structuring of hana-bi

[Joseph Murphy]

>>i think there's a logical break (or rupture?) in the conception of the
>>narrative's perspectivity. the film relates to the events in nishis past on
>>two levels: the repeated flashback (the shooting of the gangster) which is
>>obviously shown as a subjective moment of memorization. but what about the
>>presentation of the first episode in the past (nishi and horibe on their way
>>to the place of the gangster's observation; nishi going to hospital and
>>horibe being shot)? it can't be nishi's memory of the past as he is not
>>present in all the scenes. but kitano exactly suggests just that, when
>>during the car-ride he inter-cuts a shot of nishi leaning on his car in
>>front of horibe's house, which is the filmic present.
>
>Having not seen the film for a couple of years, I would hesitate to
>comment on specific shot structures, but I would suggest you hold off on
>trying to ascribe subjectivity to all of such scenes in Kitano's films.

Still, it's an interesting question, whether the time of the narrative can
ultimately be assembled in a coherent way, or whether there's something
indeterminate about the chronology.  If I remember, Kitano does not provide
the usual cues that allow you to pick up flashbacks and other jumps in time
(like a character suddenly looking thoughtfully into the distance, wavy
fadeouts, harp music, someone saying "I remember that fateful day like it
was yesterday...", and other variations), and simply cuts between them.
This elicits a lot of work from the spectator on the first viewing, and
makes it, as Aaron points out, harder to psychologize other manipulations
like the slow-motion of the shooting scene.  A comparison with Tarentino
would not be such a stretch here, as he does the same thing with Pulp
Fiction, slicing and dicing the narrative, but holding back the
conventional cues that allow you to understand how the scenes relate to
each other temporally.  The time manipulation is not psychologically
motivated, and he just cuts across them.  With Tarentino, though, all the
pieces start coming together in the end, and one is left with this
unambiguous, architectonic clarity.  Very impressive, but a classical will
to architecture, and the well-formed object.  In Hanabi, though, its not
even that cheap thing where they drop some clue at the end and make you
leave the theater thinking, "Gee,  was it all a dream?"  It's really not at
all clear and I think it'd be a great service if in your thesis you could
demonstrate your intuition that something is indeterminate (what you call a
logical break or rupture).  I would certainly want to read that.
By the way, I remember an interview with Quentin Tarentino on Japanese TV
in 1995 on one of the late-night news programs when he was in Japan for the
release of Reservoir Dogs or something, and the anchor asked who his
favorite Japanese director was, and he answered Kitano Takeshi, who was not
that well known at the time.  He spoke about Kitano's films in some detail,
called him his "opposite number" in Japan.  The interviewers were quite
impressed, as everyone up till that time had apparently answered,
"Kurosawa."
J. Murphy

PS.  desparate thesis writers are invited to consult "Natsume Soseki's
Guide to Thesis-Writing" at
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jmurphy/NSthesisGuide.html.



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Joseph Murphy
E-mail: <urj7 at nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu>
TEL: (352) 392-2110/2442. FAX (352) 392-1443
<http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jmurphy>
University of Florida, Box 115565, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
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