Blood and Bones

  • 144'
  • Japan
  • 2004
A virtual companion piece to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Puppetmaster, Sai’s epic fresco uses the biography of one man as a key to an entire social history. Kim Shun-Pei emigrates from Jeju Island in Korea (a Japanese colony at the time) to Osaka as a young man in 1923. A lifelong fear of poverty meshes with his compulsive womanising and his capacity for violence to make him a monster as he moves from initial success with a fish-cake business to heading a small criminal empire as a loan shark.
Sai’s film (based on a factual novel by Korean writer Yan So-Gil, also the author behind All Under the Moon) is a brilliantly staged and acted recreation of a vanished community, but it raises difficult questions about Korean-Japanese identity. Is Kim (a defining performance by ‘Beat’ Takeshi) a Darwinian product of his environment? Or a psychopath who’s able to flourish in this environment?

  • 144'
  • Japan
  • 2004
Director
Sai Yoichi
Country of production
Japan
Year
2004
Festival Edition
IFFR 2010
Length
144'
Medium
35mm
Original title
Chi to hone
Language
Japanese
Producer
Nozomu Enoki
Production Company
Office Kitano Inc
Sales
Celluloid Dreams
Screenplay
Sai Yoichi, based on a novel by Yan So-Gil
Cinematography
Hamada Takeshi
Editor
Okuhara Yoshiyuki
Production Design
Tsuyuki Emiko, Isomi Toshihiro
Sound Design
Susumu Take
Music
Iwashiro Taro
Cast
Kitano Takeshi
Director
Sai Yoichi
Country of production
Japan
Year
2004
Festival Edition
IFFR 2010
Length
144'
Medium
35mm
Original title
Chi to hone
Language
Japanese
Producer
Nozomu Enoki
Production Company
Office Kitano Inc
Sales
Celluloid Dreams
Screenplay
Sai Yoichi, based on a novel by Yan So-Gil
Cinematography
Hamada Takeshi
Editor
Okuhara Yoshiyuki
Production Design
Tsuyuki Emiko, Isomi Toshihiro
Sound Design
Susumu Take
Music
Iwashiro Taro
Cast
Kitano Takeshi