Document type
Round-up
Published
24 October 2005

Midnight Eye Round-Up

Rebel Samurai special

Nicholas Rucka reviews the four films in Criterion Collection's Rebel Samurai DVD box set.

Samurai Spy

Original title:
Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke
Director:
Masahiro SHINODA
Cast:
Koji TAKAHASHI, Shintaro ISHIHARA, Eitaro OZAWA, Kei SATO, Mutsuhiro TORA, Tetsuro TANBA, Eiji OKADA, Seiji MIYAGUCHI, Misako WATANABE, Jitsuko YOSHIMURA
Running time:
100 mins.
Year:
1965
DVD:
Criterion Collection - USA, English subtitles

picture: scene from 'Samurai Spy'"Any discussion leads to war," says spy Sasuke Sarutobi (Koji Takahashi) to his future fiancée Omiyo (Jitsuko Yoshimura). The time is 1614 and the uneasy peace after the battle of Sekigahara has left Kanto, which is controlled by the Tokugawa clan, and Kansai, the realm of the Toyotomi clan, in a purgatory of political intrigue, back-room dealing and double-crosses. War could break out at any point and the tension is palpable.

Masahiro Shinoda's Samurai Spy tells the story of good guy Sasuke Sarutobi and his hunt for Tatewaki Koriyama, a former lieutenant in the Tokugawa clan, who has defected to the Toyotomi clan. When the story begins, Sasuke is not sure about which side to be aligned with. Being someone who has seen too much warfare in his time, Sasuke values any peace, no matter how perilous it truly is. But it seems that he is too good at being a spy and through various external circumstances, he is forced into finding Tatewaki; if not for the tough justice that the Tokugawa clan demands of a traitor, then as an act of charity as requested by the Toyotomi clan, Tatewaki's Christian convert son and his remorseful elderly father. But in this uncertain time, people are not to be trusted and agreements and pacts can shift as quickly as the wind.

Along Sasuke's journey, mysterious, white cloaked Sakon Takatani (Tetsuro Tanba) and his band of black-clad Yagyu ninjas seem to appear whenever Sasuke most needs them (and eventually, least needs them). Sasuke can't figure out why Sakon and the ninjas would have an interest in him, but he does know that it is only a matter of time before the truth is discovered - and that might spell his own death. As people are murdered left and right and clan allegiances shift and then solidify, the fog of war begins to roll in, culminating in a showdown that is at one time both bloody and poetic and a precursor to the Osaka winter war.

In 1965, Russia and the US were in the thick of the cold war. The low simmering conflict would periodically bubble into moments of tense brinksmanship wherein each nation would wait for the other to either blink, or make the first strike. Masahiro Shinoda talks about how he was interested in the duality of this conflict: how there could be such a mess of political intrigue that could terminate so many lives, while also offering, as a result, a tense peace.

In Shinoda's world, nothing is clear and the violence is often abstracted, shot from afar, or staged in such a way that the logicality is suspect. We're not meant to understand a lot of what goes on in Samurai Spy. The plot is a twisting labyrinth with a large cast of characters whose names are often similar. Likewise, the shooting style is inconsistent: at times it is jarring, beautiful, experimental, playful, abstract, conventional and just about everything else. Clearly Shinoda was studying French nouvelle vague, but Samurai Spy seems to also to be a response, as he says, to the strict rules of bright and cheery filmmaking at Shochiku. He was young and full of piss and vinegar; no one was going to tell him what to do.

"I must stand opposed... In all of this filth and ugliness, to anything that stands in opposition to a life filled with health and goodness," says Sasuke again to Omiyo. While ostensibly the reason why Sasuke ends up siding with Toyotomi, I would posit that this is Masahiro Shinoda's anti-war stance. Samurai Spy is purposefully set during a particularly interesting time in Japanese history (and rarely explored, I might add) and the relevance to the 1965 geo-political state is intentional.

