Hana-Bi

Takashi Kitano's Hana-Bi (translated as Fireworks, 1997) takes away all the artifice of the genre action film, leaving in its wake the skeletal remains that is this film. Dialogue is never as important as the psychology of the action to Kitano, which explains his preference toward understated and nearly expressionless characters. However, Kitano also infuses his film with a grace and artistry that allows it to transcend its rigid genre status and prevail instead as an intimate character study.

Nishi (Kitano) is a cop consumed by the guilt of leaving an stake-out to see his sick wife at the hospital. His partner, however, was gunned down and paralyzed for life while he was away, an act that first is expressed in cold blooded revenge but later as an internalized disinterest with the types of morality that he was once expected to hold up. Instead, as his wife's health continues to worsen, Nishi turns to crime in an effort to give her a last few weeks of comfort and economic bliss, all while evading the mob and police.

Like his other early minimalist film A Scene at the Sea, this film's best moments occur between Nishi and his wife, when the two share an intimacy, though it is very much unspoken. There is a way in which her reaction to his rage is very much pathological in itself, since she displays no reaction to his outbursts. The juxtaposition in this film, though, is what privileges it above its kind. Whereas Nishi very much surrenders to his guilt vis-a-vis violence, his partner, now in a a wheelchair, utilizes his to new condition to turn away from his former life as a cop and now teaches himself art (all of the paintings in the film were actually painted by Kitano himself in another parallel, since this film is the direct result of Kitano trying to recover from a motorcycle accident that scarred his face and limited his ability to convey emotion through it).

As a result of this confluence between fiction and nonfiction, the commentary between art and violence as those which the two cops depended on becomes nicely woven throughout. One relies on a medium that saves and projects the regret outward, the other internalizes and becomes consumed by his guilt. The finale, which seems to suggest hues of purity and references Fellini's La Dolce Vita, ultimately becomes fatalistic as Kitano forecloses any narrative pathway for revenge to allow liberation in this film.

Hana-Bi was the film that awakened international critics to the full potential Kitano has as a filmmaker, and its power has not lessened in time. Such a good film, ripe with subtext.

Hana-Bi: 10/10