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The Perfection of GIRI HAJI



The final episode of this extraordinary series included one of the single most audacious and hermetic  pieces of choreography that one could ever hope to see in a tale of violent redemption among the yakuza. 

Or indeed in most other contexts.

At the climactic point at which multiple plot strands have plaited together, including through a butterfly effect from the other side of the world, in perfect union on a London rooftop with a motley array of hardened types facing off and a teenager poised - literally - between life and death one might legitimately expect either another blood soaked confrontation or a deus ex machina intervention. 

Instead what takes place would not have been out of place in high opera or ballet. 

The scene fades slightly to monochrome, the movement becomes formalised, more characters appear and everyone becomes quite literally a choreographed version of themselves. They  move together and apart, they cling for a moment, they face each other. Their movement is both of their own volition and that of the others. The threads between them are visible through the dance.

It has become relatively commonplace to talk about balletic violence usually meaning little more than  that the speed of the frames has been slowed down or that shards and fragments of glass provide a kaleidoscopic background as one more person is added to the body count.

What happens in Giri Haji is of quite a different order. 

Not only is there no violence this is a kinetic resolution of moral dilemmas. The movement comes from the inside of each character but its expression is the means of reaching a conclusion, on deciding what must happen, on what matters most. 

Reflecting interiority with such intensity has the same emotional heightening as an aria or a pas de deux. It teeters on the brink of absurdity but clings on because what is being represented is genuine and recognisable to all even if we rarely bring such a profound level of feeling to the surface.

The series and this sequence in particular has received high praise, and near adulation in some quarters, and it feels entirely merited. A mixed media world in which the artefacts of two quite different cultures are brought to bear and universal moral dilemmas are played out at the interface between them.




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