Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (2003) dir. Takeshi Kitano
Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Tadanobu Asano, Gadarukanaru Taka, Yûko Daike, igorô Tachibana

***

By Alan Bacchus

Zatoichi is one of Japan’s treasured fictional heroes, a blind wandering masseur/samurai whose unassuming, quiet and lumbering gate fools his opponents into underestimating him. As a champion of justice, Zatoichi travels the lands of 19th century Japan helping those in need of protection against evil.

Between 1962 and 1989, 26 films were made starring the character’s original actor, Shintaro Katsu, as well an American remake, Blind Fury, with Rutger Hauer. And so in 2003, Japanese screen legend Beat Takeski’s version arrived with both excitement as well as a certain amount of caution. Having not been familiar with any of the other depictions of the character, Takeshi’s makes for pure cinematic entertainment - humour, action, music and dance blended seamlessly in a package hyperaware of its audience and its need to entertain. For this reason it gobbled up the prestigious Audience Prize Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Silver Lion at Venice as Best Director. Though, for one of my trusted colleagues familiar with Japanese cinema, it’s a pale comparison to Shintaro Katsu's legacy.

Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano) is no ordinary masseur. He's a blind Ronin samurai wandering the land with his trusty blade hidden in his red cane, always at the ready. In the opening scene, limping, hunchbacked and featuring a strange died blonde hairdo, Zatoichi is approached by a gang of malfeasants looking for an easy score. Before one of the thugs even blinks an eye Zatoichi reveals a sword from his cane, slices it through the thug's body and replaces it back in its sheath. Wow. That’s just one guy, but when the whole group of them attack at once, their defeat is just as fast, grisly and effortless. Zatoichi soon wanders into a poor rural town controlled by this same group of gangsters. Fighting back against the gang are a brother-sister duo masquerading as geishas and looking for revenge against their parents' death. Like the covert politicking in A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More the geishas attempt to sabotage and subvert the action of the gang from within. And when they team up with Zatoichi, hell be damned for the gang.

The notion of a blind swordsman is ridiculous, and indeed it makes for fun, irreverent physical humour. Kitano walks around embellishing all the precariousness of an old, poor blind man, with the pay-off being the pinpoint accuracy of his striking. In fact, there’s really nothing he can’t do that a full-sighted man can. So what’s the point of making him blind? Well, it makes for great gags and it changes way the other characters relate to him. But it works as an extreme version of the archetypal lonesome unsuspecting hero.

But Takeshi’s charisma is maximized. His head tilt and twitchy facial ticks embellish the actor’s already enigmatic persona as well as his archetypal characters. We barely even get a full-frame shot of his face, his head always angled away from the camera.

The film’s swordplay scenes are lightning quick. Death comes in one or two quick movements, a conscious decision of Kitano to avoid the monotony of lengthy and repetitive unrealistic sword clanging. The use of digital blood that splatters across the frame with each kill is not invisible to us. Although in the Blu-ray special features Kitano tells us his motivations are for added ‘realism’, its effectiveness is the opposite, a cinematic hyperrealism and that distinct Romero-like carnage of a zombie movie.

The story beats are plotted out with the same western genre familiarity, and then there’s the surprise of the final sequence, which plays like the Ewoks' group song at the end of Return of the Jedi – in a good way. Kitano teases us with the rhythmic sounds of the farmers throughout the picture. And by the end the monotonous plowing and wood chopping syncs up forming a musical beat. This evolves into a large-scale choreographed tap dance sequence played straight to camera - a finale, which, like the Bollywood dance number closing out Slumdog Millionaire, sends the audience out with a bang and a smile. Enjoy.

The Blindswordsman: Zatoichi is available on Blu-ray from Miramax/Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.

Ran (1985) dir. Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryû, Mieko Harada

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

The 1980’s were kind to Mr. Kurosawa, the legendary cinema master who by 1985, was nothing short of a living legend. After a tepid decade of the 70’s with a couple of odd, though no less interesting features, ‘Dodes'ka-den’, and ‘Dersu Uzala’, Kurosawa returned to his genre of choice, with two astounding epic Samurai films which effectively tied a neat bow to his illustrious career (his 90's non-Samurai films notwithstanding).

The first was 'Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior', a beautiful and powerful film with an endearing humanist core, and second is 'Ran' – perhaps his most brutal and cynical film. Loosely based on ‘King Lear’, Ran is the third film in Kurosawa’s filmography which adapted Shakespeare to feudal Japan. At the outset we meet elder warlord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) who announces he’s giving up control of his empire to his three sons, Taro, Jiro, and Saburo, but with a distinct hierarchy – Taro, the eldest receiving the presitgious first castle and Jiro and Saburo the lesser of the three castles and in essence subordination to Taro. This gesture, which for Ichimonji is meant as a gesture of goodwill, is met with conflict and argument by all. And it doesn’t take long for the brothers to wage war against each other for ultimate power.

The result is Kurosawa’s bloodiest and most violent film, a deep penetrating brutality which digs deeper than mere flesh and blood but actions and choices of his main characters which demolishes the sacredness of family.

As a 'Jidaigeki' film - a Japanese genre refering to the distinct melodramatic dramatic style of Japanese period films - there’s a distinct heightened theatricality to the performances, which for Japanese newbies, might be a little oft-putting. Even I find it difficult to get into many of these films, but like the works of Shakespeare, which are even more daunting to penetrate, Kurosawa’s theme are universal and identifiable. Like the tragedy of his main influence, 'King Lear' , 'Ran' lasers in on the effect of a life of greed on its main character and the dues he's forced to pay at the end of his life.

