Movie Reviews: Director Archives
Yôji Yamada
The Hidden Blade
If you’ve seen The Twilight Samurai, there’s a very good chance that watching The Hidden Blade will give you a major feeling of deja vu. The two films are so similar—in tone, pacing, storyline, and characters—that I don’t think it’s entirely unjustified to call The Hidden Blade a retread. A skillfully done, artfully made, beautifully rendered retread, but a retread nonetheless.
Katagiri (Masatoshi Nagase) is a low-ranking samurai with seemingly no prospects: he’s stationed in a backwater part of the country; his father had been forced to commit hara-kiri, thus casting a shadow over the entire family; and worst of all, he’s unmarried, an unthinkable position for a man his age. However, Katagiri and his family make do, managing to eke out a happy existence.
Much of this is due to Kie (Takako Matsu), a young servant girl who has been living with them for several years, learning the domestic skills needed to be a good wife. Unfortunately, Kie’s time of service is up, and she’s married off to a merchant family. Katagiri’s sister, Shino, is also married off to one of Katagiri’s best friends, leaving him all alone after their mother’s death.
After three lonely years, Katagiri bumps into Kie while running errands, only she’s no longer the bright, cheerful girl she knew. A hard marriage and a hard life have reduced her to a sickly state. Incensed, Katagiri takes her from her husband’s family and begins nursing her back to health, which inevitably starts some scandalous rumors.
However, the clan has far more pressing matters at hand than one samurai’s supposed indisrections. The film is set at the end of the Edo period in Japanese history, the time when modern warfare—in the form of cannons and firearms—came to Japan, thus signalling the end of the samurai. As with The Twilight Samurai, this casts a elegiac, nostalgic atmosphere over the entire movie, and director Yoji Yamada captures it just as beautifully and longingly here as he did with his previous film.
The Twilight Samurai
When the 2004 Academy Award nominations were announced, I was absolutely thrilled to see The Twilight Samurai listed as Japan’s entry for “Best Foreign Picture”. I had just seen the movie several weeks earlier, having finally bought the DVD after reading so much about it for the past year or so and how it was cleaning up at festivals around the world. Having now seen the movie 3 times (and I’ll probably be going on viewing #4 here shortly), I personally consider it an instant classic, and I find it easy to foresee it joining the ranks of such genre classics as Yojimbo, Harakiri, and Zatoichi.
Although I found it a completely involving and affecting film, it’s safe to say that The Twilight Samurai is probably not what most people would expect from a samurai movie. The Twilight Samurai tells the story of Seibei Iguchi (Hiroyuki Sanada), a low-ranking samurai of the Unasaka Clan. From the first time he appears, it’s obvious he’s not your typical silver screen samurai.
He doesn’t appear to be a skilled warrior. In fact, he works as a bookkeeper in the clan’s storehouses, cataloging food supplies. Nor does he carry himself with any sort of swagger or pride, a la Toshiro Mifune. Rather, he just sort of shuffles about in his torn clothing, unkempt hair, and downcast expression. All in all, he seems more inclined to be a farmer instead of a proud and deadly warrior. And truth be told, that’s how Seibei would prefer to live. He’s perfectly content living a humble life far removed from the sweeping changes that are about to engulf his clan and country.
However, his life is not without hardship. He’s a recent widower, his wife having died from tuberculosis. Her funeral has left him deep in debt and he must now care for his two young daughters, Kayano and Ito, and his senile mother all by himself. A famine is currently sweeping through the country and to support his family, Seibei takes odd jobs in addition to his other duties. As a result, he has no time to associate with his fellow samurai, who mock him and nickname him “Twilight Seibei”.
Having no time to look after himself, his appearance becomes rather bedraggled, and after an embarrassing incident with the clan leader, he becomes the laughingstock of the clan and a disgrace to his family. Still, Seibei’s perfectly content to look after his beloved daughters, refusing to remarry for fear of how the change will affect them. But change is coming, and several events threaten to disrupt Seibei’s simple life.