skjam

Samurai Rebellion (1967) dir. Masaki Kobayashi (Japanese title: Joiuchi--Hairyo Tsuma Shimatsu, "Rebellion--Receive the Wife")

The time: 1723-1727 C.E. during the Shogunate period. The place: The Aizu province ruled by Lord Matsudaira, a bit north of Edo. The person: Ichi (Yoko Tsukasa), daughter of a minor vassal. Ichi has been arranged to marry another vassal's son, but this is overridden by Lord Matsudaira (Tatsuo Matsumura). As Matsudaira has only one son, he needs a spare heir in case of unfortunate circumstances so that his clan does not lose their fief. He's set his eye on the pretty and healthy Ichi to be his mistress and bear his children. It's framed as a request, but you don't disobey the lord's wishes. Not and stay healthy anyway. When her betrothed is pushed into breaking off the engagement, Ichi has little choice to comply, despite finding Lord Matsudaira sexually repugnant.

Ichi bears a son. When she returns from her postpartum recovery, Ichi discovers that the lord has picked up an additional mistress, one who is happy for the opportunity. In other words, Lord Matsudaira could have had a consensual relationship all along, rather than forcing himself on Ichi. The young woman understandably loses her temper and gives Matsudaira what for.

Offended but not allowed to just kill her, Lord Matsudaira dismisses her from the castle and "requests" that Ichi be married off to Yogoro Sasahara (Go Kato), older son of escort group leader Isaburo Sasahara (Toshiro Mifune), The Sasahara family isn't too keen on this. Isaburo has personal reasons for this, remembering that he was "requested" to marry into the Sasahara clan because their head wanted his superior sword skills to enhance their prestige, and as a low-ranking samurai he was in no place to refuse. His marriage with the nagging Suga (Michiko Otsuka) has been loveless, with just enough physical contact to create Yogoro and his brother Bunzo (Tatsuyoshi Ehara). Only Isaburo's stoic acceptance of what can't be helped has sustained the formal relationship for the last twenty years.

Isaburo tries to dodge the burden, angering Chamberlain Yanase (Masao Mishima) until Yogoro agrees to the match, based on his father's example of obedience. Yogoro and Ichi are married. Much to everyone's surprise, the actually quite nice Ichi and kind Yogoro hit it off, and the relationship becomes a deeply loving one. They have a daughter, Tomi, and Isaburo takes the opportunity to retire, as Yogoro has now shown himself a responsible adult.

A few months after Tomi's birth, word comes from Edo that Lord Matsudaira's older son has died. Ichi's son Kikuchiyou is now the heir, and it won't do for the heir's mother to be married to a lower vassal. (The other concubine apparently hasn't gotten pregnant yet.) Steward Takahashi (Shigeru Koyama) comes to "request" that Yogoro return his wife to the castle and her mistress status. This goes down as well as you'd expect, and leads to tragedy.

The director was already well-known for his prior films Harakiri and Kwaidan, but this was his first time working with legendary actor Toshiro Mifune, who also co-produced the movie. Apparently it took a lot of work in post-production to make all of Mifune's lines audible. He uses architectural details well to give many of the shots a claustrophobic, rigid feel. A particularly striking symbolic moment is Isaburo talking to Ichi in a raked sand garden about their possible responses to the situation. He moves off the paved path, and his footprints spoil the symmetry of the lines.

Also an obvious theme is Isaburo's fighting style, as described by his best friend, border guard captain Tatewaki Asano (Tatsuya Nakadai). When pressed, fall back, if pursued, fall back again, until the moment comes to switch to offense, then wait for the moment where the opponent makes a mistake to end the bout. He's been pursuing this policy in his personal life as well, so it's a bit of a surprise to his wife and his superiors when he stands his ground at this final outrage.

This story takes place during a peaceful time in history, and there's surprisingly little violence for a samurai film for most of the run time. At the beginning, a sword is only used to slice a straw dummy, and it is mentioned that Isaburo and Tatewaki have been deliberately avoiding a sparring match. There's a brief moment of fisticuffs when Lady Ichi loses her temper, but the serious violence is all in the last half hour as no way can be found out of the social traps. And then it's a bloodbath.

Another thing that struck me was the cowardice of most of the superiors. The lord doesn't make his requests directly, but sends underlings. And those underlings will try to pass the responsibility down the ladder rather than face the unpleasant reactions they know they're going to get. Tatewaki manages to rules-lawyer his way out of one such assignment because he agrees with Isaburo, but eventually is forced into a position where he cannot avoid fighting his friend.

