House

October 27, 2010 by Leave a Comment

House (1977) movie poster

(1977) director Nobuhiko Obayashi
viewed: 10/26/10

Freakishly freaky, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 horror/comedy is stranger than the sum of its parts.  Or rather maybe the sum of its parts are just stranger than just about anything out there.

It wasn’t until this film played at the Castro Theatre here in San Francisco earlier this year that I’d ever heard of the film.  And quite frankly, this was an unusual case in which what got me so excited to see the film was the movie poster.  Not the one cited above but below here, with a link to its Criterion Collection release.  The design was so cool, I just HAD to see it!

I had no idea about the movie, though I’d read that it was more of a Surrealist oddity than a true horror film.  And unfortunately, I missed the Castro showing and had to wait for the DVD.

It’s something else!  Though it’s really nothing like them, the two films that came to mind for me were Tsui Hark’s Zu Warriors from Magic Mountain (1983) and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II (1987).  I draw that comparison to an extent based on the manic nature of the film’s fantasy sequences and the eclectic film techniques that create the movie’s special effects.  That, and both Zu and Evil Dead II are two of the most innovative, inventive, and strange films that I’ve seen, while essentially being genre films.  They both made a huge impression on me.  And while House took a while to take a hold of me, I can only imagine what I would have thought of it if I’d seen it 20 years ago.

House is ostensibly a haunted house story, wherein seven very pretty Japanese schoolgirls take a holiday in the country at the home of one of the girls’ long lost aunt.  The film foregrounds its artificiality, using all sorts of strange techniques, with luridly-painted sunset backdrops, animations, split-screen shots, and more.   The film also has invasive musical elements and at times seems a bit reminiscent of an episode of The Monkees or something.  As the film gets going, its hyperkinetic editing, cartoonish characters, and ping-pong-ball pacing make you wonder what you’re in for, but when the oddball horror sequences begin and then go crazy, it’s enthralling.

The madness that ensues is almost too ornate to detail, but the best sequence for me is when one of the girls gets “eaten” by the piano she is playing.  It’s just so damn weird and funny and visually inventive.

Like Zu and like Evil Dead II, the film has a manic energy and left field swings that even 30 years later still surprise and confound.  While Evil Dead II is well-renowned and has been hugely influential (and American), House and Zu are probably well under-seen in the United States.  As I’d said, earlier this year, I’d never even heard of the film.  And, a day after having seen it for the first time, I’m still reeling at its wacky innovation, wild designs, and non-stop chaos.

Filed under DVD, Haunted House films, Japan

The Sword of Doom

July 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment

(1966) director Kihachi Okamoto
viewed: 07/10/10 at Viz Cinema, SF, CA

It wasn’t until I looked in the newspaper that I happened to notice that one of the best samurai films, a personal favorite, The Sword of Doom, was playing as a double feature at the new Japantown movie theater Viz Cinema, which I had never been to, nor even knew exactly where it was.  In fact, it was playing with Kill! (1968), another excellent samurai film also directed by Kihachi Okamoto and playing as part of a series of samurai films both old and new at the Japan-oriented theater.  Viz opened only a year or two ago (I lose track) and shows largely a lot of modern Japanese films that don’t get imported by other means plus a lot of anime.  A friend of mine who’s a big anime aficionado had been there and described it to me but I’d never been there.  But the opportunity to see this great movie on film on the big screen…too good to pass up!

The Sword of Doom is an immensely stylish, striking film.  From it’s opening sequence, in which an old man is cut down for no good reason by the ruthless samurai, Ryunosuke Tsukue, aspects of the film’s visual style are apparent.  Ryunosuke’s enormous hat obscures his face, but it also is used to frame shots, from close-ups to medium shots.  As will recur with great profundity in the final battle sequence, in which the walls and doors of the geisha house burn and are torn to shreds, Okamoto used many physical elements to create each image’s framing.  And some of these appear rapidly through action-packed cuts, while others linger for more steady durations.  The whole of the film is a visual pleasure.

