Takeshi Kitano interview

[christopher alan perrius]

On Mon, 6 Apr 1998, Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow wrote:

> 1) Violence. Violence in Takeshi does operate in system of oppositions 
> (especially with stillness and the ever present deadpan faces) that 
> prevents us from considering his films as elegies of violence.  _Violent 
> Cop_ and _Hana-Bi_, however, do not manifest this system and thus, I 
> think, harbor a much more problematic conception of violence, especially 
> as it is directed towards women.  How does violence operate here in 
> reconstructing the identities Takeshi was previously deconstructing?

Thank you for your wonderful comments on Takeshi's work.  I
recently viewed Hana-Bi, and it was the first Takeshi film I've
seen.  Could you say more about this film's variations on the
usual stylization of violence in Takeshi's work?  Stillness, at
least slow motion w/o sound, and deadpan faces seemed to be
characteristic of the style of violence in this film.
	Another opposition playing out in the film is
tenderness/violence.  Nishi fondles some rocks, gently takes
leave of his wife, then walks over and smashes the thugs faces
with the rocks.  The cops are differentiated from the yakuza by
the tenderness of their friendships, which justifies their
violence as protection of or revenge for loved ones. The two
qualities fuse in the 'mercy killing' of the wife (also where
his need to escape his debts conveniently coincides with the
doctor's suggestion to take the wife on a final trip).  
	I find her silence disturbing, but as it's not
differentiated from any authorizing male voice, I think it
would be reductionist to read it as gender oppression.  To
counter that this is the wily ideology of the film--to justify
or 'naturalize' violence against a woman through plot devices
including her terminal illness, Nishi's traumatic loss of voice,
etc--may be the same kind of reductiveness...Her passivity must
be the most disturbing, but she is dying...  
	To focus specifically on the final scene, I wonder about
the girl with the kite who witnesses the 'shinjuu' on the beach
(how would it fit in the double suicide tradition?)... Nishi
seems to delight in destroying her kite--read: 'Nishi is
sadistic to women' or 'Nishi says that women should not
have idealistic illusions'?  These are not mutually exclusive,
of course, but both are  complicated by the whole road trip, the
'gift' of romance he gives her before her death.    I find it
all quite complex and provocative...

Chris Perrius