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Mathew Scott

Hana-bi
Takeshi Kitano,  Kayoko Kishimoto,  Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe
Director: Takeshi Kitano
There was a time, in mid-1990s Japan,  when there was no escaping 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano. Turn on the television on any given night and he was there, in one of his many guises, from chat show host, to comedian, to game show prankster.
It was about this time that Kitano also turned to matters more serious - albeit in his own unique way. As an actor, first, and then by jumping behind the camera as well, Kitano had begun to make his mark with ultra-violent cops-versus-yakuza films that threw in a liberal dose of the madcap comedy that had been his trademark (along with Kiyoshi Kaneko) as the stand-up team, Beat Brothers, in the 1970s.
From the start - through his appearance in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983) and the likes of his own Sonatine (1993) - Kitano was always concerned with blending the brutal with the beautiful.
But nothing, really, prepared his fans - or critics and film-goers around the world - for Hana-bi  (or Fireworks as it was titled for international release), which won the filmmaker the Golden Lion at Venice in 1997.
It has all the elements of a Kitano film. The man himself playing a near silent lead, periodic explosions into high violence, and crazed segues into slapstick humour. But what it also has - more than any other film the man has made - is a heart.
At its core, Hana-bi is a story about devotion. It's the tale of  a man haunted by the horrors around him who sacrifices everything he knows to support the one thing in his life that really matters: his wife.
Kitano plays a cop whose partner has been crippled, whose daughter has been murdered, and whose wife (sweetly played by Kayoko Kishimoto) is dying of cancer. Sounds grim.
But you're more fixated with how the character (above) deals with things, almost without a word. He  borrows money from gangsters so he can support his wife, takes to painting, but is - inevitably - drawn back into the real world, try as he might to escape.
The filmmaker has an inherent ability to capture the workings of a very normal life and juxtapose it with the madness that  swirls around the edges of society. There are very personal elements thrown in - Kitano turned to painting when recovering from a motorcycle accident that almost claimed his life - which  make the atmosphere all the more poignant.
Hana-bi remains Kitano's finest work, and a hauntingly  beautiful essay on love.



FILM (1997)