But it’s not just the visual aesthetics that make The Sword of Doom such a masterpiece.  It tells the story of a potentially insane, near serial killer, of a samurai, who has little emotion other than wild-eyed blankness, who kills without morals or meaning.  That the protagonist is more anti-hero and yet is not utterly unsympathetic demonstrates the emotional complexity that Okamoto achieves in this film.  It’s not a morally simple tale at all.  And the ending, which occurs during a violent battle sequence with a huge body count, which freezes on a frame of Ryunosuke’s twisted, terrified face, leaves an open-endedness to the story (which apparently was originally to be followed by more than one sequel), and leaves the viewer in a state of shock of sorts.

It’s an amazing movie, one of my favorites that I’ve seen of the samurai genre.  I was disappointed that the Viz theater wasn’t actually showing the film as a double feature with Kill!, rather ushering us out to potentially buy another ticket for the second film. It helped me a bit because I’d sat through another double feature the day before and was feeling that it would have been truly indulgent to sit through another one.  In the end, the need to pay for and wait for the second feature was enough to usher me all the way out of the theater and on to other things.

But I have to say, it was great to get to see The Sword of Doom again, and actually on the big screen.  I will be quite tempted to go back and catch another samurai film from their mini-festival before it ends.  It’s not a bad little place, this Viz theater.

Filed under Japan, Samurai, Theatrical

Ran

June 11, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Ran (1985) movie poster

(1985) dir. Akira Kurosawa
viewed: 06/07/10 at the Embarcadero Cinemas, SF, CA

In celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema great Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), a number of retrospectives and re-releases of his films are expected throughout the year.  The first of which to hit San Francisco is a re-release of his 1985 film, Ran, his last great epic, perhaps his last great film, and I took the opportunity to see it in the theater on the “big screen” because my only other experience with it was sadly on a video on television some many years ago.

I was 16 or 17 when Ran came out in 1985 and made its way to my hometown of Gainesville, FL.  It’s perhaps the first foreign film that I became interested in, though I sadly didn’t actually see it on release.  Over the years, I’ve come to a great appreciation for Kurosawa, having been catching up on a number of his films on DVD including The Bad Sleep Well (1960), Rashômon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Ikiru (1952), and The Hidden Fortress (1958), mostly from his fecund early period of success.  I don’t know that Ran is the only of his color films that I’ve seen, but colorful indeed it is.

The film was meticulously storyboarded by Kurosawa, planned over many years, and while based roughly upon some historical elements, the story is heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s King Lear, as well.  An aging lord, Hidetora, who came to power through much battle and bloodshed, decides, somewhat suddenly, to divide his kingdom between his three sons, with his eldest holding the greatest righteous power.  The youngest and most brash of his sons calls him out as a fool for this, as does one of his noble gentry.  He bannishes them both for their offences.

The problem is, that they were right.  His eldest son, Taro, has a devious wife, who, though often stoic and seemingly proper, sows the seeds that will lead to the undoing of the whole clan.  She convinces Taro that his father needs to be humbled and that he needs to stake his claim more solidly on the castle, which leads to an argument and the father’s departure for his second son’s, Jiro’s, castle.  Jiro has followers who cajole him as well, barring his father’s entourage, but not his father himself, from his castle.  In anger, Hidetora is left to wander without a home.

Really, the seeds that are sown are not only what proves to be the vengaence of Taro’s wife, Lady Kaede, but the poisonous spoilage of Hidetora’s years and years of killing, cruelty, and harshness.  While wishing to hang his old age upon some laurels, to enjoy a hard-fought for peace, and to live his life out in some sort of mellowed happiness, all that Hidetora is truly left with is pure carnage, destruction, and death.  It’s an epic tragedy of grand, grand scale.

