Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

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 ...

A Samurai's son is forced to marry his son to the former mistress of his lord. I was already fascinated by the title sequence. The succession of images of roofs and shingles were visually mesmerizing and subtly establish one of the underlying themes of the story: Everybody has to stay aligned to tradition to keep the structure intact. But Mifunes character is stubborn and his fellow Samurai call him that. Although he flatly refuses his lord to wed his son to the dismissed wife of his lord, he is genuinely impressed when he realizes that the couple has taken a liking to each other. He realizes pretty fast that his own life has been full of ambition but devoid of happiness. So again he starts to struggle to make his son's life better than his. At some point the reason for Mifune's stubbornness becomes moot and he keeps on fighting for a higher ideal: Feelings of even a simple vassal should be honored even by the highest lord. During this quixotic battle he become...