Hana-Bi review

[Aaron Gerow]

Here's my review of _Hana-Bi_.  L.C. offered her comments on the film.  
Has anyone else seen it who might want to give their opinions?

Aaron


Hana-Bi

Japanese title: HANA-BI
Alternative English title: Fireworks
Production Company: Bandai Visual, Television Tokyo Channel 12, TOKYO FM,
Office Kitano
Release: 24 January 1998
Length: 103 min.
Format: 35 mm; 1:1.85
Color: Color

Staff:
   o Director: Kitano Takeshi
   o Producers: Mori Masayuki, Tsuge Yasushi, Yoshida Takio
   o Screenplay: Kitano Takeshi
   o Photography: Yamamoto Hideo
   o Music: Hisaishi Jo
   o Art Director: Isoda Norihiro
   o Editor: Kitano Takeshi, Ota Yoshinori

Cast:
   o Nishi: Beat Takeshi
   o Miyuki, his wife: Kishimoto Kayoko
   o Horibe Taisuke: Osugi Ren
   o Nakamura Yasushi: Terajima Susumu
   o Tojo Seiji: Hakuryu
   o Scrap dealer: Watanabe Tetsu

Review:

                   Kitano's Inner Lives Bloom in 'Hana-Bi'

After winning the coveted Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival
for his new film Hana-Bi, Kitano Takeshi boasted of his exploit to the
sports papers in typical Beat Takeshi fashion: "I am the master!"

The statement was certainly the kind of showing off that the comedian is
famous for, but it also expresses the in-your-face pride of an artist 
whose
film work has been given recognition after years of being ignored by the
mainstream Japanese media. Hana-Bi itself can be seen as Kitano's
declaration that he is indeed a master of cinema. But as such, it 
sometimes
loses the unconventional edge that makes Kitano so special.

Hana-Bi does expand on previous Kitano themes while breaking new ground. 
The
title, meaning "flowers and fire" in Japanese (and "fireworks" when read 
as
a whole), evokes the motifs of life and death and the violence that 
connects
them that have been central to his works.

Two police detectives, Nishi (played by Takeshi himself) and Horibe (Osugi
Ren), are the film's central opposition because of their location along 
the
flower=life/fire=death axes. After Horibe was shot following Nishi's
departure from a stakeout to visit his sick wife (Kishimoto Kayoko), 
Nishi,
like Murakawa in Sonatine ("Sonachine," 1993), comes to resemble the 
walking
dead. He is laconic to the extreme, almost as empty an existence as Masaki
in Boiling Point ("3-4 x jugatsu," 1990); his only means of expression 
seem
to be unexpected outbursts of violence.

The now half-paralyzed Horibe also initially chooses death by attempting
suicide. But he forges a new life upon encountering a mass of blooming
cherry blossoms which spark in him the urge to paint. It is his 
rediscovery
of the power of life and the decision to open himself up to its creative
inspiration that allow him to tread the opposite path to Nishi.

Yet Kitano's deft editing, repeatedly connecting the two men's actions,
establishes them as doubles, indicating the degree to which the director
does not treat life and death as opposites, but as two-sides of the same
coin.

This is most evident in the character of Nishi. Despite expressing a 
virtual
death wish, Nishi's violence is oddly productive. He fends off the pursuit
by the yakuza over his bad debts, and thereby protects his terminally-ill
wife's happiness as he maintains their life together.

But paradoxically, it is as they fall towards death when Nishi takes her 
on
a last holiday at the end, that enables them to experience life to the
fullest. Life and death, play and violence, are eventually joined at the
location that often serves as Kitano's boundary between existence and
non-existence: the beach.

This intertwining of life and death may have autobiographical roots. 
Kitano
has noted in interviews how Nishi in some ways represents himself before,
and Horibe himself after, his near fatal scooter accident in 1994. Both
Nishi and Horibe are in fact "directors" within the movie, molding their
environments and narrating stories. But Horibe is the closest to Kitano, 
the
self-styled "the master of cinema," since it is through his paintings that
Nishi's tale is told.

Like Horibe, after his accident Kitano rediscovered the beauty of flowers 
he
had long ignored and began painting, creating the works that figure
significantly in the film's art design. Horibe and the paintings are more
than anything else Kitano's declaration that he is the artist of this 
film.

But just as the film's visualization of an artist's inspiration (the 
cutting
from Horibe's face gazing at flowers to the resulting surrealist works) 
is a
bit cliched, Kitano's rather conventional proclamation of his own artistry
threatens to undermine an otherwise superior film.

His previous work amazed and infuriated critics by breaking rules,
subverting narrative convention and refusing to descend to generic
emotionality. This was most evident in the poker faced characters who 
never
revealed an inner life and were thus the more frighteningly violent for
that. This was a critique of identity best represented in the Kitano's
destruction of the characters he portrayed himself. But in his new 
identity
as auteur, Kitano has created a different world. While never exhibiting 
the
conventional emotionality of Hollywood characters, Hana-Bi's individuals
have an inner life never seen in a Kitano film before. Maybe this is a
continuation of the post-accident turn towards realism begun in Kids 
Return,
but the new film shares little of that work's cruelly cold gaze. Hana-Bi
frankly borders on the sentimental and, perhaps because of that, exhibits 
a
defect Kitano's previous work never had: predictability. Kitano Takeshi 
has
proven in Hana-Bi that he is a master of cinema. But I'm left wondering
maybe it is that kind of recognition that this brilliantly unconventional
director should avoid.

Reviewed by Aaron Gerow
onogerow at gorilla.ne.jp

Originally appeared in The Daily Yomiuri, 22 January 1998, p. 9

Copyright 1998: The Daily Yomiuri and Aaron Gerow