Fireworks (1997)

Written and Directed by 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano There are few mediums that can compare to film with such deft ability of displaying the emotions, mental state, or general malaise of a single culture. This is most evident in Takeshi Kitano's film "Fireworks" where Kitano plays Nishi, a Tokyo detective whose wife is slowly dying of leukemia. Nishi's detachment from his job and colleagues grows when his good friend Detective Horibe is shot in the line of duty, compounding Nishi's guilt and sense of loss. Added in to these feelings is the fact that Nishi feels responsible for the death of another fellow cop because of his botched attempt to take an armed robber down resulted in the deaths of two fellow officers. Once Horibe recovers, he is destined to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, and upon his return from the hospital, his wife and child leave him, and Horibe slowly but surely slips into a suicidal depression. Nishi relates to Horibe's pain, because although he still has his wife, there has been a strong rift between the two since the death of their young daughter. Throughout the course of the film Nishi deals with these feelings, and begins to attempt to mend the rift with his wife by spending more time with her, by taking her home instead of leaving her at the hospital. This is not because Nishi was a cold man, he merely did not know how to deal with the guilt and shame that he felt about the loss of their daughter, and his feelings of helplessness over his wife's illness. As the story progresses, we learn that Nishi is in debt to a local Yakuza boss that loaned Nishi the money he needed to help pay for his wife's medical care, and is now attempting to collect the debt along with the interest that is accruing. As Nishi's desperation and anger grows, so does his contempt for the things around him that he cannot control, and he slowly begins to change his attitude on the moral centers that he has based his life upon up to this point, culminating with the fact that he robs a bank to pay off the Yakuza boss. This is a deliberate film filled with visual metaphors that not only reflect the issues presented in the film, but issues that are prevalent in Japanese culture as a whole, such as the suppression of feelings, the introversion of shame and the withdrawal from confrontation and loss. The cinematography and direction sets the deliberate tone of the film, with expertly framed shots that let the characters live their lives inside of it. The acting supports the emotional weight of the film, with Kitano's character Nishi rarely uttering a word, except when it is absolutely necessary. This is because of his character's sorrow filled nature, Kitano chooses to let his lack of words speak more than any words actually could. The audience is left to surmise what he is thinking about, right up until the final frame of the film. The use of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound in the film tells yet another aspect of the story, the words that aren't said are replaced with the sounds of the actions of the character, and what those sounds mean to the plot of the story. The visual design of the film is completed through the use of paintings and artwork that comes from the character of Horibe, which I understand were actually Kitano's paintings from a time when he was recovering from a terrible motorcycle accident a few years before, meaning the subtext of this film are the actual feelings that Kitano lived with after his accident. As I mentioned before, this is a distinctly Japanese film because of the space that exists between the characters, and the reluctance to deal with difficult feelings that arise from even more difficult situations. Many American viewers might find this film to be too slow paced for their tastes, but I think there's a distinct difference between boring filmmaking, and a deliberate pace to make a point, which is what I believe this film does. Not the most exciting of Kitano's police thrillers, but still a very interesting watch for the police-thriller-as-art-film experience. 9.0/10