This time, we edit a user review of what I've come to realize may well be my favorite film of them all, Takeshi Kitano's Hana-bi, also known as Fireworks:
"Fireworks" is a direct translation of the Japanese title "Hanabi," which combines the two words "fire" and "flower." The title was chosen due to the juxtaposition of the calm beauty of a flower, and the burning intensity of fire, which perfectly captures the feeling of this Beat Takeshi masterpiece.
I was expecting quite a different film, one more packed with violence and action, something more along the lines of a John Woo/Chow Yun Fat creation. Instead, this is a calm, understated and emotional film peppered with miniature explosions like...fireworks. The pacing of the film is typical of Japanese storytelling, patient and quiet allowing enough time for a story to build fully and characters to live and die on the screen.
Takeshi gives such a complete performance, saying everything with a glance or a movement. Dialog is almost unnecessary, although when it does come it punctuates the scene fluently. He is equal parts warrior and lover, tender and hard. Kayoko Kishimoto delivers an equally wonderful performance as Miyuki, Nishi's wife, dying of leukemia yet able to charm with a smile.
Visually, the movie is stunning, full of creative scenes and transitions. Takeshi knows when to have the action appear off-camera, and when to focus. The use of nature as an element in the film is beautiful, as the story moves from snow to sea to mountain.
Takeshi "Beat" Kitano is one of Japan's greatest modern filmmakers, and "Fireworks" is one of his greatest film. A stunning film.
By user review standards, this is decent, if a tad unmindful. By that I mean that the writer doesn't appear to have paid attention, while writing, to what he'd already written. This heedless embrace of the moment, though beyond common in internet writing, generates an awkward sort of repetitiveness: see the recurring "calm" and "stunning" or the same ideas that keep resurfacing. I'd say we have around 200 words of solid thought here, but they're lost among 250 of them. You may laugh, but a 20% drop in mass can make the difference between okay-ness and excellence.
Despite the sketchiness of opening a review with a point about the work's title, the writer does reasonably well with it:
"Fireworks" is a direct translation of the Japanese title "Hanabi," which combines the two words "fire" and "flower." The title was chosen due to the juxtaposition of the calm beauty of a flower, and the burning intensity of fire, which perfectly captures the feeling of this Beat Takeshi masterpiece.
Though he has the stuff of a strong (if long) first sentence, he spreads it over two of them with nearly 50 words. Better, I submit, to begin with a single, clean swordstroke than a series of staccato jabs:
"Fireworks" is a direct translation of the Japanese title "Hana-bi," a combination of the words "fire" and "flower" that juxtaposes calm beauty and burning intensity, perfectly capturing the feeling of this Takeshi Kitano1 masterpiece.
I came up with a rule while revising this piece: don't write what things are, write what they do, which of course, is just a fancier version of Strunk and White's injunction against the passive voice, but my version's a lot easier to remember. Favor action over description, and if you must describe, work it into the way you convey an action. We've turned a statement about what the title is into one about what it does; all, I submit, to the good.
The writer puts his next observation somewhat more... problematically:
I was expecting quite a different film, one more packed with violence and action, something more along the lines of a John Woo/Chow Yun Fat creation. Instead, this is a calm, understated and emotional film peppered with miniature explosions like...fireworks.
Serious speed bumps here include "I was expecting," "more packed," "violence and action," "John Woo/Chow Yun Fat" and the dreaded ellipsis, the short, dotted road to the realm of the high school literary magazine.2 We can smooth this sentence out by converting it into one about how the movie defies the writer's expectations from a couple of them about what his expectations were and what the picture is instead:
Against expectations of violent action along the lines of John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat, this understated, emotional film is peppered with miniature explosions — like fireworks. Its quiet, patient pacing, typical of Japanese narrative, allows time for a story to build, for characters to live and die onscreen.
I'm still not 100% comfortable with the timing of that reveal of the word "fireworks," but it's an improvement. (As I believe Hoyle originally wrote, em dash trumps ellipsis every time.) Another quick-and-dirty rule has emerged: write about how, not about what.
I agree with the writer's next claim, and with its subtext — in most of the other films I've seen, the pacing royally sucks — and so its poor expression troubles me all the more deeply:
The pacing of the film is typical of Japanese storytelling, patient and quiet allowing enough time for a story to build fully and characters to live and die on the screen.
In almost any case where padding is not the goal, "the pacing of the film" is better rendered as "the film's pacing." Here, we can get that down to "its pacing," no problem. As before, we'll want to discuss about not what the pacing of the film is, but what the pacing does. And rather than saying the pacing simply is a few adjectives, let's emphasize them by leading with them:
Its quiet, patient pacing, typical of Japanese narrative3, allows time for a story to build, for characters to live and die onscreen.
The next two sentences' fragmentation badly fogs their clarity:
Takeshi gives such a complete performance, saying everything with a glance or a movement. Dialog is almost unnecessary, although when it does come it punctuates the scene fluently.
