Hana-bi

Heavy-weight romance and a very nice movie. It’s all about feelings, with very little clap-trapping. You see, neither Takeshi nor his wife say much. The bits I like most are the scenes on their trip and the regular ins and outs; they seem even warmer and pleasant, in contrast with the rest of the movie. An exceptional piece. (01.01.2012)

A trivial masterpiece about hope in despair and the weight of a single moment. A laconic melodrama, which (as is customary with Kitano) breaks genre expectations and narrates through fragments that the viewer has to work hard to compose. Fantastic, as a sharp contrast between the sober Kitano style and Hisaishi's very intense traces, forms a strange melancholic blanket over a world dominated by seeming inseparability and closedness (of the characters and their stories). I evaluate the rest, in any case, next to the mythical Zatoichi, as Kitano's clear (intimate) peak. (19.01.2012)

Kitano again tempts death, again is lethally funny in several places and again doesn’t play by the rules. He simply plays. He doesn’t place his bets on standard dramatic plot construction. He gives priority to mood-setting shots over the distribution of information that would advance the plot. The gangster setting is presented as unexcitingly as the shots of the sea, the director’s favourite place for beginnings and endings. The non-action-packed bank robbery, partially shot with a silent security camera, is the height of apathy. The protagonist comes across as equally quiet, calm and at peace. Except, of course, at those moments when he pokes someone’s eye out with chopsticks. Perhaps no other director can transition from laughter to death in a fraction of a second. The incursions of seemingly unrelated shots and “blink and you’ll miss it” moments of gore disrupt the continuous melancholic flow and cause the film to be ambiguous in terms of feelings and characters. In contrast to the rest of the action, the depiction of an almost wordless relationship is a beautifully non-aggressive assault on the senses and the heartlessness of the world. If you want to see it as an ordinary linear narrative, you will probably find Fireworks as unreadable as its protagonist, a stoic man who is absolutely at peace with everything and who may have gone over to the dark side and perhaps just stopped distinguishing between black and white. In any case, the film has a lot more colours (due not only to the images through which one of the characters tries to establish a dialogue at least with himself). 80% (22.05.2012)