There are film makers who do not need any introduction. Their films have been incorporated into the collective memory of the film-loving world population. People eagerly await each new film. The latest Kitano! Many hope they can again experience the sarcastic euphoria of Sonatine (1993) or Violent Cop (1989). But Kitano himself does not need to continue to repeat the gangster roles of 25 years ago. He makes that clear in this film, a bizarre satire on every conceivable variation on film making. His humour here is dry, black, capricious and scorchingly devastating. No means is left untried in order to mock the great film maker Kitano. The film was not very enthusiastically received. Apparently people still yearn for Kitano as a cool, amoral and violent Yakuza. Glory to the Filmmaker was regarded as a light-hearted sequence of burlesque scenes. This verdict totally ignores the underlying ambition of the film maker to map out the whole landscape of cinema upside down, in a manner of speaking. No, Kitano is no longer the great gangster, but he is the great satirist who has discovered his own grand form of humour. Kitano himself criticises the Kitano that everyone loves. It has been written that in this film he is the emperor without clothes and that does comprise an unintended truth: the naked film work of Kitano is imperially hilarious. Banzai! (GjZ)
