When thinking about Christmas films, Satoshi Kon may not be the first filmmaker that comes to mind. His work is distinctive and can often be mind-bending, examining the gray area where fiction and reality come together during an age of quickly advancing technology. Due to budget constraints, Kon would often experiment with his animation by using storytelling techniques like match cuts, overlapping dialogue and flash-forwards and flashbacks in order to pack as many ideas he possibly could in a short runtime. In his debut feature, Perfect Blue, this created a necessary sense of distress and paranoia as a young pop idol turned actress is tormented by an obsessive fan and loses her sense of self in the confines of coercion and complicity. It pondered the complexity of identity and terror of perception – subjects perhaps even more relevant today than in 1997. For his second film, Millennium Actress, his approach manifested in an almost completely opposite way, which, rather than foreboding horror, celebrated cinema as a record of memory through the lens of a lifelong romance. With his first two features, Kon established himself as a master of illusion, forcing audiences to interrogate the boundaries between an impression and the material.
While Kon’s third film, Tokyo Godfathers, is more linear and grounded in reality than Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, it shares a fascination with identity, tearing down false appearances and shallow judgments to reveal its characters’ true stories. On the surface, the film’s central characters are just three unhoused people. Gin (Tooru Emori), an alcoholic gambler, calls himself a “bum,” Hana (Yoshiaki Umegaki) is a brash yet lonely trans woman and Miyuki (Aya Okamoto) runs away from her family as a rebellious teenager. But Kon and co-writer Keiko Nobumoto, who also wrote the screenplay for the revered television anime Cowboy Bebop, see past these easy labels and find the emotional turmoil, dire circumstances and resulting guilt that have brought each character to where they are.
The film follows the trio as they survive as a make-do family. While searching for a meal on Christmas Eve, they discover an abandoned baby in the trash, and with little information to work with, the three attempt to return the infant to its parents. The plot is a rough retelling of John Ford’s 1948 western 3 Godfathers, which itself is an adaptation of the Biblical story of the Three Wise Men. As the outcasts search for the baby’s parents, they confront their pasts and embark on journeys toward absolution and redemption. The film is a tale about dealing with feelings of regret and finding joy in the most difficult situations. It humanizes the trio, and as a result, places communities that society mostly chooses to ignore front and center. While Kon doesn’t take a particular stance on any contemporary social issues, his stories make careful observations on the systemic oppression that affects his characters’ lives.
This may make the film seem grim, but Tokyo Godfathers is filled with humor. Along the characters’ journey, they run into a yakuza boss trapped underneath his car, argue about not eating cats despite hunger and engage in a hilarious car chase. Levity can also be found in the many Christmas miracles that occur throughout the story such as when Gin gets in an argument with a drunk customer outside a store, causing him to narrowly avoid getting hit by a truck that crashes into the entrance of the building. The film has its tender moments too when the trio act like a family unit to keep the baby safe. Hana takes on the role of the mother and grows protective over the child and Miyuki while Gin also fights for the family, becoming an “action hero” in the final traffic chase sequence. The family also finds community in a group of drag queens that Hana had worked with years ago. This idea disrupts the tradition of the nuclear family as the characters find solace in one another.
Even 20 years later, Tokyo Godfathers finds the true meaning of Christmas. With the holiday becoming increasingly more about commercialism – Kon fills Tokyo with billboards and makes markets out of religious sites – the film realizes the importance of supporting one another regardless of relation. Like many of Kon’s ideas, this type of depiction of a found family was ahead of its time, appearing in future films like Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2018 Palme d’Or winner, Shoplifters. The portrayal of Hana was also groundbreaking for a relatively mainstream Japanese animated feature. Although Kon originally intended her to be a male drag queen, many, including the most recent GKIDS English-language dub, have interpreted the character to be a trans woman. Tokyo Godfathers contains an emotional nuance that not only stands out from the rest of Kon’s work but animated films in general. Make this a part of your collection when the next holiday season comes around.
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