[4.4]
I’m glad my Beat Takeshi journey started with VIOLENT COP, before jumping to his acclaimed masterpiece HANA-BI. I need to fill in the gap with SONATINE, his other famed film, to see the proper progression of his artistry, but just in the eight years from his first film to this one, there is an incredible elevation of focus and craft. At first, it seems like HANA-BI will be another play on the persona he crafted for VIOLENT COP: a man of few emotions, but quick to (bloody) action. Takeshi plays Nishi, whose path from violent police detective to being kicked off the force is fairly similar to Azuma’s in VIOLENT COP, except here, the events that cause his dismissal have a profound effect on his soul. While Azuma’s only care was reserved for his mentally ill sister, his love for her was more paternal, trying to protect her innocence. Nishi is different. The person he cares for is his wife, who is slowly dying of leukemia. And while there is also a paternal aspect to his love, it is more nuanced. When we see him and his wife together, they seem emotionally distant, and we get the feeling that it is only now that she is sick that Nishi realizes how much he needs his wife. His will to live is dying along with her body. But, again like VIOLENT COP, Takeshi’s story revolves around the conflict between work and family. Azuma neglects his sister because he is consumed by his job. But when Nishi is let go from the force after killing a gangster who had murdered and maimed his colleagues (with another cop noting how Nishi, in a crazed state, kept firing bullets into the corpse), he doesn’t look back. There are no “Big Bads” left to go after. No revenge to be gotten. All that is left is to live in the aftermath of trauma and despair.
Horibe, the only other cop who survived the gangster’s rampage, is left crippled. Nishi tries to comfort his friend, but Horibe, now wheelchair bound and alone after his wife has left him, is racked with depression. He thinks that maybe painting can give his life some meaning, so Nishi mails a box of art supplies to Horibe. Though these two characters never interact again, Horibe’s story is told in parallel to Nishi’s. Horibe draws inspiration from flowers, and his paintings, which start as clever hybrids of animal and flower shapes (with flowers becoming the eyes or head of different animals), become more complex, developing into pointelist renditions of nature scenes, until his final painting: a large and terrifying snowscape with the words “Suicide” emblazened in bright red. The quiet boredom and dread of these scenes is accentuated by the minimalist acting. While it seems like Horibe has at least found a hobby to fill his time and focus his attention, there is a loneliness in the way his scenes are framed, often with an image of his painting and then a cut to him looking at it. They don’t occupy the same space, suggesting that when he is finally done with his art, he is once again left with the quiet oppression of an empty room. But Horibe’s blank expression doesn’t betray his deep depression, so that we are never sure if he is recovering, resigning to his fate, or actually on the verge of suicide.
As for Nishi, we learn that he has taken out an extensive sum from loan sharks in order to pay his wife’s medical expenses, and now they are threatening him if he doesn’t pay up. Nishi buys a stolen taxi and repaints it to look like a police car, and then, dressed like an officer, he robs a bank. He sends some of the money to the widow of his dead colleague and then uses the rest to pay off his debt to the loan sharks. Nishi then skips town with his wife Miyuki, driving to Mt. Fuji, staying at a ryokan, visiting temples, and just trying to reconnect with his wife and make her happy in her last days. These scenes are very touching, especially any time that Nishi manages to bring a smile to Miyuki’s often dour face. She’s practically mute for the entire movie, so any time she lets out even a giggle, it feels like a reason to cheer. Nishi guesses the card in her hand (he can see it in the car’s rear view mirror), tries to light fireworks (it duds out on him, but then pops as he gets near it), rings a gong at the temple, falls into some sand garden art, and finally, brings her to a beach where she can go fishing and then up the mountain to see snow. We can feel his desperate attempts to bring her joy, but they keep being thwarted by the loan sharks, who hound him for more money. At the beach, the gangsters tell him they want more money and Nishi beats them up. When they approach him at the ryokan, the gangster points a gun right at Nishi’s chest. Nishi apologizes for poking out the man’s eye in an earlier scene, and as the gangster pauses in confusion for a moment, Nishi quickly slides his finger between the hammer and the rest of the gun. The gangster desperately tries pulling the trigger, crushing Nishi’s finger and making it bleed, but the finger has completely stopped the gun from firing. This is a hilariously nifty (and badass) trick, and I’m actually shocked I’ve never seen this used in a movie before. Nishi then goes and kills the rest of the gangsters and walks away in a beautiful shot of the snow at night. In the final scenes, Nishi’s old colleagues have discovered the dead gangsters at the ryokan and track Nishi down to the beach. Even though he is their friend, they need to bring him in. He pleads with them to just give him a few minutes. Embarrassed at having to arrest a friend, the cops relent. Nishi sits next to his wife, as they watch a girl play with a broken kite. The music swells, the camera pans over to the ocean and the horizon, and it seems like we will have… well, not a happy ending, but at least a peaceful one. But the music is suddenly cut off by the sound of a gunshot. And then another. We see the startled face of the girl holding the kite. And then black. Wow.
Takeshi’s directing is confident and intricate. And if anyone can claim to be an auteur, it is Beat Takeshi. He wrote, directed, edited, and starred in this movie, as well as providing all of the paintings that are key to Horibe’s storyline. And I didn’t even realize until reading a bit of Takeshi’s biography that he was involved in a horrible motorcycle accident a few years prior to this movie, and he took up painting as therapy, much like Horibe does. I also didn’t realize this probably accounts for Nishi’s very noticeable twitching on one side of his face (Takeshi’s face was partially paralyzed). The soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi is superb, but even better than the music is the sound design that Takeshi so carefully utilizes to shape the film’s tone. The whisper of wind, the crunch of snow, and the stillness of silence are major elements of this movie’s aesthetic. And the editing! Takeshi employs some clever smash cuts (one in which Nishi lights his cigarette and just as he flicks his lighter, we jump to the gangster’s gun firing; later, when Nishi fires his gun at a gangster outside the ryokan, we jump to a splatter of red on a canvas. It’s not blood, but rather red ink that Horibe has spilled on his painting, the one with “Suicide” written on it), but he never lets technique overshadow the film’s precise tone. Though the narrative jumps around in time for dramatic effect (we only learn the true chronology of events that led to Nishi’s colleagues being murdered after a few isolated flashbacks), the story remains easy to follow. And when Takeshi does employ symbolism, it never feels forced. One of my favorite moments is when Nishi sits alone in front of a fire, and he throws a bullet that he took from the gangster into it. The bullet explodes, and Miyuki looks up to the sky, startled, thinking she will see fireworks. With this simple gesture, Takeshi shows the conflict between Nishi’s personal life (the real fireworks that bring joy to his wife) and his professional life (the bullets that defined him as a policeman and that now threaten his future peace). With HANA-BI, Beat Takeshi has shot up in my ranking of Japanese directors, and while he may not be the heir to Akira Kurosawa (as some enthusiastic critics suggested), he is still a singular visionary.
burning retina 