Play it again, samurai
Stephen Hunter
The Washington Post
Oct. 2, 2004 12:00 AM
This was my summer of sam - sam as in samurai. Who knows why? What I
do know is that when I saw Yoji Yamada's "The Twilight Samurai" back
in May, it lit something in me. The speed, grace and beauty of the
fighting, the intractability of the men compelled to do it, the
tenderness of the women who accepted it, the themes of vengeance and
loyalty (those primeval melodramatic staples) as expressed in the
spurting blood and lopped limbs; it all seemed suddenly powerful and
right and satisfying in a way movies hadn't been for some while.
To begin with, the samurai were all fresh, at least to my eyes. The
imagery of the West, of knights on horseback, of soldiers charging
up a beach under heavy fire: all old, all stale, hardly impressive
anymore. But ... here were these guys in bathrobes. They grunted and
stomped and stared and laughed. They seemed to be having so much
fun! And to repeat what I believe is the funniest image I have ever
invented: They swordfought in flip-flops! How cool is that? That
hair, shaven (the Japanese equated baldness with masculinity,
nothing wrong with that!), a ponytail nursed, then folded over to
form a topknot. The swagger, the run, the utter comfort in the
physical world! God, to carry a sword, eat sushi and sleep with
women in kimonos! What else is there? And, speaking of mysteries,
how do they get the swords to stay in the sashes? Aren't swords
heavy? Wouldn't they droop? Yet these guys run, ride, sit, drink,
laugh, all with six pounds of double-folded, multi-pounded and
quenched blades (always with two: a 27-inch katana and a 14-inch
wakizashi) imperturbably lodged in their sashes. Baby, that's style!
But unlike most movie fans who get a second wind when some obscure
stimulus sends them flying into the ether for a few months, I had a
newspaper at my disposal. So I wrote a batch of pieces on my
fixation. In one I celebrated three great samurai films - Akira
Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai," Hiroshi Inagaki's "Samurai" trilogy
and Kenji Misumi's "The Last Samurai" (never to be confused with
Edward Zwick's "The Last Samurai"!) Then I discovered the series
films of the '60s and '70s, the six "Lone Wolf and Cub" and the
26 "Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman," and had great fun writing about
them, too. But the most fun of all was when Beat
Takeshi's "Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman" re-created the
delights of the earlier series.
But ever since then, I have learned more. I have learned so much -
say, that Tatsuya Nakadai was a better actor than Toshiro Mifune and
that Kihachi Okamoto at least rivaled Kurosawa at moments and that
killing a high lord in the snow at Sakurada Gate in Edo in 1860
isn't a good career move but it does get you a certain immortality -
that I can now say proudly, I know nothing. The breadth and depth,
the differing tonalities, the textures of color, it's all dazzling
and possibly endless.
But what the samurai pictures, high and low, seem to have in common
is a sense of the code - absolute loyalty to the clan, no matter the
cost (though its meaning could be played straight or ironically) - a
faith in bravery, and the soundest story construction, movie by
movie, in history. The writers of these movies were workmen, not
artists, carpenters and drywall guys, not poets and dancers. Thus
the stories are all rooted in narrative simplicity and the value of
motive. Even at their most insipid, they grip in a way that American
movies seem to have forgotten how to do.
Besides the trio of films I recommend, let me mention several others
that are equally excellent: "Sword of Doom," a look at a psychotic
swordsman (played by Nakadai); "Harakiri" (which watches a father -
Nakadai again - gain vengeance on the clan that bluffed his son into
a horrible death), "Goyokin" (a giant Italian western sort of
movie); "Samurai Rebellion," (Mifune on the warpath); "The Yagyu
Conspiracy" (with Sonny Chiba); and the fabulous "Shogun's Shadow"
(wall-to-wall-to-ceiling-to-back-porch action, with Chiba as the bad
guy!).
As you can see, I went a little samurai nuts for weeks and weeks.
Happily, I have not recovered. Hopefully, I never will.
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/articles/1002samurai02.html