Kurosawa wrote a short letter to Kitano before his death.
There are only a few sentences above: "Kitano, you did a great job, without you, the future of Japanese cinema would be chaos." ”
Why Kurosawa has such a high evaluation of Takeshi Kitano, and why he is called Akira Kurosawa's successor, look at Takeshi Kitano's self-directed, written, and self-cut "Fireworks".
The narrative and editing of Fireworks seems disorganized and fragmented, unlike a five-act or three-act play, which follows the order of the timeline.
In fact, this kind of editing that disrupts the timeline only enhances the friendliness of watching the movie, and if it is told according to the classical structure, "Fireworks" will become boring.
The whole story is that Kitano's colleagues were killed, injured and paralyzed during an arrest operation, and Kitano resigned after feeling remorseful about himself.
Later, in order to take care of his wife suffering from leukemia, comfort his friend Horibe, who is paralyzed and abandoned by his family, and support the widow of young police detective Tanaka, he takes the risk to borrow usury from the underworld.
But he was overwhelmed by the harassment of the underworld, and finally decided to pretend to be a police officer to rob the bank.
Send money to Tanaka's widow, buy materials for Horibe's paintings, and take his wife on a trip to complete the short but brilliant end of his life.
This script, with this narrative of beginning, development, climax, ending, and ending, is definitely more lethargic than clapping.
Takeshi Kitano naturally understands this truth, so he chose to jump and cut doubts to arouse the interest of the audience.
Then use flashbacks to put the results in front, and then restore the positive order, and decrypt them one by one in the process, such as the flashback shot in which Tanaka dies in the line of duty, and Horibe sits alone in a wheelchair looking at the sea.
At this time, the story has just begun, the time is still now, suddenly there is no explanation, the picture is a few days later, the audience is confused, but Kitano Takeshi is not ready to explain immediately.
Immediately gave a flashback picture of the past line, deepening the audience's doubts, until Kitano Takeshi bought police lights at the old car factory, he fully explained the failure of the ambush operation, and the audience suddenly realized.
This kind of editing method of "playing" the audience is difficult to master the balance, and once it is unbalanced, it will not only fail to show off the skills, but will become very messy.
Because the narrative does not rely on the script, but follows the editing, if the beginning and end of the time cannot be arranged properly, and each plot is reasonably distributed, the movie is a mess.
Its structure is similar to that of several flowers, one branch each, not to mention that each flower blooms well, at least the fruit must be on a tree.
If it is an independent article, each saying its own, it will not be a whole, just like Kitano Blue throughout in "Fireworks", making the movie look complete.
In addition to the ingenuity in the editing, Kitano's sudden violence and unexpected comedy are also quite intentional.
The violence in "Fireworks" is always without warning, and even if it happens, it will not be too much rendered, and even the action and gore are not much, concise and clean.
Just like the narrative described in the white part of the film, it is not foiled and given directly, but the violence presented is full of aesthetic ideas, rather than simple heavy taste or curiosity.
For example, at the end of the film, Takeshi Kitano and his wife both committed suicide, and did not give the scene of Takeshi Kitano raising a gun, but turned to the picture of the waves, with the gunfire outside the picture, highlighting a noisy and calm beauty of death.
This is Kitano's unique aesthetic of violence, no plasma, no massacre, and bells and whistles of the camera language, the explosion in calm, the surprise is enough to indulge in it.
In terms of humor, perhaps because of the experience of mangai, the comedy in "Fireworks" breaks the mold in a serious book.
Kitano Takeshi first presets a trap for the audience to fall into, and then makes a sharp turn when the audience thinks about the trap, and the comedy effect comes out.
For example, at the beginning of the movie, Kitano and his colleagues go to the ambush site to hand over the shift, and two young men play baseball in an alley, and the ball falls at Kitano's feet, and Horibe reprimands them for not being able to play here.
Kitano picked up the baseball and made the young man ready to catch the ball, thinking that everything was as usual, losing the ball and catching the ball, everyone was happy, but Kitano Takeshi threw the ball to another street after doing the action, and this form of contrast before and after made the baggage shake more naturally.
Of course, the most admirable thing about "Fireworks" is that it shows a sad story with a calm and silent expression.
According to past practice, stories like this in which a wife is terminally ill, a friend is paralyzed, and a colleague is beaten to death by a prisoner must also portray suffering and rectify it in terms of sensationalism.
In particular, Kitano Takeshi's heavy and breathless life, tormented by all kinds of pain, and silent, not talking to people, everything is pressed in the heart.
This kind of protagonist is too easy to tear up, and a little use of the background music may be teary-eyed, but Kitano Takeshi takes an unusual path and treats life and death with an open-minded attitude.
In the film, Kitano Takeshi does not have more than 20 lines from beginning to end, but none of them are not complaints, but most of them are comforting or helping others.
Having experienced the greatest grief in the world due to the early death of his daughter, his wife's illness, the paralysis of his friends, and the death of his colleagues, Kitano Takeshi did not feel that the world was not worth it, but chose to remain silent.
His wife only has one line, which also says "Thank you, I'm sorry." ”
This is a woman who has lost her daughter and is terminally ill herself, even if she is hysterical and crying.
But she is enjoying the happy days when time is numbered, never showing displeasure, calmly accepting the arrangement of life, and walking to another world with her husband.
Kitano Takeshi's friend Horibe was paralyzed due to work, but in exchange for his wife leaving with his daughter, leaving him alone, his life can be described as terrible.
But in "Fireworks", Horibe, encouraged by Takeshi Kitano, still tries to embrace life, watching the ebb and flow of the tide alone, watching the cherry blossoms alone, and dissolving negativity with painting.
Tanaka's widow is also not sad, her husband died, and the economy is down, which is tantamount to making things worse for a widow, but she still works hard, takes care of her children, and looks forward to life getting better and better.
Everyone in the movie did not complain about the injustice of society, let alone a large paragraph of lines to tell their own difficulties, just three words, both concise and concise, and sad to die.
In terms of camera language, Kitano Takeshi did not let it take over.
In many cases, the shots of "Fireworks" are mainly fixed shots of close-up and medium panorama, making the camera an objective recorder rather than a subjective participant.
This lens design, on the one hand, allows the audience to face the suffering of the characters and enhance the sense of realism, on the other hand, it can also leave the thinking to the audience, from take-ism to active acquisition.
But no matter what kind of understanding, you should see the positive in "Fireworks".
Life is as brilliant as summer flowers, death is as brilliant as fireworks, nine out of ten things are unsatisfactory in life, when life deceives you, do not be sad, deal with it indifferently, the future and the tenderness of the future.