Ten Great Foreign Films Of This Decade

Tokyo Godfathers

by Anna Pulley

Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon 2003)

“We’re homeless bums, not action movie heroes,” says Gin (Toru Emori) aka Geezer the alcoholic who gambled his life, wife and child away. He says this to Hana (Yoshiaki Umegaki) aka Uncle Bag, the toothless tranny who’s hopelessly in love with Gin and wants nothing more than to be a mother. S/he gets her maternal fix partially through Miyuki (Aya Okamoto) a teenage runaway who stabbed her cop father in a heated argument and hasn’t looked back. These three unlikely characters are not only great action movie heroes, they’re endlessly endearing and fascinating as well. Satoshi Kon (who popped my anime cherry, bless his heart) manages to turn this Charles Dickens-esque Christmas tale about the “noble poor” into a captivating, exaggerated portrait of hilarity-cum-salvation. With roots in John Ford's Three Godfathers (1948), and also Three Men and a Baby (1987), Kon takes the religious theme of Christmas miracles and juxtaposes it with the gritty, obscene Tokyo underground. He also leaves some time to spare for shoot-em-up car chase scenes, action sequences and enough coincidences to provide fodder for Alanis Morrissette’s next six albums.

The unholy trinity of Gin, Hana and Miyuki begin their triumphant tale on Christmas eve, where they find a baby among the heaps of alley trash and decide to find its parents. Hana names the baby Kiyuko, meaning “pure child” and they embark on a fantastical journey involving the Japanese mafia, Latino immigrant hitmen, delusional post-partum suicidal baby kidnappers, a winning lottery ticket and lots and lots of It’s a Wonderful Life-type reunions.

The animation is so sparse at times it seems as though you aren’t watching anime at all but a twisted kind of realism perpetrated by carnies, elves and perverts. The bleak urban landscapes and dreamlike distortions contrast beautifully with the vivid snowfall and whispered hues that blanket the city’s darker moments.

But Kon runs close to ruining the frenzied imagery and burlesque-style plot twists with sentimental tear-jerkery. He compensates for this, however, by never taking his characters too seriously. With each “Full House” revelation comes a heaping dose of bulging facial contortions, prancing, slack-jawed drag queens or skyscrapers that dance. This kind of temperament allows you to forgive scenes like the one where Gin is tearfully reunited with his long lost daughter, also named Kiyuko. Coincidence!

A third Kiyuko also comes about in the form of a mob boss’s daughter, thus expounding on the theme of the trinity, a classic Christmas premise, but on the whole Tokyo Godfathers is more Molotov cocktail than Egg Nog, upping the fairytale stakes to incorporate a socially conscious agenda with a very non-traditional “family,” who may have no worldly possessions but they do have each other and that’s all that matters really. Well, that and the bazillion dollar winning lottery ticket they happen to stumble across. But, it’s mostly about love and acceptance. Really.