In 1965, it was unclear at that point which ideology (communism or capitalism) would ultimately triumph among nations. Shinoda, it seems, is withholding judgment as to which is the best. I don't mean this in a literal sense, but when Sasuke has his showdown at the end, amidst the 'fogs of war,' his nemesis is no more or less a killer than Sasuke has been throughout the movie. I purposefully don't want give away who the main bad guy is, but we do find an interesting abstraction and tension occurs in the final fight between them, because it could really go both ways. Does the fact that we've ridden along with Sasuke during the whole film truly make him our hero? I suppose it does if you take into account his love for peace and Omiyo.

Going back to the fight, it starts very far away, in an extreme wide shot: Sasuke and his nemesis are mere dots on a grassy hillside. Through an edit we move in to a standard wide shot of both characters, but suddenly, a low fog has rolled in obfuscating the action both for the viewer and for Omiyo, who waits in a panic on the sidelines. As a result of the fog and also through specific editing choices, we see very little sword action here because most of it occurs off screen. (Shinoda even mutes the battle sounds.) However, Shinoda makes a point of parting the fog to show us the carnage of violence. Due to this technique, we are left with the indelible message that no matter how stylized and glorious violence may appear it's actually vile. Having this on top of a story that is a twisted maze of plots, counter-plots, characters, and locations, and you are left with the impression that the precursor to warfare might not be clear, nor who is on the good versus the bad side, right and wrong; the only truth is violence. And Shinoda knows that this was as true in 1614 as in 1965: violence is a cold hard truth.

[NR]

Sword of the Beast

Original title:
Kedamono no Ken
Alternative title:
Samurai Gold Seekers
Director:
Hideo GOSHA
Cast:
Mikijiro HIRA, Go KATO, Eijiro TONO, Shigeru AMACHI, Kunie TANAKA, Toshie KIMURA, Kantaro SUGA, Takeshi KATO, Yoko MIHARA
Running time:
85 mins.
Year:
1965
DVD:
Criterion Collection - USA, English subtitles

picture: scene from 'Sword of the Beast'A bloodied and tired ronin is lying hidden amongst the long stalks of grass when a not so unattractive woman stumbles upon him and proceeds to slink out of her kimono, trying to seduce him. Ah... fortunes are looking up for the weary Gennosuke! Who, like any red-blooded man on the lam from a group of murder-minded swordsmen from his former clan, would naturally jump her bones... But not so fast! We're less than 5 minutes into Hideo Gosha's Sword of the Beast, so we know something is up.

Yep, it's a trap. And Gennosuke just barely manages to get away from his pursuers in time, stealing a horse to make his exit, to the cries of "Have you no pride?" Gennosuke responds: "To hell with name and pride! I'll run and never stop!" We freeze-frame and the narrator tells us that the samurai Gennosuke killed his Enshu clan's counselor and has run off to his home prefecture to hide. Clearly this isn't going to be a quite film about honor, right?

Wrong. This film has everything to do with honor. Admiral Perry has come to Japan and samurai Gennosuke has seen the writing on the wall: evolve or perish. So the samurai Gennosuke tries to foster a revolution in his clan - but he has been played by his more power-minded and strategic higher-ups who are willing to sacrifice him as collateral in a chess match for power. But what they fail to see, because they are so entrenched in the minutia of old feudal system, is that 'honor' as they define and follow it no longer matters in a world where western ideals will render it anachronistic and quaint.

The samurai Gennosuke, then, becomes the ronin Gennosuke and chooses to be a beast if that means being opposed to the hypocrisy and corruption of the old order. What then becomes interesting is how this 'beast ronin' actually embodies more of the bushido philosophy and moral fortitude than the system that professes to administer and protect it. Sword of the Beast, we can say, is about a man who has no class and morality, who fights immorality and protects the last vestiges of honor in a land that is quickly falling apart.

