Japanese Cinema

[Matt3737]

This is for anyone who really enjoyed The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise or anyone who really enjoys jidaigeki in particular.

The Twilight Samurai is a 2002 Japanese film that was highly regarded in Japan and is one of my favorites of the genre along with the works of the late and great Akira Kurosawa. It swept the Japanese Academy Awards that year winning 12 and was nominated for best foreign film here in the States, but lost to a French Canadian production.

It stars Hiroyuki Sanada, who played Ujio-san alongside Tom Cruise the following year in The Last Samurai. In each film he plays a starkly contrasting personality. Ujio-san was the fierce samurai who trains Tom Cruise's character after beating him senseless dueling in the rain pictured here.

This duel scene pictured here is a notable reference to a famous duel in Japanese history between the renowned Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro at Ganryu island, in which Musashi defeats his opponent using a wooden weapon on the beach. It is a scene that has been repeated in other movies and television shows.

[video=youtube_share;CuX3B9OFiLA]http://youtu.be/CuX3B9OFiLA[/video]

The director of The Twilight Samurai, Yoji Yamada, followed up the success of that movie with the 2004 release of The Hidden Blade which is starkly similar to his previous film in setting, style, and themes. Given the success of the previous production, this incarnation was also well received for similar reasons though in my personal opinion it is somewhat lacking in significance compared to his preceding movie, but nonetheless a great movie still worth watching and one of my favorites as well.

Although each movie has a different storyline with different casts of all but three returning actors, one of those actors returns to play the same character in what is otherwise completely separate storylines, which is Hiroshi Kanbe playing the simplistic servant named Naota to each movies' titular samurai protagonist. Nenji Kobayashi and Min Tanaka also return to play different roles.

Both of these movies are available in full on youtube in Japanese with English subtitles:
(Click on the CC button for English subtitles if it is not already enabled)

The Twilight Samurai (2002)
The Hidden Blade (2004)

I just thought I'd share since I know many people familiar with video game culture and/or anime/manga have some appreciation for Japanese culture. I first saw The Twilight Samurai on youtube and then it had been taken down at some point and now I find both movies free online, so I am unsure how long these may be available for viewing unless youtube or the producers have decided to leave them available for now.

 

[Vict]

Will watch.

Seven Samurai and Yojimbo are requisite, I figure.

 

[Matt3737]

I wouldn't say requisite, but certainly essentials of the genre. These two movies are period pieces par excellence for the accurate portrayal of life and culture during the late Edo period. They are not chambara films by any stretch, in that they feature no battles and besides the one duel I posted, they each only feature one other sword fight at the end of each film as the resolution to each film's central conflict.

I would more closely identify them with the romance genre, as a historical romance. Both in that the focus is a romantic portrayal of a historical period and also that the central plot is tied together with the protagonists love interest with each finale culminating in each protagonist resolving their feelings for their loved ones after having to duel to the death.

This is a bit of a difference from Akira Kurosawa whose movies did feature more chambara (swordfighting) style of storytelling.

 

[Matt3737]

Another thing about the importance of those two Kurosawa films you mentioned that is well documented, but I felt was not as well appreciated about the artistic liberties that The Last Samurai took was the cultural influence between the western genre and the jidaigeki.

Part of the criticism toward that movie was a bit of historical inaccuracy that overplayed America's influence during Japan's modernization and stereotypically romanticizing the samurai and their political/ideological motivations. They had and used arquebuses introduced by the Portuguese as far back as the late 16th century before the Tokugawa shogunate had solidified their political hegemony over the country.

Having an American lead for an American made movie directed at an American audience makes sense, but further allows them to play off the cultural dialogue that had been recurring between the western genre and jidaigeki genre for years. That of the cowboy and the samurai. These two culture heroes grew to identify with one another in the years following WWII and the American occupation of Japan.
It came to be symbolized by Akira Kurosawa's admiration for the western and the western's admiration for his work in such remakes as The Magnificent Seven being based off of his Seven Samurai, which was also most recently paid homage to in Pixar's second feature film A Bug's Life where the ants seek out mercenary bugs to protect their home from the bandit grasshoppers, and Clint Eastwood's feature role in A Fistful of Dollars being based off of Yojimbo which in turn became the watermark for all future spaghetti westerns.

I felt that the western influence was a nice filmography reference for The Last Samurai that makes it more of a historical revisionism of events that would have yet to take place.

 

[JonMac]

Kurosawa's films are incredible. While I loved Seven Samurai, of course, I think I prefer Kagemusha and Ran. Also, his non-samurai thriller High and Low is a masterpiece, in my opinion. I can't put a film starring Tom Cruise in the same class as a Kurosawa film, though. No way.