The soundtrack is also good, relying on instruments appropriate to the time period, and diegetic whenever appropriate.

Content note: Sword and gun violence, usually fatal but not particularly gory. Suicide. Domestic violence. Implied marital rape. Peril to a child. Breastfeeding. Due to the nature of the social conflicts and the length of the movie, I'd say older teens on up.

A well-made samurai tragedy with an unusually strong focus on the central female character's emotions and concerns. Strongly recommended to those can handle that it is, yes, a tragedy.

Seven Samurai (1954) dir. Akira Kurosawa

It is in the Warring Stages period of Japanese history, but between major battles, so many samurai and soldiers are at loose ends, and bandits roam the countryside. An isolated farm village learns that the local bandit gang that already took their rice harvest is coming back in a few weeks when the barley harvest is brought in. The magistrate of the territory is less than proactive, only coming out after a bandit raid to tut at the damage and enforce the tax collection. The farmers gather to discuss their options: give the bandits what they want and starve to death, defy the bandits and be slaughtered, or commit suicide now and not give the bandits satisfaction. Farmer Rikichi (Yoshio Tsuchiya) has suffered too many losses to consider bowing to the evil ones. Old Man Gisaku (Kokoden Todo), who lived through similar events before, remembers that the one village in his previous province that did not burn was the one that hired samurai mercenaries.

Because the village is poor, Rikichi and some fellow farmers go off to the big town to find hungry samurai who are willing to work for just getting fed. This goes poorly at first. But then the men run into Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura) who demonstrates his willingness to think outside the box by allowing his head to be shaved like a monk in order to save a child's life. Even he turns them down at first, but is stung by a low fellow's taunting of the farmers to step up.

Kambei quickly assembles a team of seven "samurai", the minimum he thinks he'll need to handle forty bandits. Gorobei Katayama (Yoshio Inaba) is an observant fellow who is hard to trick. Heihachi Hayashida (Minoru Chiaki) isn't the best warrior, as seen by the fact that he's been reduced to woodchopping for meals, but is upbeat and likable. Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi) is a stoic master swordsman. Shichiroji (Daisuke Kato) is Kambei's old colleague who had been thought dead, but is more than willing to become his friend's second in command. Katsuhiro Okamoto (Isao Kimura) is an idealistic young man who has never known true combat but finds Kambei inspiring. And then there's "Kikuchiyo", a rough, ill-mannered man who tries to use a "borrowed" family ledger to prove he's the youngest child of a samurai family, but because he is illiterate, doesn't realize that he's pointing to a girl's name. The others don't accept him at first, but Kikuchiyo proves useful...eventually.

This hastily assembled team travels to the village, knowing that there's little time to create fortifications, give the peaceful villagers some basic combat training, and learn to mesh as a group.

This 1954 film is one of the all-time greats, immensely influential in plot structure, characterization, and cinematography. Even the oddly-aligned title sequence stands out. Its most immediate descendant is The Magnificent Seven, but plenty of other movies have taken their cues from Seven Samurai as well.

We've got a good spread of character types among the samurai and villagers, from cowards to fools to the weary wise. (The one area where we don't get much characterization is among the bandits, who don't have much in the way of conversation.)

The one hint of romance is between Katsuhiro and village girl Shino (Keiko Tsushima), whose father Manzo (Kamatari Fujiwara) was so paranoid about the possibility that he chopped off her hair and forced her to wear men's clothing in a futile attempt to hide her. It...doesn't turn out as you'd expect in an American film of the same vintage.

This is a long movie, about 3 and a half hours including an intermission. Much of this is long relatively quiet dramatic or comedic scenes; between that and the fact the movie is in black and white, some younger viewers may not be ready for it, at least not all in one sitting.

Content note: Lots of lethal violence, but very little blood. Offscreen rape. Offscreen consensual extramarital sex. Parental abuse and slut-shaming. Suicide is discussed but not shown. Some cultural differences between 16th Century Japan and 21st Century America may be distressing to the sensitive. Men wear skimpy loincloths. (There's also shots that focus on women's rear ends but they're fully covered by loose kimono so not as racy for modern viewers.)

Absolutely a must see for movie fans, especially if you are lucky enough to have it appear in an actual movie theater near you.