Kurosawa sets much of the action on the mountainous regions of Mt. Fuji, with thousands of extras clad in the color-specific flagged battle costumes signifying for which lord the soldiers battle.  But interestingly, in some ways, it comes not to matter.  Death comes for all, good and noble, pious, impious, vengeful, ruthless, everyone.  And it’s hard not to be impressed with the grand scheme played out on such grand scale.

There is much going on in the film, much too much to fully comment on here.  But watching it this time, I felt aware of what was perhaps a commentary on the Cold War or at least the destructive power of war, a contemporary vision of the mid-1980′s.  As well, there is Hidetora, whose age is similar to that of Kurosawa at the time the film was made, a perhaps personal character, a perspective on the futility of one’s life’s work, of coming to an age when all is supposedly behind one, and the sizing up of that is not perhaps what one would have hoped for.

While richly colorful, I found some of the color almost garish, while other aspects of it are most lush.  And the acting, particularly that of Hidetora and Lady Kaede is in strange, theatrical contrast to the acting of many of the other performers.  Hidetora wears a ton of make-up, projecting his intense mania as he is struck into madness by the tragedies befalling him and his family, and Lady Kaede, who at times wears a refined, unexpressive make-up, also lurches into moments of grand theatrics.  While these performances and styles reckon back to Noh theater, I am not enough of a scholar of Japanese theater to sort through why those two are the key figures to perform differently.

What is always fascinating in Kurosawa is his mixture of Western and Japanese traditions.  He often used Western texts from Shakespeare (Throne of Blood) to Dashiell Hammett (Yojimbo (1961)) as narrative inspiration for his Samuari and other films, he brought these themes upon a truly Japanese landscape and historically and culturally.  Perhaps this is partially why his popularity in Europe and America was so profound.

Ran fits appropriately at the end of a long list of great, telling, visionary films fitting well within his canon.  It was great to see it again, and to see it on the big screen, a screen large enough to appreciate the breadth and scope of his story and imagery.  I will be looking out for others of his films in this centenury and I recommend the experience.

Filed under Akira Kurosawa, Japan, Samurai, Theatrical

Godzilla’s Revenge

May 22, 2010 by 1 Comment

Godzilla's Revenge (1969) movie poster

(1969) dir. Ishirô Honda
viewed: 05/21/10

The kids wanted to watch another Godzilla movie.  Who was I to let them down?  We started watching Godzilla movies, which I grew up on, about 3-4 years ago with a mixed to positive range of response.  And, while it had been surprisingly an entire year since our last Godzilla movie (Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)), I was glad to resume our foray into Japanese cinema (such as it is).

We’ve not been watching them in any particular order, though we’ve been working our way through the catalog of the original Shōwa series.  Actually, this film was my first consideration back when we first started watching these films.  I had always remembered liking this one as a kid, but in my modicum of research had seen that it is derided  by many fans of the series.  It’s the most kid-friendly or kid-oriented of the Godzilla films, an anomaly for sure, but when you think about guys wrestling in big rubber monster suits, you have to think that they are all pretty kid-oriented.

Godzilla’s Revenge, or as it is also known, All Monsters Attack or Minya, Son of Godzilla tells the story of a little boy growing up on the rough industrial side of Tokyo, a latchkey child with a rich imagination and a series of bullies.  He “dreams” himself into a trip to Monster Island, home of Godzilla, Minya, and many other monsters, where he meets up with Godzilla’s son who talks (!) (and who sounds quite a bit like Gumby’s sidekick Pokey).  Minya has a tormentor, too, the hyena-laughing Gabera (who shares a name with the dreaming Ichiro’s bully).  Like Ichiro, Minya is being taught the lesson of “fighting one’s own battles”.

And if this wasn’t enough oddball plotline, there are also two goofy bankrobbers who are hiding out among the rundown industrial buildings, who end up kidnapping Ichiro, too.  The whole thing gets a little Home Alone (1990).