Coming from a television background, Hideo Gosha is famous for his rough and tumble brand of samurai films. To be blunt, his movies just feel different than the others that populate the jidai-geki/chanbara schools. Part of this arises out of the angularity of their production. While perhaps too obtuse of a description of his filmmaking style, as a way of explanation we find that Hideo Gosha's films, when compared to Masaki Kobayashi's formalized geometric constructions and pre-Red Beard Akira Kurosawa's long-lensed action, feel looser in direction and rougher around the edges - and consistently defy the tradition of proscenium staged mise-en-scene seen in the period drama.

Technically, Gosha's films also feel different because of their unique style of high-contrast black and white photography that is combined with a varied and random usage of long and short prime lenses and zooms. And while there is a predominance of close-ups as well as shots with very deep staging and blocking, Gosha will freely twist, turn, zoom and freeze his shots in order to propel or pause his action as needed. In so far as Sword of the Beast is concerned, Gosha seems to be less inclined to stay committed to a specific aesthetic approach and as a result this movie has a more dynamic and shot from the hip quality about it. In short, this film feels feral. Perhaps that is another reason why it's called Sword of the Beast?

[NR]

Samurai Rebellion

Original title:
Joiuchi - Hairyo Tsuma Shimatsu
Alternative title:
Rebellion
Director:
Masaki KOBAYASHI
Cast:
Toshiro MIFUNE, Go KATO, Tatsuya NAKADAI, Yoko TSUKASA, Tsuyoshi KATO, Shigeru KOYAMA, Tatsuyoshi EBARA, Michiko OTSUKA
Running time:
121 mins.
Year:
1967
DVD:
Criterion Collection - USA, English subtitles

picture: scene from 'Samurai Rebellion'You don't realize how rare master craftsmanship in filmmaking is until you see it. But then, ironically, it's not something that is so much seen as felt.

I started thinking about this when the lights went up after a screening of Masaki Kobayashi's 1967 film Samurai Rebellion. This thought then inevitably led to the realization that it had been ages since I had seen a film so well crafted in a movie theater. It seems silly to write this, but the difference between good filmmaking and great filmmaking is that with one you're aware of the craft while you're watching it while the other hits you after it's done.

Samurai Rebellion is, if not a masterpiece, than an exemplar work of directing mastery. With almost no seams that belie its structural form it is a film of such precise and exquisite design that like so many of the buildings which are lovingly shot by cinematographer Kazuo Yamada's geometrically precise Tohoscope, it's hard to point towards any one single element that makes it all work - because they all work in harmony. This means that the story, acting, drama, camera, lighting, editing, music, sound, sound design and a special invisible something that is nearly impossible to put in words (perhaps the director's filmmaking sense?) all work together equally to create a true piece of cinematic life.

Firmly rooted in the jidai-geki as social critic, Samurai Rebellion is an angry, but not pessimistic, movie that focuses on the total corruption of unchecked power, its resultant hedonism, and the futility of social protest - the 'rebellion' of the title - in a society that disallows personal freedom and expression. Samurai Rebellion tells of Isaburo Sagahara (Toshiro Mifune), an aging swordsman for a corrupt clan lord, whose son, Yogoro Sagahara (Go Kato), is forced into marriage by the clan with the clan lord's disgraced mistress, Lady Ichi (Yoko Tsukasa). The request of the clan lord is not only an affront to the Sagahara family name, but it is a cynical flexing of power that is designed to make Isaburo wallow in his social status as a lowly vassal.

As luck would have it, though, Lady Ichi and Yogoro fall madly in love with each other. The clan lord's cruelty, it turns out, was a present in disguise - and not only that, Lady Ichi's aforementioned rumored disgraceful behavior was a situation of her honor and moral rectitude conflicting with those of the hedonistic clan lord. The family is brightened by their good fortune and soon Lady Ichi and Yogoro have their first child, a beautiful little girl.

