Chushingura / 47 Samurai (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1962)

The 47 loyal ronin revenge the death of their master years after his unfair death sentence.

This version of the famous japanese tale depicts the events that lead to the seppuku of Lord Asano and the regrouping of the 47 samurai and their careful planning to get Lord Kira's head, the person that was responsible for their master's death.

I preferred Mizoguchi's version of 1947 where Asano's death was simply recounted, not shown. This epic rendering of the story comes across as a bit heavy-handed. There are way too many characters it tries to follow - and most of them are not very convincing. This sheer mass of different sidelines results in the appearing characters being very two-dimensional and the scenes they play out a bit clichéd. In some of the scenes I wasn't even sure, whose story was told presently.

From what I gather, it looks like Toho wanted to present a mass-audience compatible version, throwing in a lot of the stars. Mifune has his role, but his character is practically irrelevant to the story. And there are other familiar faces from Kurosawa's and Naruse's films, but they pop up and disappear quickly.

On the other hand, the legend is entertaining to watch and it gives a good sense of what the Japanese folklore seems to value - loyalty and codes of honor. When these two clash, a consequence of human nature, it is up to the individual to decide about the right action with the rigid system of morality and subservient behaviour to the "lords".

Kommentare

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

Time of the Gypsies / Dom Za Vesanje (Emir Kusturica, 1988)

A supernaturally gifted boy from a Gypsy community is forced to survive in the world of crime. The intriguing qualities of Kusturica's films I've seen is his relentless depiction of basically crazy communities. Not just agreeably potty, they're usually outright interstellar-nuts. Here, he follows the fate of the rather harmless boy Perhan, that leaves for Italy in hope of a better future for him and his loved ones. There are some enormously interesting images in the film that kept ringing long after. The ritual in the river and the last scene in the church ruin (with a horse standing somewhere far back in the image...). After sketchily mapping out the scenes it is surprising how rigorously three-acty the screenplay is constructed. The first act seems quite long in terms of time and number of scenes, but there is also a lot of imagery spent on depicting life in this crazy universe, which makes the second part in Italy much more believable. And there is a certa...

Detour (Ulmer, 1945) #TSPDT #390

A hitchhiker is picked up by death and then picks up his personal tormenting devil. The plot looked fairly straightforward, but the magic of this gem is that the story strand convolutes until it tightens into a strangling gordic knot - which is pretty much exactly what happens towards the end. The flashback structure are very noir-ish, so was the plot - everything straight down, right from the beginning. I really rooted for the guy to get out of this situation, but every time he takes a decision it actually gets worse - so in the end I was just hoping he might die and get relieved. Most striking was the jaw-dropping performance of Ann Savage. She pops out about a mile and her character is rendered so immensely unlikeable that I wondered that she has not been called the godmother of a new type of acting school (maybe she was?) This is definitively a film worth studying again. Its shortness does nothing to diminish the impact and it is rich on details.

Scarface (de Palma, 1982) - TSPDT #490

A cuban refugee wreaks havoc on Miamis drug industry and realizes his version of the American Dream. The main character is really something - the acting is great and the character suffers from the most fatal of all flaws: He cannot lie - although in a practical sense he does exactly that. So his attacks on the american society he has worked so hard to become a part of work really great - he has a deep insight but at the same time he is hypocrite enough to fall in the same trap in a way. The only time when I felt that the script had to "pull" a little to take the story where it wanted it is when Tony's mother calls to ask about his sister. Her character was a little too much on hating Tony.

Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

Dieses Blog durchsuchen