London Film Fest 2011 Day 5 - HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI

Writer-director Takashi Miike, the master of gory violence, is in altogether more sombre mood with his remake of Masaki Kobayashi's iconic 1962 feature "Harakiri". Takashi Miike's film takes the form of a highly formally controlled, slow-paced, beautifully depicted tragedy.  The form is particularly complex and satisfying - a tale within a tale within a tale, book-ended by acts of wince-inducingly graphic and stunningly choreographed violence.  It is both a personal, family tragedy, and a lament for the unbearable burden that the honour code of the samurai places on its follower.  

The movie is set in seventeenth century Edo, where peace has left the samurai caste impoverished and unemployed. The desperate ronin (samurai without master) apply to local lords to commit ritual suicide in their courtyards "to restore honour", but hoping the lords will pay them to leave.  As the film opens, Hanshiro Tsugumo (Ebizo Ichikawa) is making just such an application and the Senior Retainer warns him not bluff this particular house.  This is the outer layer of the story.  The retainer tells the tale of the previous applicant, Motomo Chijiwa (Eita) whose bluff was called.  The second layer of the tale.  And then, we get to the very heart of the film, Tsugamo's reply to the Retainer, which reveals that he knew Chijiwa well.  In fact, the boy was his son-in-law - husband to an ailing wife and son, desperate for a few pennies for medicine.  

In the telling of the three tales, Takashi Miike depicts with unflinching gaze the truth behind the exotic myth of the samurai - that their fortunes are swept up in wider feudal conflicts - a knife-edge walk between poverty and glory - the lack of humanity in their strict honour code.   This is done not just through the graphic depiction of ritual suicide, but more subtly in the colour palette of the film.  The reality of life is depicted in shades of grey.  Real life is dark, unlit, unwarmed, grim and bleak. This contrasts with the burnished red coat of armour lovingly given pride of place in the courtyard - the only shock of colour in the film, constantly in the glow of candles.  It's as though society has been up-ended, inverted - and the prison-like samurai code is being given the upper hand over life itself.

HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF SAMURAI is an amazing film.  Moving, never melodramatic despite the tragedy, formally beautiful, with set pieces that are unbearably tense and vividly depicted.  It is not the typical film one has come to expect from Takashi Miike and his long-time fans may be disappointed at its serious, almost lyrical tone. But I found it to be his best, most mature, most artistic work to date.  The only quibble is that the 3D adds very little to the experience. 

HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI played Cannes 2011 where it was the first film to be shown in 3D.  It opened in Japan on October 15th and opens in France on November 30th.

Late Late review - London Film Fest 2010 Day 11 - 13 ASSASSINS

13 ASSASSINS is a fantastic film. I literally bounced out of the cinema having watched it! On one level it's a brilliantly lavish Samurai film in the classic mould - beautiful costumes, whole villages created as sets, codes of honour broken, elegantly choreographed sword-fighting - and it reminded me how much I loved Samurai films. On another level, it's typical Takashi Miike mischief - satirising the violence of Samurai movies with a level of gore and blood that is quite simply ridonkulous - and making the village idiot actually a better sword-fighter than the pompous Samurai.

The plot is straight out of Shogun Total War 2. It's mid 19th century Japan with the Shogunate on its last legs but still rich enough to hire Shinzaemon (Kôji Yakusho) to assassinate the evil pretender, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki). The first half of the film is a Kurosawa style "putting the band back together" narrative, with the cool twist of having Yusuke Iseya play the provincial dolt who gains a place alongside his hard-core Samurai team-mates. And in the second half of the flick, they turn the town of Ochiai into an A-Team style booby-trap setting up a brutal, bloody massacre.

The first thing to say about 13 ASSASSINS is that it looks amazing. The production design is lavish in style and flawless in its period detail, creating a look typically associated with epic historical drama. The photography (Nobuyasu Kita) echoes this lavish style with Kubrick-like deliberate framing and slow, stylised camera movements. Interior scenes are lit by candelight to give an authentic feel and the detail of the costumes is breath-taking. The second thing to say is that beyond the historic detail, Takashi Miike remains the Director of the Egregious - from the audacious sadism of Naritsugu (e.g. the women crippled so extremely by "total massacre") -  to the egregious and dogmatic code of honour of Shinzaemon -  to the balletic, operatic, monumental final display of bloodshed in the village. Miike creates a film that is utterly modern in its gorging, self-indulgent, obese display of blood and violence - but also a film that is curiously nostalgic for the age of the Samurai when that bloodshed was part of a self-sacrifice for honour. His film is, then, a bravura performance - modern, nostalgic, bloody, but with depth. Undoubtedly one of the finest films of the London Film Festival.

13 ASSASSINS played Venice and Toronto 2010 and was released in Japan in September. It opens in the UK in May 2011.