But when potential political crisis threatens to upend the clan's power structure and Lady Ichi's return to the castle proves to be the only way to resolve it, the Sagaharas' fortunes turn dark. After settling in with the family, Lady Ichi swore never to return to the castle; needless to say, she refuses to leave Yogoro and her daughter. Likewise, her husband, Yogoro, can't bear to lose Ichi and is willing to destroy the Sagahara family to keep her. And for Isaburo, a swordsman who made his name (as many did) by being an unremarkable vassal, this abuse of the clan lord's power is a wake-up call... and he will fight to the death to rectify the situation.

The original title of Samurai Rebellion was Joiuchi - Hairyo Tsuma Shimatsu, literally "Rebellion - receive the wife." The use of the term 'rebellion' is very deliberate as the concept of rebellion manifests itself in many forms in the film. One of the ways shows Lady Ichi as a lowly mistress literally rebelling against the clan lord, setting the stage for her being forced into marriage with Yogoro Sagahara. Another way 'rebellion' manifests itself again features Lady Ichi, who at this point is very happily married to Yogoro and therefore refuses to be returned to the castle like a lost cow.

Not to be patronizing, but think about these two things for a moment: Lady Ichi, a woman, refuses to follow the wishes of the ruling elite. At the time that this story is set - and one can argue that it also goes for the time when this film was released - this was pretty radical stuff. But her refusals are not only directed at the clan, but are additionally, and one could argue more forcibly, directed at the Sagahara family elite. In a time and place that was so rank and order based, her behavior could be described only as radical and revolutionary.

This being said, I would argue that the major critical manifestation of 'rebellion' as a concept in Samurai Rebellion is Isaburo's total refusal to follow the clan rule of law - after years of enforcing it, I might add - because he realizes that someone, somewhere, at some time must make the clan lord responsible for his actions! And those lower class people, who have the cosmic misfortune to have been born at a lower rank in a heavily stratified caste system, shouldn't have to take responsibility for someone who has never taken any!

This then leads to what is the major critical focus of the film. Isaburo's actions are futile - but he knows it. Kobayashi chose to make a film that is not dependent on machismo sword action (and what action there is, is collected towards the end) because he is interested in telling a story seeded with some sort of optimism. The little sword fighting that is in the film is gruesome, but not so much in blood as in its heaviness, its brute force. As viewers we get the feeling as we move steadily towards the end of the film and the sides of the castle and the distance to Edo and the futility of the scale of Isaburo's rebellious challenge becomes absolutely apparent, that he will die for nothing. And in a literal since he does, but in a figurative sense he doesn't: he dies for the viewers.

In an interview by Joan Mellen which originally appeared in Voices from the Japanese Cinema [Liverlight, 1975] Kobayashi talks about the killing of his protagonist at the end of his The Human Condition trilogy this way: "He had to die there. With his death, he lives in the minds of people for a long time, as a symbol of the hope..." He goes on to speak specifically about Harakiri, but it is apropos to Samurai Rebellion, I think: "I try to express the possibility that human beings can overcome the tragic events of the worlds... In this film, human evil takes the form of an oppressive feudal power structure. I was fascinated by the tenacious human resilience that continued to defy this extreme pressure."

As this shows, this turns out to be what Kobayashi is thematically fascinated with: stories about individuals that challenge authoritarianism. Samurai Rebellion, specifically, could then be viewed as a cautionary tale. No doubt a response to the horrors of war and the unchecked corrupt bloat of a military government that Kobayashi saw as a soldier in Manchuria, we are meant to hurt after watching the film. It IS unjust. But you have to fight, if not for today then for the future. The best lesson we can learn is to rebel so that it can never happen again.

Ultimately, this might go a longer way towards explaining the craft of the film. I have chosen in this review not to focus on the spectacular technical aspects of the film, because Samurai Rebellion, like the incredible and thematically similar jidai-geki Harakiri, feels like a movie made with great imperative. That the craft is first rate is self-evident, but the true mastery of this film is how every element of its construction is used perfectly in telling a cautionary story of rebellion that clearly Kobayashi had to make.