Despite the fact that the English dubbing is perhaps a series-worst and the silliness quotient is so high, the film is actually kind of enjoyable.  The soundtrack is virtual surf rock, the effects are cheap but sort of trippy and surreal.  And the general lack of drama, lack of a big battle scene, fact that seemingly several sequences are actually replicating sequences from other Godzilla movies, the whole thing works pretty well for the kids.  It’s funny because they sort of recognize the silliness too, that none of the monster sequences are happening outside of Ichiro’s fantasies.

But the film is directed by Ishirô Honda, who directed the original Gojira (1954), as well as many of the other better films in the series. Actually, when I started off showing Godzilla movies to the kids, Clara was 3 and Felix was 5, so maybe this would have been a better choice at the time than
Son of Godzilla (1967), from which this film borrows footage. But you know, it’s kind of fun watching these films with them since they like them.

Filed under DVD, Godzilla, Japan, With the kids

Porco Rosso

April 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Porco Rosso (1992) movie poster

(1992) dir. Hayao Miyazaki
viewed: 04/16/10

Happenstances being what they are, I’d never gotten around to seeing Porco Rosso, the 1992 film by one of my favorite filmmakers, Hayao Miyazaki, the only of his feature films that I’d never seen before.  And credit is definitely due to Pixar and John Lasseter there who have helped get the Disney corporation to import and dub these films for feature releases and DVD distribution.  I recall at one point toying with renting this film from a Japantown video store to watch untranslated just to see it.

I pooled the kids for this one.  We’re all quite into Miyazaki films.  We all enjoyed his most recent (and hopefully not his last directorial feature) Ponyo (2008).  It’s funny, but within 15 years or so, maybe longer, Miyazaki has gone from an obscure figure in American culturual knowledge to a much more known and recognized filmmaker, appreciated by many many more people than I would have ever hoped for at any time.  Again, I think this has a lot to the broad distribution and quality voice-acting hired to dub these films for the American market.

Porco Rosso is set in a typically Miyazaki world, a place somewhere between WWI and WWII but one which is in stark contrast to purified reality.  Technologies are as magical and pseudo-technological, retro, but retro in a way that nothing ever really existed.  And the world is a largely European fantasy of the gorgeous Mediterranean yet not by any means utterly particular to reality, though this film does spend some time in Milan (how accurately depicted, I have no clue).

But it’s a quasi-fantasy, a mixture of retro-and-just-never-was.  Porco Rosso, “the crimson pig”, was a bi-plane fighter in (probably) WWI for Italy, but when after a crazy dogfight in which he lost his battalion, he survived, suffering a “curse” or some other twist of fate, turning from striking handsome man into a pig.  And he takes his pig presentation as an excuse of sorts for his other types of piggishness, his selfishness, his wanton lifestyle, his lack of integrity.  He’s a bounty hunter, rescuing treasures and children from a myriad of marauding pirates.  But for money, supposedly looking out only for himself.

The opening of the film is one of its best sequences.  A group of children are abducted from a ship along with the ship’s treasure.  The gaggle of little girls are more than the pirates can handle and run amok on their plane, giving them a hard time about not being able to get Porco Rosso.  Porco Rosso zooms in for a dramatic rescue.  The bi-plane-style dogfights are exciting and lovingly rendered.  Miyazaki has a particular love of flying machines and features a broad spectrum of strange aircraft in almost all of his films.  And this seems to be the focal point of the aesthetic and setting of Porco Rosso.

But interestingly, it’s also a bit of a tip of the hat to films like Casablanca (1942), with its restaurant/bar and its singing hostess, the beautiful Jina, who has a pseudo-love relationship with Porco, the thrice widowed would-be bride of many a aeronaut shot down.  And there is the semi-villainous American (eventual movie star) as well.

