The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, November 16-22
Hana-Bi (1997)
Directed by Takeshi Kitano
The 69 year-old Japanese superstar Kitano—actor, filmmaker, author, and television host, among other roles—is in many ways multi-sided. He adopts two names in his practice: His behind-the-camera moniker, as well as his stage name, “Beat” Takeshi. He is a longtime comedian known for making yakuza films that alternate quiet, melancholy scenes with moments of violence. His directorial career is marked by shifts and changes, among them a 1994 motorcycle accident that left half of his face paralyzed and led him to accentuate the subtleties of an onscreen persona that had already shown itself capable of being subdued, minimalist, and cool. During his time in recovery, Kitano created a number of beautiful, simple pointillist color paintings of nature scenes, which appear onscreen throughout the second film he shot following his accident and first in which he starred, the Golden Lion award-winning Hana-Bi.
The film’s title translates to Fireworks while combining the Japanese words for “fire” and “flower,” two images that appear throughout the paintings. These paintings, along with frequent Kitano collaborator Joe Hisaishi’s marvelous score, bring much emotional power to this work about a reserved former police detective (played by Kitano) who broods on tragedies he’s witnessed: The loss of his young child; the death and wounding of fellow officers in a shootout with a suspect (one of whom, wheelchair-bound, paints and inspires his colleague); the claiming by leukemia of his wife (Kayoko Kishimoto), with whom he spends time at the seashore during what are potentially her final days. Detective Nishi himself faces danger from yakuza hoods to whom he has fallen into debt while seeking treatment for his beloved. Hana-Bi contains several shootings, stabbings, and beatings, all of which are rendered in brief, suggestive fashion. This violence, rather than titillating, depicts the fragility of bodies as objects within a film that offers respect—and even love—for human life. Aaron Cutler (November 17, 2:45pm, 7:15pm; November 22, 5pm at the Metrograph’s Kitano retrospective)