"Shokuzai", in my opinion, deserves 8/10, as a TV series, but if we consider these episodes as separated units, because they are more or less accomplished little films, I'll give them lower values. I think, besides first episode titled "French Doll" anyone else of next four episodes wouldn't be Kiyoshi Kurosawa's favorite for individual distribution as a movie. Simply, with this TV series Kiyoshi didn't achieve quality of his previous TV projects - "Seance" and "House of Bugs".
Don't get me wrong. This Kiyoshi's work also is, without any doubts, surgically precisely shot and directed, well-written and well-acted, but he didn't build up it's own reality, virtual reality, which every artwork have to contain in order to persuade the audience, that this screen's reality is more "reliable" than real world. Artistic reality doesn't imply mere reflection of our everyday lives, which is, sometimes, exciting and upsetting, but otherwise prosaic. In fact, it implies surrealism, vividness, using symbols, metaphors, allegory, phantasmagory, everything we could have found in the best Kiyoshi's movies, such as "Pulse", "Charisma", "Loft", "Cure", "Bright Future" etc.
K.Kurosawa is one of my favorite directors, therefore my expectations were too high, although this project obviously wasn't conceived as an artwork but mass consumption TV product. In the end, I hope that his next projects will be made for theatre, not for TV.
Don't get me wrong. This Kiyoshi's work also is, without any doubts, surgically precisely shot and directed, well-written and well-acted, but he didn't build up it's own reality, virtual reality, which every artwork have to contain in order to persuade the audience, that this screen's reality is more "reliable" than real world. Artistic reality doesn't imply mere reflection of our everyday lives, which is, sometimes, exciting and upsetting, but otherwise prosaic. In fact, it implies surrealism, vividness, using symbols, metaphors, allegory, phantasmagory, everything we could have found in the best Kiyoshi's movies, such as "Pulse", "Charisma", "Loft", "Cure", "Bright Future" etc.
K.Kurosawa is one of my favorite directors, therefore my expectations were too high, although this project obviously wasn't conceived as an artwork but mass consumption TV product. In the end, I hope that his next projects will be made for theatre, not for TV.
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