The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

102 Takeshi Kitano Fallen hero Actor and director Takeshi Kitano seeks to undermine the traditional notion of the virtuous and invulnerable protagonist as an instigator of a heroic narrative. He creates powerful filmic explorations of a contemporary notion of heroism. Employing a spare style of acting and a masterful use of silence, which is counterpointed by absurdist humour, Kitano captures the decline of the heroic character at the precise moment of his fall from grace. His directorial debut, Violent Cop 1989, demonstrates Kitano’s confident storytelling approach and signals his interest in problematising the notion of an irreproachable protagonist. He uses narrative pauses, sparse dialogue and empty frames to focus the audience’s attention on his complex characters and the subtleties of their interactions; his delicate, understated filmmaking techniques provide stark contrast to abrupt intrusions of violence. The opening scene of Violent Cop follows a group of high school students who viciously beat a homeless man for entertainment. Kitano plays the lead, a police detective who invades the home of one of the boys and beats a confession out of him, vividly capturing the moment when his character crosses the line of no return and begins a rapid descent from righteous heroism. He avenges the injustice but transforms the boy into a victim, taking his place as the aggressor. The transgressions in Violent Cop unleash a string of consequences leading to the character’s onscreen decay. His inevitable destruction is both tragic and glorious as he struggles to follow a path to redemption. The cinematic study of the consequences of violence is central to Kitano’s exploration of his failing heroes. Unlike traditional acts of heroism which equate violent force with restrained and unavoidable collateral damage, Kitano’s heroic violence is excessive and messy, not stylised into palatable and exhilarating action sequences. Kitano strips his violence of conventional film melodrama, presenting his central character’s actions and the resultant reprisals as gritty inversions of cinematic expectations of heroic fiction. Kitano is careful to connect the dead to their killer — often a protagonist will pause over a dead body to absorb the reality of what has transpired, the camera lingering on a trail of blood or a grimace of pain. The protagonists who carry out these acts are often yakuza (members of Japanese criminal organisations) or police officers. Rather than being physically and emotionally impervious, they are fragile and at the limit of their endurance from the outset. As the decay and destruction reach their climax, the only redemption possible for these characters is death — an onscreen liberation realised through self-sacrifice. Kitano’s presence in Japanese popular culture is ubiquitous: he is often referred to as the most famous person in Japan, and is a source of humorous social and political commentary. A prolific artist, he is also a writer of poetry and fiction and a regular contributor to newspapers. The majority of his creative output, however, is through television. 1 In contrast to his movie roles, Kitano’s television persona is primarily comedic. Drawing from his performance beginnings as a stand- up comedian, Kitano’s TV persona is often the prankster, regularly making fun of celebrity guests he interviews, and hosting game shows which deliver slapstick humour in the form of extreme physical challenges and outlandish costumes for contestants. For mainstream Japanese audiences, Kitano’s television career largely overshadows his filmmaking; they are more accustomed to his work as a comic and struggle to engage with his more serious film content. International audiences know him best as a filmmaker. Violent Cop and Sonatine 1993 garnered critical acclaim, but it was Hana-bi 1997, with its delicate balance of tenderness and characteristic nihilism, which brought the actor–director to international prominence. Kitano’s most recent cinematic trilogy Takeshis’ 2005, Glory to the Filmmaker 2007 and Achilles and the Tortoise 2008 expands his exploration of the flawed hero, from yakuza and police officer alter egos to the self- referential realm of the filmmaker. Kitano’s bold yet serene storytelling evokes a mood of uncertainty. His questioning of masculine mythologies offers the viewer a glimpse of the taboo notion of the hero as a flawed mortal lacking mythic strength or resilience — an everyman breaking under the pressure of expectations, his own as much as others. Rosie Hays Endnote 1 Tim Smedley, A Divine Comedy: The Films of Takeshi Kitano ,<http://www. kitanotakeshi.com/index.php?content=resources&id=31 >, viewed September 2009.