Scriptwriter William Goldman famously said "Nobody knows anything" in the movie business, beginning with why one film becomes a hit and not another.
The latest proof of that adage is “Kokuho,” Lee Sang-il’s megahit drama about two kabuki onnagata (men who play women’s roles) who become friends and rivals as teenagers in postwar Osaka and have long, turbulent careers in this most Japanese of performing arts until one is named “kokuhō,” a government-bestowed honor meaning “national treasure.”
Based on Shuichi Yoshida’s two-part novel, the film clocks in at nearly three hours — a length generally considered box-office poison, especially with younger audiences used to consuming entertainment in quick hits on their devices. And the film’s setting — the closed, tradition-bound world of kabuki — is little known to ordinary Japanese, who may only experience a real performance on a school excursion, if that.
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