But despite the guns and bullets, nobody really gets killed.  Nobody really gets shot.  And though Porco and the American end up in a battle and a fairly brutal fist fight, this film has less aligned with Miyazaki’s more serious and more socially critical works like Princess Mononoke (1997) or Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds (1984).  It’s adventure but quite light-hearted, quite fun.  And also, most notably, less exemplary of his fanatsy elements and whimsical character designs of strange elements.  Rather it’s a relatively human world in which Porco is the only real fantasy figure.

The kids liked it.  Perhaps my kids liked it the most.  The girls from upstairs were down for it and seemed to like parts of it.  Felix had a friend over from school for a sleep-over and while he eventually seemed to get into it, it was clearly not his first kind of choice for a movie night thing.  Hey, Miyazaki is not going to be for everybody, but for those who are open to or just plain into his wonderful storytelling, imagination, design, and artistry, well, there is no comparison.  There is no one like him that I’ve seen.  We can only hope he keeps making films as long as he wants to.

Filed under Animation, DVD, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, With the kids

Ballad of Narayama

January 26, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Ballad of Narayama (1983) movie poster

(1983) dir. Shohei Imamura
viewed: 01/24/10

Though I’ve studied film and even taken a Japanese Film and Aesthetics class, til now, I’d only seen one of Shohei Imamura’s films, his 1979 film Vengeance Is Mine.  Unsurprisingly perhaps, his 1983 film Ballad of Narayama is quite a different thing from my memory of the only other of his films that I’d seen.  And it’s been such a long time, I would be hard pressed to draw any parallels or contrast points.

Ballad of Narayama took the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1983, the first of two of Imamura’s films to do so (the second being his 1997 film, The Eel.)   And, unsurprisingly, it’s quite a fascinating film.

Set in the 19th Century in rural Japan (though arguably it could have been any time perhaps in the past), it is a story about the struggle for life, survival, procreation, and the acceptance of death.  Imamura shows many animals (snakes, owls, rats) eating, copulating, dying, killing one another, a clear metaphor for the human survival, the story of the human creatures and their needs and desires and fight for life.

In the community of the village, barely enough food is produced to keep a family of size, baby boys are discarded and killed, dumped in a rice paddy without much as a blink of an eye.  Another mouth to feed is one more too many.  However, a daughter can be sold, so therefor is worth more.  Such is the basics of survival.  It’s harsh.  That’s life.

According as well, to the village’s traditions, and in cohesion with the survivalist mode of the populace, when a person live to be 70, they are to be carried by one of their children up to a mountain top to die.  Abandoned.  But this act is not one of mercilessness, but of keeping the overall health of the community strong.  The weak cannot contribute and would drain the potential survival of the clan.  And so, as harsh as this seems, there is great dignity in this process as well.

The harshest treatment befalls a small family who steals food from other families.  They are caught, accused, proven to be guilty, and then buried alive together in a pit.  Something beyond that which a snake or a falcon might condemn an entire family, men, women, children to.  But this too seems not much out of step with the world.  Not much is made of this, except the additional punishment of the pregnant daughter-in-law who carried another family’s child.

It’s a harsh film, but one with great humanity and beauty to it as well.  The people are all very much of their animal selves, needing food, sex, warmth.  And the film is not without humor.  Quite a bit of humor is played out along the line of the stinky youngest brother, who for I am guessing societal exclusion is unwashed and a virgin, yearning, mastrubating, even buggering the family dog, until his mother sets him up with an older widow to get his burning sexual needs met.

The dignity with which the mother takes her place upon the mountain, amid the bones of her friends, family and ancestors, speaks to the interpretation that Imamura finds this a time in which people are conencted to the world, to one another, to the planet, the mountain (its spirit), and the harshness of life is also part of its inherent beauty.