We shouldn't have to use this many brain cycles figuring out that the writer means that Kitano's nonverbal performance alone so nears completeness that he barely needs to speak. (But for what it's worth, that's true.) Condensation works wonders:
Kitano gives such a complete performance with glances and movements that dialogue is almost unnecessary, though when it comes it punctuates scenes fluently.
I'm still not sure what the writer means by "punctuates scenes fluently," but that's not the sort of thing I'm here to correct.
The remainder of the paragraph sets off a bunch of low-level "not quite right" alarms:
He is equal parts warrior and lover, tender and hard. Kayoko Kishimoto delivers an equally wonderful performance as Miyuki, Nishi's wife, dying of leukemia yet able to charm with a smile.
"Equal parts warrior and lover, tender and hard" reads like back-cover copy on a Harlequin novel, but never mind; perhaps a slight rephrase can damp the romance-novel effect. We should otherwise leave this passage alone, save to address the concern that Nishi, Kitano's character, has not been introduced by name:
He is equal parts warrior and lover, as tender as he is hard. Kayoko Kishimoto delivers an equally wonderful performance as his wife, dying of leukemia yet able to charm with a smile.
Something about that "dying of leukemia yet able to charm with a smile" sits less than right. Maybe because the ability to charm with a smile doesn't feel precluded enough by terminal leukemia to warrant a "yet"?
Following that, we have yet another solid statement chopped into shapeless chunks:
Visually, the movie is stunning, full of creative scenes and transitions. Takeshi knows when to have the action appear off-camera, and when to focus. The use of nature as an element in the film is beautiful, as the story moves from snow to sea to mountain.
This lumpen accretion of sentences about what the movie is, what Kitano knows and how beautiful te film's use of nature is can, fortunately, be transformed into one sentence conveying directorial action:
Kitano fills this visually stunning movie with creative scenes and transitions, beautifully using natural elements as he moves from snow to sea to mountain, knowing when to put the action off camera and when to focus on it.
After all, why waste time declaring that, visually, a movie is stunning when you can instead write something more informative about a visually stunning movie — better yet, perhaps something that indicates how it's visually stunning?
I hardly need add my agreeement with the writer's final lines:
Takeshi "Beat" Kitano is one of Japan's greatest modern filmmakers, and "Fireworks" is one of his greatest film. A stunning film.
As much as I'd delight in stripping this bare of equivocation by striking out both instances of "one of," that's playing too fast and loose with the original text. We can, however, unhesitatingly 86 "A stunning film" guilt-free, since we've already got one use of "stunning" — more than enough — two sentences back. With some additional streamlining, we'll end the review in a way that does justice to its subject:
Takeshi Kitano is one of Japan's greatest modern filmmakers, "Fireworks" one of his greatest films.
Here's our final product:
"Fireworks" is a direct translation of the Japanese title "Hana-bi," a combination of the words "fire" and "flower" that juxtaposes calm beauty and burning intensity, perfectly capturing the feeling of this Takeshi Kitano masterpiece. Against expectations of violent action along the lines of John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat, this understated, emotional film is peppered with miniature explosions — like fireworks. Its quiet, patient pacing, typical of Japanese narrative, allows time for a story to build, for characters to live and die onscreen.
Kitano gives such a complete performance with glances and movements that dialogue is almost unnecessary, though when it comes it punctuates scenes fluently. He is equal parts warrior and lover, as tender as he is hard. Kayoko Kishimoto delivers an equally wonderful performance as his wife, dying of leukemia yet able to charm with a smile.
Kitano fills this visually stunning movie with creative scenes and transitions, beautifully using natural elements as he moves from snow to sea to mountain, knowing when to put the action off camera and when to focus on it. Takeshi Kitano is one of Japan's greatest modern filmmakers, "Fireworks" one of his greatest films.
1
Fans know that Takeshi Kitano works under two names: Takeshi Kitano and
Beat Takeshi, the former for directing and the latter for acting.
Technically, then, Hana-bi is a Takeshi Kitano film starring
Beat Takeshi, but for simplicity's sake I'm going to change all of the
writer's varying usages of Kitano's names to either "Kitano" or
"Takeshi Kitano", which seems to be the de facto convention in English articles about the man.
2 My high school's literary magazine, on whose staff I very briefly had a place, was actually titled Ellipsis. One of its poems had a line about "the bright new moon."
3 I never thought the day would come when I would edit the term "narrative" into rather than out of a piece, but there it is.
Remember: Whatever happens happens for a reason.
Posted by: jordan 2 | November 02, 2010 at 08:58 PM
Dear, please remeber that don't miss your smile forever!
Posted by: Air Force Ones | November 07, 2010 at 09:49 PM
After all, why waste time declaring that, visually, a movie is stunning when you can instead write something more informative about a visually stunning movie — better yet, perhaps something that indicates how it's visually stunning?
Posted by: buy viagra | April 08, 2011 at 09:10 AM