 A film in three minutes, Hanabi. It's pretty hard to say anything new about writer, director, actor, editor, producer, television host, comedian, musician and painter Takashi Kitano, but that's not going to stop me from highlighting his award-winning 1997 feature Hanabi. Taking home the golden line at the Venice Film Festival that year, Hanabi has always been one of my favorite Kitano films, which he wrote, directed and edited, as well of course starred in. Looking at his earlier career, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this multi-talented artist only seemed to excel in ultra-violent Yakuza-themed dramas, and violence does play a large role in most of his work, but for me, Hanabi is where the director struck a perfect balance between his previous violent gore fests and a new cinematic poetry of beauty and love. The story follows the struggles of aging retired detective Nishi, played by Kitano, who is informed by his wife's doctor that her health is in terminal decline. To add to his woes, his longtime partner Horibe is injured in a shoot house, leaving him confined to a wheelchair, depressed and alone with suicidal thoughts. Nishi is indebted to a local Yakuza loan shark and so decides to steal money from a bank, using the funds to finance a road trip with his wife, whilst also supplying his friend with painting materials to help him cope with his new disability. Nishi's former detective buddies begin to suspect that he was responsible for the bank robbery, and begin to pursue him, along with the Yakuza fugs, across some of Japan's most beautiful and historical sites. The film's pacing is deliberately slow, granting plenty of quiet moments between Nishi and his dying wife. Their relationship acts as one of two emotional cause to the film, the second being Horibe's sad isolation whilst his skills grow as a painter. Kitano re-edited the film 14 times until he found a cut he was happy with, and in doing so, the film's first act jumps backwards and forwards through time. What always stood out to me was the way in which Kitano would edit shots together to create tension and suspense, particularly during the scene when his partner is injured. A lot of the cuts in the violent scenes are very hard and sometimes come out of nowhere, but the violence itself is never indulged in. It's quickly replaced with a more sedate shot of Nishi and his wife enjoying their last vacation together. On editing, Kitano has said, when I write a script, I have the entire film in my head, so when we start shooting, I just do it. I'm more interested in the editing process, so I tend to shoot in a hurry. Maybe you don't always have enough footage, but the way you play around with it is what is interesting. One of the strongest elements in Hanabi, however, is its score, composed by longtime Kitano collaborator Joe Hisaishi. The soundtrack contains some of the composer's strongest work, particularly during a poignant scene where we get to see a montage of Horibay's paintings. The paintings themselves were made by Kitano when he was recovering in hospital from a near-fatal motorcycle crash a few years prior. Hanabi may contain several hallmarks to the director's earlier work, but the end result is a wonderful combination of violence and beauty, with the odd dark joke thrown in for good measure as well.