Filed under DVD, Japan

The Masseurs and a Woman

January 2, 2010 by Leave a Comment

(1938) dir. Hiroshi Shimizu
viewed: 01/01/10

Though I can imagine that someone might read the title of this film and get the wrong impression, The Masseurs and a Woman is a 1938 Japanese film by Hiroshi Shimizu, who was known mostly for his silent films, but has recently been getting recognition and promotion in the US via The Criterion Collection.  Apparently, his films are not all that well known in Japan.  Not being a particular Japanese film scholar, it seems that perhaps there are a lot of fascinating and potentially important Japanese film directors who never managed to make it across the Pacific.

It’s an unusual film if you compare it with the American genre films that were made in it’s day, late 1930′s leading up to WWII.  I do know that WWII had a massive impact on Japan’s film industry, which like probably so many things in Japan, had much to recover from after the War.  But I don’t know that I’ve seen any pre-WWII Japanese cinema.  So, I don’t have a lot to compare it to.  It’s certainly no screwball comedy, though it has its elements of comedy about it.

The masseurs of the title are blind men, who I am now recalling from Samaritan Zatoichi (1968) and The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003), often found work as masseurs because of their blindness, I suppose weren’t considered a threat to either men or women and needed a way to make money.  These masseurs in this film are a migrant bunch, having taken to the mountain retreats for the summer, returning from the southern regions.

Probably the most interesting thing to me in the film was Shimizu’s use of camera movement.  The film opens on the road, tracking in front of the two blind masseurs, who like to walk fast and see how many people they can beat up the hill.  The camera moves along with them in clearly exterior shots, location shots.  And again, when a horse-drawn carriage passes them, the camera follows, keeping them in the frame.

Shimizu seemed to do a lot of interesting framings and used depth of field to fade inward and outward as two characters played a “blindman’s bluff” of sorts.  How near or far, there was a lovely shot of the woman as she slowly blurred in the distance.

In the end, if looking for genre, you cannot find a clear one.  The story follows this woman who comes to the spas and her meetings with one of the masseurs and with an orphaned boy, cared for by his gruff uncle.  There is quite a bit of fun had at the expense of the unsighted masseurs, and other comedic bits, such as when the masseur intentionally pains a certain group of students when he feels upbraided by them.  And finally, there is a plot about thievery, the mystery of whether the strange woman from Tokyo is behind it or not.  But in a greater sense, that is never truly resolved. 

At 66 minutes, it’s not quite a tone poem, or a drama, or a comedy, but a small snapshot of people meeting at this distant resort, perhaps of class and perhaps a bit of a love story, but quite hard to pin down.  And since I do not know much more, I’ll leave it at that.  I quite liked it.

Filed under DVD, Japan

Ponyo

August 17, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Ponyo (2008) movie poster

(2008) dir. Hayao Miyazaki
viewed: 08/16/09 at AMC Loews Metreon 16, SF, CA

Ponyo is the latest film from the great, wonderful, amazing Hayao Miyazaki.  It’s the softest and gentlest of his films since My Neighbor Totoro (1988), the most G-rated and little kid-friendly.  His range in his audience is not necessarily huge, but this film is on the extreme end of accessibilty and identification with small children, and at the same time, open and wonderful to all as is true with all of his wonderful films.  And Ponyo, while it’s not quite Totoro, or Spirited Away (2001), is a wonderful film itself, featuring many characteristics about Miyazaki’s world that amaze and enchant.

Ponyo is a revision of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, but in this case, the heroine is not a mermaid, but a goldfish with a human face and magical powers.  And her father is some alchemist technician who struggles to keep the sea in balance, her mother is the ocean itself, embodied by the image of a human godess.  Ponyo falls in love with a five year old boy, Sosuke, for whom she wants to transform herself into a human.  The story is less about a purely romanticized love, but a love that seems to transcend everything, ultimately symbolizing a binding of humanity and nature, a nature simply alive with anthropomorphication, living waves, living bubbles, fish of all kinds.  It ties in with other themes of Miyazaki, the spirit world of traditional Japanese beliefs in which spirits inhabit everything, and thusly, everything is more or less alive, especially if not specifically, the natural world.

