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| Saturday, May 1, 2010 12:53 PM |
| On the Viewer - Samurai Assassin |
 by Fëanor |
I started watching this movie before my son was born, which means I've been trying to finish watching it for longer than he's been alive! It's a Japanese film from 1965. I can't remember why I put it on my Netflix queue originally - possibly because it had been mentioned in some history of Japanese film I'd read - but really I didn't need any reasons other than the title and the star: Toshiro Mifune. It's a period, sword and sandal melodrama about a group of men conspiring to assassinate a powerful lord. They discover that one among them is a traitor, and in their haste to find him out and eliminate him, a terrible mistake is made. In fact, the film is basically a series of terrible mistakes and fateful coincidences, on the level of a Shakespearean - or even an Ancient Greek - tragedy. Mifune's character is naturally at the center of the tragedy. As usual for Mifune, he plays a wild, passionate man who is also a talented swordsman with a mysterious and tragic past. Though he strives always to follow his heart and do what is right, he seems fated to do only wrong. Also as usual for Mifune, his performance is intense and masterful. The film takes a little longer to get where it's going than it really needs to, with some needlessly lengthy and repetitive dialog sequences. Also, seeing as how it's a melodrama, it is by its very nature a bit melodramatic. But it's not horrifically overwrought, and the ending sequence in particular is incredibly thrilling, with amazing visuals and fantastic editing.
Besides examining one man's fateful, seemingly unavoidable, personal tragedy, the film also examines, through that story, an unavoidable tragedy of Japanese history: the passing away of the age of the samurai. Mifune's character, in his attempt to raise himself up and to become a samurai, destroys any chance of raising himself up, and helps bring about the beginning of the end of all that he wants to be. Nothing is black and white here; the conspirators seem at first to be heroes, striking out against a tyrant, but later seem little more than mean and heartless killers. On the other hand, it is hard to call the lord a hero or a villain, and even though it is rather sad to see the noble and honorable samurai pass away, and to see so many men cruelly trampled under by the unstoppable turning of the wheels of history, it is at the same time difficult to mourn the death of the rather rigid and cruel feudal system, which is perhaps more than anything or anyone else to blame for the main character's destruction. The final sequence is not a clean, pinpoint assassination, but a horrific bloodbath in which you cannot root for either side, but only wince at the loss of so many men.
Samurai Assassin could probably stand a little more editing, but is otherwise a truly great and powerful film. |
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