of the sea is well known to followers of his work. It is not unreasonable to assume that he has gone further in that direction to try to shoot a film of cinematography splendour. But I do not totally agree. While I won't go to the extent of saying that pursuit of aesthetics in Dolls is purely incidental, I think it's only a small part. I would even venture to say, although many would undoubtedly disagree, that these breathtakingly beautiful scenes were put in there as an afterthought.

Also frequently mentioned is Dolls' obvious theme of absolute devotion. Such emotions in Doll, however, are one-dimensional. The pop fan's expression of devotion towards the disfigured idol will more likely bring a shudder than a sigh. The woman's weekly bento box for the yakuza boss may elicit for her some pity which, however, would be more for a mentally imbalance person than for a devoted lover. Even Matsumoto's devotion to Sawako stemmed from his having gone astray in the first place. From Dolls, the audience does not get the depth and warmth of resonance as in Hana-bi, from detective Nishi's feeling towards his terminally ill wife and disabled partner.

More interesting is the reference to Bunraku puppetry, particularly gradual evolution of Sawako's physical movement as the mystical journey progresses, from that of a disoriented mental patient to that of a puppet. How deliberate this transformation is, I cannot tell. But this does seem consistent with the refrain of the Bunraku scene at the end, and the ultimate fate of the couple. The tragic end does follow Kitano's tradition but here at least is some joy in seeing Sawako's memory revived from being brought to the scene of her original wedding engagement with Matsumoto. The interpretation of the Bunraku metaphor, however, is left to the audiences' imagination.

Artists may not always on a conscious level be fully aware of what are the motivations and ultimate objectives of their creation. In the case of Dolls, it may well be that from a spontaneous inspiration by the Bunraku theatre, an idea gave birth to a project, and the film simply evolved as things moved along. After all, even Tolkien confessed that Lord of the Rings originated from a much humbler endeavour in a children's story The Hobbits, and "...the story grew in the telling", as he said.

Often quoted is Kitano's own remark that Dolls is his most violent film. The obvious interpretation of this is that while there is clearly less visual, graphic violence, the emotional violence in the name of devotion surpasses everything we have seen before in Kitano's films. But Kitano could be making this remark simply to provoke reactions, to initiate debates. Maybe there is really no need to explain everything. We can simply see Dolls as another experiment of Kitano at creating something new and different.