Miyazaki creates images that no one else could.  Ponyo is constantly metamorphizing via her magic, growing chicken-like arms and legs, occasionally like some blob thing more than fish, but ultimately, one of the film’s most stunning images is her running across the giant waves, racing after Sosuke and his mother in their car.  She has a joie de vivre, a spark of love and life and energy that is vibrant and magical, a really lovely, fun character.  The strangeness of the sea and of some of the images that Miyazaki dreams up, he spawn-like little sisters, her father’s watering can system, the weird ships and strange simple technologies he loves to dream up.

And the film has a sweetness for the elderly, something that occurs frequently in his films, mostly notably in his last film, Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), with the young girl becoming old and the ability to hang onto or lose one’s youth.  In Ponyo, it is the children and the senior’s center, more a vague Greek chorus than important figure.

Ponyo is lovely.  We are very lucky to have Hayao Miyazaki’s films, that he continues to make such amazing, creative, unique work.  There is charm, joy, love, and a deep appreciation for the magic and metamorphosis in animation, the ability to instill the anthropomorphism that is in essence his sensibility of nature and traditional Japanese values that agree with that belief.  And to create characters and instances, images, and actions that are simple, yet true, true cinema.

Filed under Animation, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, Theatrical, With the kids

Harakiri

August 5, 2009 by Leave a Comment

(1962) dir. Masaki Kobayashi
viewed: 08/02/09

I’ve developed quite a liking for Samurai films over the last couple of years, and though I’ve seen several, there a lot of interesting and important films of the genre that I still have to see.  And I think that the choices I’ve made in selecting films to watch has been skewed toward the masterpieces, the high points.  But this is both good and bad.  The good, clearly, is watching excellent films that stand out, impress, wow, draw you in, but also often work as either archetypes of the genre or in interesting subversion of the genre.  As is the film Harakiri.

The film has an interesting structure, but centered on an event unique to the Samurai culture, the act of seppuku or harakiri, the ritual suicide by disembowelment, which was considered a noble end for a fallen or shamed samurai.  A wandering ronin, a samurai without a master, who has fallen on hard times, comes to the noble house of another clan and asks to use their porch for harakiri, a request that must be accepted socially, since it is considered part of the samurai code and so this must be respected.  However, due to the breakup of a large clan’s house, hundreds of ronin flood the Edo area and a spate of such requests have come due.

Initially, the nobility of the requests were appreciated by some of the clans and the samurai who was ready to take such a noble step as ritual suicide rather than waste away in poverty was brought in and added to the staff.  As word got around that this was possible, more and more ronin showed up, hoping to be taken in, but largely they were given money to go away.  This spate of semi-blackmail begging is noted by the house master to the samurai who has presented himself for harakiri, and he agrees that it is shameful that samurai have taken this path, but that he is truly there for seppuku.  The master then relates a story to him about what happened the last time that this particular house had such a visitor, how they led him to believe that he might receive assistance, but then told him that they would instead respect his wishes and allow him to die.

The man, who was evidently not prepared for this outcome, begged for two days release before returning to commit harakiri, but is denied.  And then is forced to kill himself with his own bamboo sword, which is shameful enough in itself, but woefully inadequate for the act of seppuku.  And yet, he does, agonizingly gut himself.

The structure of the narrative unfolds in the flashback telling of stories, interwoven in such a way that it’s not simply a cheap device, but a very formal one.  Director Masaki Kobayashi frames many of the shots within the formal confines of the Japanese architecture, symmetrical framings of the buildings, which reflect the criticism that his film offers, which is a flat-out condemning of the hypocrisy of the samurai code, of the implied honor of their rules, while behind these structures hide normal human need and life.  And just as the samurai who has come to commit ritual suicide condemns the house for its hypocrisy and inhumanity, Kobayashi burst the formal space, thrashing the scenery, in the one true “fight” sequence.