In the first half of the picture we sympathize with Ichimonji, whom we feel unjustly suffers the pain of his mutinous and greedy sons. But as Ichimonji’s journey progresses we discover the actions of his sons against him represent a shake of bad karma against his own despotic ways. Specifically, the blind character of Tsurumaru, who gives the fleeing Ichimonji shelter, only to discover Ichimonji, himself, was responsible for gauging his eyes out and rendering him blind. And the character of Lady Kaede, who at first comes off as the conniving and manipulative Lady Macbeth of the film, by the end reveals a lifetime of shame at the hands of Ichimonji who destroyed her family’s kingdom and made her marry his son, as a form of brutal subjugating punishment.

At 160mins, ‘Ran’ is no easy task to get through, especially if you have other distractions at home watch a DVD. Many of the scenes linger on and on longer than traditional Hollywood fare – the opening scene which contains the inciting incident could have cut out after 3 or 4 mins, instead Kurosawa stays with the scene for 10-12more mins.

But it's only two scenes in particular which elevate this picture to cinematic high art. The first is the phenomenal midpoint assault on Ichimonji’s castle – a scene of uncompromising brutally, with buckets of bright red blood, comparable to Sam Peckinpah’s carnage in 'The Wild Bunch', but executed with the grace and elegance of a Bergman film. As the armies of soldiers pound each other with swords, arrows and guns, Kurosawa takes out the sound, except for the music for a powerful sublime visual and aural effect.

The final battle scene features some of Kurosawa’s finest compositions, showing his best epic chops, comparable to David Lean’s late career work. Kurosawa uses the engulfing effect of the mountains and landscape to punish his characters and rendering their insatiable actions of greed petty and small. In the end, none of the characters get off scott free, a self-destruction of monumental proportions. And the awesome final shot, featuring the blind and innocent Tsurumaru wandering hopelessly on the edge of massive cliff reinforces this cynicism.

'Ran' is now available on Blu-Ray as part of the Criterion-comparable 'Studio Canal Collection' and via Maple Pictures in Canada. The Blu-Ray transfer is good, though not astounding, but is the ideal way, other than the theatre, to experience Kurosawa's awesome imagery.

Yojimbo (1961) dir. Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshiro Mifune

***

“Yojimbo” is a landmark film for Akira Kurosawa. He was already on the map with “Rashomon” (1951) and a master filmmaker by “Seven Samurai” (1954), but he became a living legend with “Yojimbo”. The film famously influenced Sergio Leone to create the Spaghetti Western “Dollars Trilogy” and George Lucas to create “Star Wars”. “Yojimbo” is a supreme example of the adaptability of Kurosawa’s storytelling, but unfortunately beyond historical significance it doesn’t quite stand up to Kurosawa’s other more revered works – “Ikiru”, or “High and Low” or “Seven Samurai”.

Toshiro Mifune plays Kuwabatake Sanjuro, a feudal Japanese Ronin who is first seen wandering rural Japan. He has nowhere to go and no timeline, and so he puts his fate to chance by throwing a stick on the ground to determine his direction. The stick directs him to the small township, similar to those one-horse towns from the American Western. Sanjuro is an opportunist and immediately he sees an opportunity to make some money and exploit the gang war that plagues the innocent bystanders. Sanjuro offers himself to the highest bidder and schemes from both sides of the conflict to incite the gangs to destroy themselves thereby freeing the citizens their tyrannous rule.

Kurosawa’s frames are brilliant. Widescreen black and white always looks good and “Yojimbo” is one of his best looking films. Kurosawa mixes long lens portraits, which influenced George Lucas and the classic wideangle establishing shots of the town, which influenced Leone.

Plot wise, the film doesn’t hold as well today as it did in 1961. The second act drags. Sanjuro’s manipulation of the gangs is never clearly thought out and the moment he is beaten up, there’s a long stretch where the film almost comes to a complete halt. Interestingly, “Fistful of Dollars” suffers from the same flaws as well.

It’s fun to watch the opening fight scene in “Yojimbo” to see where it influenced both George Lucas and Sergio Leone in separate ways. Leone takes Kurosawa’s humour, specifically mimicking Mifune’s last line to the coffin maker – “Two coffins... No, maybe three”. Lucas borrows the fighting style of the Samurai. Compare it the scene in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”, when Liam Neeson and Ewan Macgregor rescue the Natalie Portman from the droids in the first act. Watch how Neeson kills the droids with his lightsaber with speed and sheaths his saber exactly like Sanjuro.

The Western archetype is the prevailing theme – a wandering fighter, a loner who balances personal ethics with crafty selfishness. Wind and dust are important to the look and feel of the film. It fills the frame with chaotic movement while the characters move with slow deliberate steps. Like those who were influenced by him, Kurosawa’s work is an amalgam of several other sources - the great American Western filmmakers, John Ford, Howard Hawks, George Stevens, Japanese myths and classic Shakespeare.

The 1962 film “Sanjuro” is a sequel featuring the same character on a different adventure. Though it has some flaws as well, it features a fantastically bloody ending which “Yojimbo” lacks. But all quibbles aside there’s nothing to take away from Kurosawa. He is and always will be one of the top five filmmakers of all time. Enjoy.

Buy it here: Yojimbo - Criterion Collection

This is the final confrontation – spoilers obviously: