It can seem as if Gongoro (Masatoshi Nagase) isn’t all that pleased to hear from Hanjiro (Ken Watanabe) that his son Kikuo has a gift in “Kokuho” when it’s for kabuki theater, a grand tradition in Japan but one that involves Kikuo dressing up as a woman when no females were allowed on stage. The fact that Hanjiro, a legendary kabuki actor in his own right, is sitting next to Gongoro at a performance is a credit to the gangster who craves legitimacy, but his son is a mystery to him, dressed up as a geisha and unlikely to enter the family business, wondering what will be of his own legacy. He won’t get to see it when almost immediately after the performance of “Snowbound Barrier,” Gongoro is killed in the opening minutes of Lee Sang-il’s absorbing family epic, though not before taking out a few men of his own right in front of his son right after the show, a lasting impression that Kikuo takes into his career even if it’s not the one his father likely wanted.
Inheritance is a curious thing in “Kokuho,” an adaptation of Yoshida Shuichi’s novel of the same name, though the writer only wrote the book after previously working with Sang-Il on the film “Rage” and the director expressed interest in doing something set in the kabuki world. No detail of the art form isn’t given lavish attention from Sang-Il, presenting each play in the film with its title and a note about its plot as if it’s a museum piece, but making it anything but a relic when everything from the careful application of makeup to the beat of taiko drums has an intensity behind it. The idea of theater also takes on an additional meaning as Kikuo (Ryô Yoshizawa) is eventually asked to become Hanjiro’s successor on stage, a daunting proposition as is when the actor is a national treasure, but one fraught with tension when Hanjiro’s own son Shunsuke (Ryûsei Yokohama) is an actor as well that trained alongside Kikuo for years after the family took him in following his father’s death. Like Kikuo’s father, Hanjiro didn’t see the exact same path for his son as himself for slightly different reasons and both young men, who are close as friends personally and professionally find success as a dual attraction, have to adapt to the roles they’re offered, putting as best a face they can on despite feeling as if they’re disappointments to their fathers while still very much at times revealing how the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
The film covers five decades, beginning in Nagasaki in 1964 just a year before the atomic bomb would change everything, and when kabuki is rooted in very direct emotional expression, Sang-il follows suit, taking bold dramatic swings that keep the three-hour drama moving along at a constantly riveting clip. It is mildly frustrating that the women in the film are generally not afforded the screen time to justify their importance to the story overall, such as Fujikoma (Ai Mikami), a geisha that Kikuo takes on as a lover though his heart belongs to the noncommittal Harue (Mitsuki Takahata), who also seems a bit underserved as she becomes intertwined with both Kikuo and Shunsuke, but a more charitable view is that it’s the same cutthroat attitude that Kikuo and to a lesser degree, Shunsuke, have as the pursuit of professional success leads to any supporting character in their lives getting short shrift.
“Kokuho” becomes really interesting when the violence Gongoro was drawn to as a yakuza would seem to manifest itself in how mercilessly Kikuo approaches both his craft and career. Sang-il summons suspense not unlike a crime film when with time, the dangers of the actor who has no time for distractions gradually starts to see what time he devoted to the stage as obstacles to reaching his full potential when he has less outside experience to draw on as an actor and when fortune is fickle, he spends more time lamenting lost opportunities than taking advantage of the ones that are available. For all of the film’s resplendent recreations of kabuki classics, Sang-il finds just as rich a text in the tale he’s telling and the film demonstrates the full force of dedication for better or worse, observing harmful effects for characters whose devotion to their art can be blinding but yielding an end result that’s undeniably powerful.
“Kokuho” will be distributed by GKIDS in the U.S. at a later date.