FILM REVIEW
Review Scoring Chart - 10:
Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above
Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1:
Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.
HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI
Dir: Miike Takeshi
Stars: Kōji Yakusho, Hikari Mitsushima, Eito, Ebizo Ichikawa
Running Time: 126mins
To Western eyes, director Miike Takeshi will probably forever be associated with the blood-soaked insanity of Audition, Ichi The Killer or Dead Or Alive.
In Japan, though, he is quite the journeyman, often releasing as many
as five movies in a single year and covering very different subject
matters. His last two movies, for example, have been the family comedy Ninja Kids!!! (and yes, those exclamation points are as mandatory as for Mario Kart: Double Dash!!) and Zebraman 2, whose plot summary on Wikipedia is something you really need to read.
Prior to that, he directed Thirteen Assassins, a fairly decent samurai movie which I reviewed as part of my London Film Festival coverage last year. Miike is back this year with a remake of Masake Kobayashi's Harakiri, which won the Cannes Special Jury Award in 1962. Anyone planning on seeing this on the back of Thirteen Assassins should be warned that Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai
has Miike showing off the extent of his versatility yet again, reneging
on almost everything that Western audiences have come to expect from
him.
Thirteen Assassins struggled in its slow first hour, which mostly comprised set-up and character work. Hara-Kiri
is a slow, character-based drama all the way through, virtually
bloodless compared to the director's best-known work, with only very
brief bursts of violence. That isn't a problem, though: Thirteen Assassins
couldn't make its scene-setting work because its premise was so generic
and everyone was waiting to get to the action. As a story-driven film, Hara-Kiri is able to pull more surprises and put more focus on its smaller cast of characters.
The film utilises flashback to tell a great deal of its story, which
might have been problematic had it not thrown itself so wholeheartedly
into the idea. It starts off with a samurai arriving at the house of a
powerful and respected lord, asking for the honour of committing seppuku
in his courtyard. From there, the narrative takes three jumps back in
time, each going further back and revealing the whys and hows behind the
samurai's decision.
Its twists are never surprising, but watching the consequences unfold
before the inciting actions lends a tragic weight to the latter half of
the film, as we see happy families walking towards their collapse and
well-intentioned plans leading to the worst possible outcomes. It also
allows the characters to be so much more than the stock figures they
initially seem: a dishonest young boy vindicated by circumstances; a
plot for revenge fuelled by something much deeper than dishonour.
If there is one thing apart from the period setting which carries over from Thirteen Assassins,
it is the disdain with which Miike views the hierarchies and traditions
of Japanese society. Far from the romanticised Western view which has
produced such garbage as Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, Miike
sees the life of a samurai as one strangled by social immobility and
heartless obedience to meaningless social rules that punish anyone who
dares have a soul.
The cast are uniformly outstanding: Kōji Yakusho successfully
reconciles the man we meet at the beginning of the film with the very
different one we see at the end, fully rounding up how one turned into
the other, all the while being someone else entirely. Hikari Mitsushima
and Eito (just Eito) invest great emotional power as a young
couple struggling to get by with little money, a young child to support,
a crumbling house and a spreading illness. Though the stories are
simple and the characters set on their path from the first shot, each
actor makes the most of their every cue.
Miike directs the hell out of the movie, albeit in the most
unassuming way possible. The brief fight near the end shows that his
talent for staging action is as strong as ever - hopefully he'll go back
into that genre soon - but it is the way he frames the still, quiet
shots that reveal the depth of his mastery. Everything in Lord Iie's
house is captured in either tight quarters or with characters under
constant scrutiny (the seppuku ritual is made particularly oppressive,
with swordsmen watching on all sides, never out of shot), echoing the
constrictive nature of the rules by which the upper echelons of Japanese
samurai society lived. The overwhelming colours are white, grey and
red, much as how the samurai code incisively divides life into what is
right and wrong, with blood the only thing moving inbetween.
By contrast, the family home from society's lower rung is wrapped in
greens, yellows and blues, with walls of transparent cloth and
disintegrating paper reflecting the emotional openness so lacking in the
immaculate walls of Lord Iie's house. Yet when winter arrives and
disease and poverty start to take their toll, those transparent walls
are suddenly letting in cold, the yellows turning as white as the snow
outside and the blues and greens darkening into a deathly veil over the
once-warm household. What makes the little family special is also what
ends up betraying them.
The film has one big problem, though. It's in 3D. Perhaps a few of
you reading this will roll your eyes, thinking this just another
(re)statement of my dislike of the technology, but it's more than that.
The added darkness dulls the effect of the understated cinematography.
Take the glasses off and the film is gorgeous. Put them back on,
suddenly everything is that little bit more dreary. It emphasizes how
pointless the whole endeavour is: when the 3D is understated, it is at
least relatively unintrusive (apart from those bloody glasses), but
raises the question of what the point of it is when at its best when
least noticed.
When it does become obvious, it injects a veneer of
artifice that is vulgar and distracting. It is the first time I have
seen 3D applied to a film that aims for serious artistic merit rather
than blockbuster spectacle, and the result is every bit as reductive as
feared. The only thing in its favour are the 'raised' subtitles, which
look better than having them printed onto a flat image. Considering how
much the rest of the film suffers, though, sacrificing that effect for
full-strength cinematography and no uncomfortable glasses or added
expense would be my choice every time.
But for that misstep, Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai is a
beautifully made and evocative tale from the last man that Western
audiences would expect to have telling it. Its storytelling and
characterisation are a little too straightforward to hit the same
heights as the 1962 classic, but if you can find a screening unblighted
by 3D, it is worth strong consideration. Should 3D viewing be your only
option, however, take it as a worrying sign of the technology starting
to take its toll on proper art, rather than sticking with to likes of Transformers 3 where it belongs. [ 7 ]
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