Arguably Takeshi Kitano’s most critically acclaimed and famous work, Hana-Bi lives up to its reputation by combining every distinctive element from the auteur’s oeuvre, and stripping away the rest—including traditional storytelling structure—to create a film so unique, pure and evocative that one would be hard pressed to find a more important Japanese film from the 1990s.
Kitano stars as a police officer Yoshitaka Nishi, a tough, stone-faced man still recovering from the recent death of his infant daughter. One day, he is advised to leave an uneventful police stakeout to visit his sick wife in the hospital, who has just been diagnosed with an incurable type of cancer. While Nishi is away, his partner Horibe is shot by the suspect at the stake-out, so Nishi and the two remaining detectives track him down to a shopping mall. In an emotional burst of violence, Nishi finds himself responsible for the death of one officer and the injury of the other. He soon quits the force, to spend time with his sick wife and the paralyzed Horibe, while dealing with a number of yakuza on his tail.
While parts of the film may rehash elements present in Kitano’s earlier work, never are they used so precisely and effectively as in Hana-Bi. The deadpan stares, the jarring bursts of violence, the contemplative and poetic moments of silence, the tough-guy protag, the static long takes, the evocative Joe Hisaishi score—they all come together along with a very personal cross-section of Kitano’s real life to become something meaningful. He knows when to use elliptical editing for a laugh or a shock. He knows when to cut out the sound and slow down the movement to capture a moment of aching futility. He knows his story and the stylistic techniques inside out, so it becomes less of an experimental work and more of a masterpiece full of depth and deliberation.
And this is simply done with a minimalist approach. Whether it be the sparse, empty soundtrack, unadorned long shots of nature or the many wordless, inexpressive character moments, Kitano rarely seeks to draw our attention and sentimentalize a scene. He lets actions speak for themselves, and allows the viewer to take away what speaks to them. Kitano’s Nishi rarely reveals emotion in his myriad of close-ups throughout the film, opting to stick with classic Japanese cinema motifs of restraint and suppression and occasionally lash out in moments of stark brutality. Hana-bi itself follows the same pattern, meandering about Nishi and Horibe’s lives with slow, uneventful sequences, and when the viewer least expects it, striking us with a sudden and tragic sort of beauty.
Reviewed by Tarun
