Some Things are Better Left Unsaid
Often a film with little dialogue draws considerable attention to its pace and rhythm. It can be likened to music without lyrics, or a man with few words (in which case his movements become notable, or even mesmerizing in some cases). The pace of Takeshi Kitano’s films, as seen in Kikujiro, Hana-bi, and Violent Cop (not purposely selected to suit this analysis), is at once prominent with the use of music soundtracks and the inserts of amateur paintings, which recompense the unsaid.
Like a shrewd parent who chooses the right moment to exhort a child, a clever filmmaker chooses the right moment to elicit a particular emotion. Kitano does this repetitively in all three films by first, situating us in a stretch of complete silence, occasionally ruptured by mundane but always scanty dialogue, and second, flooding us with an overflow of great music. In Kikujiro, for example, when little Masao and Kikujiro arrive at Masao’s mother’s new home, the main theme starts to play just when Masao’s mother is seen walking out of the house with her daughter and husband. Before this shot, multiple cuts are made with different focuses on Masao and Kikujiro, both only speak the bare minimum to keep the story going. Masao anticipates as much as he hesitates; the contrast between the close-up shot of him and the long shot of him helps set up this dynamic. When all is finally clear to Masao, that the address is right, although the name is wrong, and that his mother has remarried, music comes on screen and accentuates his moment of realization. It then continues to pour, until it spells out how hurt Masao is. The use of music proceeded by silence or near-silence, therefore, paces the film.
Before the uniqueness of this pace is clearly laid out, another outstanding feature in Kikujiro and Hana-bi shall be addressed. Apparently, both films are punctuated by shots of colorful figurative drawings of people, animals, or landscapes. Thanks to these deliberate breaks, the films sometimes resemble kabuki plays. For example, in Hana-bi, a painting of falling snowflakes, which are depicted in the form of kanji, is followed by the scene where another round of violent killings takes place. In a way, the painting opens a new chapter of violence and self-destruction by titling it. Our eyes follow the camera as it moves across the canvas in a tracking shot; finally, some large writing in red ink appears on the snow-covered ground, saying “suicide.” There are other ways of interpreting the functions or the meanings of the paintings in this film. For example, the flower-headed animals can be understood as an allegory of the superficial beauty and civility of Japanese people whereas in truth, they are not any less animalistic than others. Alternatively, we can say that Japanese people are people without faces, and people without faces are people without identities. Such interpretations and analysis can go on in pages, but to all my intents and purposes, the key point here is that every implicit filmmaker develops a unique pace, and the relationship between the implicitness and the uniqueness is directly proportional. For Kitano, he constantly downplays an emotion until he sees fit to let it erupt. Music and paintings are used extensively in making such eruptions happen. The results range from humor in Kikujiro, sarcasm in Hana-bi, to anger and rage in Violent Cop.
“I hate having to explain everything; that’s what all this comes down to,” confesses Kitano in an interview, “Respect at Last? Hold Your Tickets,” in the January-March issue of Japan Quarterly. It should go without saying that he avoids long, fluent, and continuous dialogue for this reason, and he must have relied on other fine arts like music and paintings for the same reason too. His comedy,Kikujiro, complies with this confession, and his thrillers and dramas, Violent Cop and Hana-bi, do so too. Other formal elements, such as camera movement and mise-en-scène, are likely to have contributed to this unique pace. For example, some film scholars have looked into the significance of walking in his films. However, to my first viewings, the use of music soundtracks and paintings stood out most.
