Fireworks: Expressions of Pain through Violence and Paint

Clyde Mulroney

Patrick Noonan

Japanese Cinema II

5/1/2020

Fireworks: Expressions of Pain through Violence and Paint

Kitano Takeshi’s acclaimed Hana Bi is one of the stranger movies I have seen in a long time. The first words that come to mind when describing this movie are that it held an aura  both ominous and almost confusing. From the outset, we are already met with not one but two near-speechless protagonists, a violent detective, Nishi, and a now paralyzed one, Horibe, who both are now caught in the serious throws of self-doubt and depression after narrowly escaping a shootout with their lives. The majority of the director’s filmmaking perspective is from the eyes of Nishi, but he makes very clear to compare and even mirror these two men all the time to show that they are part of the same force of good, hope, and beauty, even with Nishi’s habit of violence.

The cerebral and ethereal aspects of this movie's visual style and temporality through montage serve to promote this overall sense of senselessness and delusion. Nishi and Horibe are both not only plagued by the incident – that left the former jobless and scarred, and the latter paralyzed and depressed – but plagued by a society appearing to leave them behind. Horibe's previously beloved family abandoned him immediately after he is injured, leaving him even contemplating suicide.

Horibe's feeling of worthlessness as a result of his handicap is only solved by inevitably finding a hobby with painting after Nishi sends him supplies. Nishi, however, is not so fortunate as to be relieved of his pointless wanderings. Despite his violent tendencies, he still wants to do good by those he cares about. He takes care of his wife and Horibe, as well as robbing a bank to give money to the widow of another lost in the shootout that injured Horibe and to take his wife on a final vacation. Though Nishi and Horibe both change in very different ways after their shootout, they share similar desires of finding beauty within the life that they have left. Despite his violent means, Nishi's goal is inevitably peace and aid to those around him, just as Horibe's art is a means of expressing what he no longer can physically.

Aaron Gerow also points to an almost post realist aspect of the movie in its close depiction of the director Kitano Takeshi's own life following a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed. The author states how Nishi in part represents the director before the accident, whereas Horibe takes the place of him afterwards. He points to one scene in particular which emphasizes this point: that of the cross-cutting painting scene. They both paint for different practical reasons while, ultimately, attempting to achieve the same goal; Nishi uses paint as a mechanism for furthering his (violently executed) help and care of his loved ones. However Nishi's nurtured pattern of using violence as a means of power and dominance eventually catch up with him, and he is forced to finally either give up his own life or that of fellow cops.