TIFF REPORT: Q&A with HANA director Hirokazu Kore-eda

Both Todd and Opus have written fine reviews of Hirokazu Kore-eda's Hana for ScreenAnarchy so there's really no need for me to take a go at it, other than to offer a transcript of the Q&A with the director after its first TIFF screening.

Prefacing that the film, although a period piece, addresses contemporary issues, Kore-eda was asked why he decided to set the film at the turn of the 18th century and what attracted him to the samurai genre? He stated that initially he came up with the idea after 9/11 when the spirit of vengefulness was at a peak. He wanted to make a film with the theme of revenge, but, he wanted it to be a comedy or to have comedic elements. He then wondered what the film might be like if it was about a samurai who was compelled to avenge someone's death but who really didn't want to? Also, currently in Japan there is a resurging obsession with the samurai warrior code, which makes Kore-eda uncomfortable. He wanted to somehow address these patterns of vengefulness appearing once again in human history to comment upon how they interfere with peace.

He was asked about the cinematic citation within Hana to Kenji Mizoguchi's Genroku chushingura / The 47 Ronin. He responded that people of his age around the New Year usually watch this film about the tale fo the 47 samurai who avenge their lord's death. It's a tale very familiar to people of his generation.

With regard to the film's title--Hana--which is the Japanese word for flower, Kore-eda explained that the full title of his film is Hana yori no naho which roughly translates as "something more than a flower" so, in a way, the Western abbreviation of the title is misleading. The lord of the 47 ronin who committed suicide allegedly left a note indicating his regret in the metaphor of a flower and Kore-eda was playing with this metaphor. Throughout the film samurai are associated with cherry blossoms and there is some discussion that the beauty of this equation is that samurai, like blossoms, must die. However, Kore-eda adeptly offers a counter-interpretation that what is beautiful about the cherry blossoms falling is that they will return the following spring. Death, then, is seen as something like the middle of a long life and not an end in itself; certainly not a goal in itself, which is often the predictable trajectory of the samurai code.

Further, Kore-eda was asked if there was any significance to the fact that Soza's bird was named Hana and that it is eaten by a cat. Kore-eda complimented the questioner's hearing because the bird's name was indeed Hana but was not named in the subtitles. He wanted the reference kept subtle and admitted he had, perhaps, his own reasons for naming the bird Hana, which he declined to expand upon.

One of the true delights of the film, lending to its comic atmosphere, is the film's music. Asked about the music, Kore-eda responded that he wanted to use music that no one would expect to hear in a samurai film. He employed a group of musicians who play with antique European instruments from that era. He wanted to use music that would have been contemporaneous in Europe to the time the film is set in Japan.

Asked about the set design for the tenement slum in Edo, Kore-eda admitted he has never done a historical scientific study of how many people lived in abject poverty at that time. He did discover that at that time they hadn't yet developed the technique for building houses on a slope so, in a way, this representation in his film might be inaccurate. Then again, his set design was in response to his frustration with how sturdy and well-built the houses of poor people are in most samurai films so he purposely encouraged his set designers to make the tenement slum as shabby as possible.