Atom User Reviews for Kokuho
Metacritic
The pace moves from the hustle-bustle of daily business carried out over five decades to moments of stillness from the artform – the flick of a fan and a hand moving in gentle waves, for example. The actors bring the drama to life, without being overly dramatic.
The gender questions are open-ended and the sacrifices of the artist’s life familiar ground, but Kokuho truly comes alive in the performance sequences that evoke the deep roots of theatre, and the semaphore of emotions represented in gestures, poses, strange movements and painted faces that evoke feelings beyond words.
The central narrative, of the emotional dance between these two men over decades, holds even as the running time, while never boring you, often feels exaggerated for the sake of epicness rather than wholly necessary to this telling.