Not Coming to a Theater Near You
There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair.
There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair.
Expecting a samurai swordplay genre exercise but instead getting a layered, elegantly conceived drama of devastating emotional impact, my first Kobayashi left me shellshocked. The narrative is superbly structured, forcing the viewer to continuously reevaluate what he has seen and even what he is currently seeing, not through any rashomon effect or convoluted chronology (though flashbacks are key to the storytelling), but rather through an ever-deepening understanding of character. When the destitute ronin Hanshiro first enters, looking to use a wealthy lord’s court to commit ritual suicide, he’s a standard bad-ass type—deep of voice, stoic in expression, honorable in person. Yet as the story unfolds (and this is one of the few films whose story can be said to truly unfold rather than simply unspool in front of you) Hanshiro becomes far more than the genre would normally permit. Played brilliantly by Tatsuya Nakadai, Hanshiro is a hero who earns the audience’s sympathy and respect by virtue of his character, not because the film mandates it.
Kobayashi’s formal strategy here is rigorous, precise, elegant. Every shot is beautifully composed, the frame never out of balance. The slow tracking shots Kobayashi employs, particularly those that track up and close behind the actors as they remain stationary, are aesthetically pleasing in and of themselves, but also brings us into the psyches of the characters, heightening their feelings and giving a sense of mental processes as work. The editing is crisp and fluid, to the point where the multitudes of flashbacks flow directly into the main narrative and vice versa. Canted cameras, mini-zooms and excellent use of off-screen sound round out Kobayashi’s arsenal of cinematic tricks, each used exactly where they need to be and no more. This is an exceedingly well-made, aesthetically confident picture.
I was truly blindsided by the emotional impact of this film; the emotions keep building on top of each other as the story progresses, until finally, at the breaking point, action erupts. For me, never has the kinetics of action cinema been delivered as such a catharsis, a release of all of the feelings and ideas that the movie has thus far presented. Visceral and wild, yet never flagging in its formal elegance (have I used that word enough?) the climactic action sequence blows everything I’ve seen by Kurosawa out of the water (there, I said it). And when the dust settled, almost without my realizing it, the film’s great theme of individualism and compassion in the face of social indifference and hypocrisy emerged loud and clear, still ringing in my head now.
by Timothy Sun | Source: 35mm
22 Jun 2008 10:09 PM | Submit Comment
