Achilles and the Tortoise

2008 JP Takeshi Kitano
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What begins as a coming-of-age satire of the art world passes through an un-engaging romantic phase and ends as an absurd story about a ruined artist—macabre undercurrent flowing throughout. The pivotal event: our artist, poor but passionate, paints a beautiful seascape; he takes it to a gallery filled with ugly, inferior works; it's rejected: too conventional. Everything he makes afterwards is an imitation of the poor and inferior, of which the film becomes a (conscious?) mirror: parade of copied styles adding up to something long and incomplete. There is still entertainment to be found in a twisty sense of humour, but what else? No beauty, no emotion, limp irony. The artist, whom we see in three stages of his life, remains a mystery, empty. Takeshi has finished this canvas. Now he should move on. Original title: Akiresu to kame.