[NR]

Kill!

Original title:
Kiru!
Director:
Kihachi OKAMOTO
Cast:
Tatsuya NAKADAI, Etsushi TAKAHASHI, Atsuo NAKAMURA, Tadao NAKAMURA, Yoshio TSUCHIYA, Shigeru KOYAMA, Eijiro TONO, Shin KISHIDA, Hideyo AMAMOTO, Yuriko HOSHI
Running time:
114 mins.
Year:
1968
DVD:
Criterion Collection - USA, English subtitles

picture: scene from 'Kill'Kill! is a movie about two men fighting over a chicken.

That I can boil the film down to this is to praise Kill!'s economy and wry sense of absurdity. Here's why: While being based on the same source material that Akira Kurosawa used for 1962's Sanjuro (Tsubaki Sanjuro), Kihachi Okamoto's Kill! is about the absurdity of power struggles and the violence that surrounds them.

It's March 1833 and Hanjiro Tabata (vaguely horse faced Etsushi Takahashi) is a farmer who wants to be a samurai. Genta (Tatsuya Nakadai), on the other hand, was once a samurai but is now a yakuza. With fate as their guide, they've both stumbled hungry and tired into the wind-swept streets of the desolate Joshu where corruption and political infighting have devastated the local economy. Hanjiro, it seems, has heard that this is a great place to find work as a samurai; Genta, on the other hand, is an impish sort who, having lost his taste for the samurai life, is in town to stick his thumb in the collected eye of society, maybe help some people on the way, and get a few free meals.

When a group of seven (formerly) dedicated samurai decide to split from their corrupt clan lord and try to overthrow him, they are double-crossed by one of their members, forcing them to hole up in a mountain retreat and fight for their lives. Genta, sensing a good opportunity for hijinx, knows that by helping out the seven, he can jam the system and perhaps foster some positive change. Hanjiro, though, is not the brightest bulb in the lamp, but what he lacks in brains he makes up for in muscles and a curiously firm sense of right and wrong. Becoming an unlikely partnership, the two of them find themselves in the middle of this clan standoff and through clever planning and pure luck they help to right a moral wrong.

As Kill! reaches crisis point we find the seven former retainers under siege from two larger and distinct groups of fighters, one equipped with bows and arrows and the other equipped with rifles. (Do you guys remember the two men and the chicken from the beginning?) Yes, the sheer firepower is over-kill, but the fact that one gimpy former-samurai turned yakuza could outwit all involved - with the aid of a bone-headed farmer no less - and save this group of seven is incongruous. Oh, hell, why not call it what it is? It's just silly.

Yes! The chicken in Kill! is a scrawny bag of bones and feathers. The absurdity of two grown men being so hungry that they would fight over it IS the humor. Similarly, the fact that seven former loyal retainers in a windswept, worn-out little village, would become the focus of such a large showdown, illustrates the bizarre lengths that the entrenched old guard of the clan will go to maintain the status quo (but, in a sense, they are no different than any of the upper echelon of the creaky mid-19th century Tokugawa system - or other time or place in the world, for that matter).

This, of course, is the fun of Kill! If Kurosawa's Sanjuro could be called wry or even cheeky, Kill! is meant to be puckish and goofy. To be honest, Kill! pushes its luck, at times, with its Tom and Jerry style sound effects and Etsushi Takahashi's mugging but the craftsmanship is so high, that it ultimately overcomes any weakness. And sure, no review of the film can end without pointing out the oft-mentioned genre blender quality of the film - a marinade of chanbara, jidai-geki and Italian Spaghetti western - but this ultimately is less interesting to me. Though Masaru Sato's 60s Ennio Morricone (and others) inspired music is standout, ultimately, I prefer to focus on where the film began: the chicken.

[NR]