 | Hana-bi Starring: Takeshi Kitano (as "Beat" Takeshi), Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe, Haku Ryu, Yasuei Yakushiji, Taro Itsumi, Kenichi Yajima, Makoto Ashikawa, Yuko Daike |
Hana-bi: a wank from git to go Many respected critics have gone gaga over this superficial winner of the 1997 Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion. It must remind them of the French and Italian films of heydays past. The final scene where the girl from nowhere looks at the camera is an update of the final image in "La Dolce Vita" (1959), while the two shots that ring out just before are reminiscent of the last few moments of Truffaut's "La Femme d'Coté" (1981). And Jo Hisaishi's music is a well-crafted homage to Georges Delerue, Vladimir Cosma, Francis Lai, Philippe Sarde, and particularly, Eric Demarsin, whose score for "Plein Sud" (1980) sounds like the inspiration for opening and closing themes. Kitano, (whose acting seems painfully restrained, as if he were trying to emulate Alain Delon in his Melville films), plays ex-cop Yoshitaka Nishi, whose child died at the age of four or five (we are not told how) and whose wife is now dying of cancer. Nishi's longtime police partner, Horibe (Ren Osugi) is paralysed in a shootout and forced to retire, leaving him empty and suicidal. Nishi is also in hock to the Yakuza for a lot of money (we are not told why). Initially these alternating story lines are told with confusing back to front editing (conclusions of scenes are shown before their beginnings), but once the background information is dealt with, events move along in a straightforward manner. Well, that's auteur cinema, and more power to it. Central to the film is the play-off between minimalist quietude and brutal violence. They rotate predictably and, in the end, monotonously. The plot is not "Hana-bi's" downfall; it's the one-dimensionality of the screenplay. Characters and situations are not fleshed out; everything is a device. Nishi's wife (Kayoko Kishimoto) never at any time looks other than fit. Even at the end, she is the picture of good health. Dying of cancer? We are led to believe throughout that she hasn't much time left. If anything, she is the healthiest looking member of the cast. Right after Horibe's release from hospital we find that his wife and daughter cannot bear his being confined to wheelchair: they leave him forthwith. Do we know why they are exhibiting characteristics almost unknown to wives and children? Their abandonment of Horibe is clearly unbelievable, a deus ex machina of singular ineptitude. Members of the Yakuza feature in scenes of comic strip subtlety. Rather than Manga, they are more like the kind to be found in remote cabins of Militiamen types in Montana. They act as if they were business men without frontal lobes, laughing over crude jokes one minute, blowing each other's heads off for unimaginably juvenile slights the next. We'll never know how Nishi got involved with them, but anyway, he robs a bank to pay them off and finance a final holiday with his wife. The two drive off to the seashore and the mountains, giggling inanely at life's little mishaps by the numbers. Yet wherever they go, here comes the Yakuza. Somehow Nishi has neglected to pay off the interest on his debts. Somehow, the Yakuza neglected to remind him of this at the time. Somehow we are supposed to overlook this glaringly obvious plot device. Ludicrous? You bet. Worse, how do they know where to find the couple? But wait, there's more. With his wife blithely looking out to sea, Nishi deftly rearranges their faces with a rock wrapped in a beach towel. Is she aware of this? Of anything? Beyond her rosy health, she is little more than a flesh-draped idea. Not happy with your set of steak knives? Well, not only are the Yakuza able to find the couple, but here come the police as well. Everyone knows where the Nishi's are. In the final scenes at an isolated beach, we are suddenly treated to a pubescent girl with a kite. She merrily dances around the beach all by herself, no parents nearby, no house to which she could possibly belong. She is merely planted there because Kitano thought it would be a good idea. There is no intelligence in this film. Nor creativity, for that matter. The unfathomable complexities of real life are nowhere to be seen. Nor are the possibilities of imagination in unreal life. What is evident in "Hana-bi" is the director's inability to translate either his life experience or imagination into a successful representation of anything. He hasn't got a clue. There is another worrying aspect to "Hana-bi." Behind the emotional restraint is a banal sentimentality. The kind that Hollywood was good at during the years when so many of its actors and directors turned in their colleagues to the House UnAmerican Activities. It smacks of the inauthenticity of the Right, best exemplified by the Nazis, who could send millions to their deaths while weeping over Mozart. "Hana-bi" shares a similar disconnection. Perhaps I'm being over harsh with this film; let's hope Kitano doesn't come looking for me! Hideo Yamamoto's cinematography does wonders with what appears to be a northern, somewhat bleached out, landscape. Hisaishi's music is sonorous, though often too lush for the corresponding image. But with so many superlatives from critics and audiences, there was bound to be a dissenting voice. In my opinion, like the rocket that fizzles out on the Nishi's holiday, "Hana-bi" is simply a fizzer. Harold Hark |