The film is set at the onset of the samurai era, and so, as noted by a film historian on the disc, Kobayashi’s critique is meant to blast the entirety of the supposed nobility and righteousness of the structures of creed and society, not merely the late period of the samurai era (which is most often the setting for these films), to demonstrate that this is not the “crumbling” of a once proud system, but a flawed, false system from the very get-go.  This is further emphasized by the fact that as the story is written for history, it is whitewashed, erased, eradicated, any critique or failure, hiding again behind the empty armor that symbolizes the hollow shell that is the samurai ethic.

It’s funny in that sense to watch a notable samurai film that debunks the samurai myth.  But that is the case when gaining knowledge of genre films, that sometimes the most interesting ones are the ones that challenge the norms of the form, perhaps even the rules and ideology therein.  I’m sure that you could find such things in the American Western, too.

However emblematic or alternatively unique this film is in the samurai filmography, it’s truly a remarkable and excellent film.  Interesting, powerful, and well worth seeing.

Filed under DVD, Japan, Samurai

The Hidden Fortress

June 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment

The Hidden Fortress (1958) movie poster

(1958) dir. Akira Kurosawa
viewed: 06/14/09

My continued travels in the realm of the samurai film bring me back yet again to the Japanese master director, Akira Kurosawa, whose own works in the genre make up for almost half of the notable films listed on Wikipedia.  And while other directors have been quite interesting, Kurosawa, as noted, made so many films in this genre, that it’s almost a career unto itself, a series of films that can be viewed as part of a whole.  And while I am still far from understanding that whole, my comprehension does grow every film.

The Hidden Fortress is perhaps more comical than many of his other films, whose humor is often more subtle or just low-key.  But the film starts with a pair of thieving peasants, escaping from a battle scene in which they’d hoped to profit, having been forced to bury the dead and now reek of death and quibble and fight constantly.  These two are actors Kurosawa uses frequently, and their characters here are simpleminded and singleminded, driven by fear and only tempered by cowardice.  Their bantering and arguments (and perspective, being the lowest on the social order in the film) have been noted by George Lucas as his inspiration for the droids in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977).

They happen upon a wily fellow, Toshiro Mifune, who sees that these two have happened upon some of the store of gold that belongs to his embattled princess that he serves.  She is holed up in the titular hidden fortress, hiding out from other clans that would have her dead.  And Mifune is trying to move her across the realms to a place where she can be reinstated to power along with her family’s store of gold.  The peasants never fully understand what is happening, but are cowed to play along for fear and greed.

The princess is kind of interesting.  Raised “as a boy” according to one line of dialogue, she runs around in shorts and often takes a pose, arms akimbo, atop mountain passes, with a decidedly authoritative way, meant to be read as masculine.  She’s clearly feminine, but her disguise is one of class, to make her appear as a deaf-mute peasant woman (whose value is considered extremely low, so low that once a man realizes that she cannot hear or speak, opts out of trying to purchase her as a slave).  She’s a bit of a proto-feminist, never quailing in her protective needs, but enthralled by the life on the outside, enjoying deeply a pagan burning of firewood and dancing that is held by some peasants while they are on the run.

It’s an enjoyable film, certainly, and it features many good characters and some interesting action, including a duel with spears and an impressive race on horses for Mifune to cut down some soldiers who might report back about them.  The tonality switches between the more intended comedy of the two peasant thieves and the more noble adventure of the nobles.  But I have to say that some of the comedy was harder to appreciate than others.  Some moments of the two peasants’ bickering have genuine flair and humor, like when one of them complains that the other “blinks too much”.  But also, they are so shallow, so given to switching their loyalties to one another given an opportunity at more money that it’s less funny than tedious.  But that’s just me.

Not my favorite of Kurosawa’s films, but still a solid, excellent film.  He was indeed “the man.”

Filed under Akira Kurosawa, DVD, Japan, Samurai

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