Rarely does the discrepancy between expectations and reality produce something as unique and beautiful as the Dark Samurai. But those emotions and the certainly unique aftertaste, doubling over time in its power, are beautiful, like the painting of Yoji Yamada. And at first glance, there is nothing in it that samurai cinema is usually associated with in my head: no pompous speeches, no epic battles, no heavy sacrifices with dramatic consequences.
Only the simple life and burden of a educated person who has not forgotten what he was taught: obedience and adherence to the code. Seipei does not spew out pretentious phrases, there is no steel in his eyes, and life is simple and understandable to anyone: a samurai interrupts from one coin to another in order to feed his beloved family. His life is saturated with bitterness, more than once he gave up his own happiness for the sake of the peace of others, and the only thing he did impeccably was follow the path of a good mortal.
With a fine brush, the first-class artist Yoji Yamada paints the everyday life of a simple person, in whose everyday postulates flow not so much samurai dogmas as a righteous understanding of life, conscience and the meaning of honor. To the lulling music of Isao Tomita, Hiroyuki Sanada dutifully walks through time to his destiny. Seipei lives a simple and dignified life, perhaps not at all significant, but there is something so beautiful in ordinaryity that it is impossible to break away from its contemplation.
The main thing is to catch the current of the “Dark Samurai”. Calm, meditative, full. Stand in the middle of it and let your soul be washed. Because the final chords of the melody of this river are sure to drive history deep into the heart with a few precise samurai punches that carry simple truths.
A warrior does not take other people’s lives, but does everything to save them. Seipei, taking care of his own family, fighting against bad people and being in doubt before blind duty, tells us that the path of a true samurai is the path of a worthy person, whose eternal struggle is not with an external opponent, but with an internal one.
by vtorichniichief
A costumed melodrama about the difficult years of the life of a “dark” widower who is on the verge of holiness. I wish I could. A sober man, a caring father of two charming (by Japanese standards) daughters, a loving son of a half-witted mother, an honest warehouse worker, a “genius of judo”, a handsome man with a three-day bristling forehead. Day service, evening cage making for canaries. Family, of course. On Sundays, the garden with a hoe in hand. And a constant self-control that knows no fluctuations. Full set! Including knowledge by heart of Confucius. One problem is neglect. It's understandably hard without a woman. Even there, in distant Japan for some century BC. Or India, or Australia, or some other thirtieth kingdom. Depends on the entourage, language and scenery, “with precision recreating”. And you can't check the accuracy, it's so far away. But he bribes, takes it alive, squeezes a tear, tickles. To a bitter laugh, what nonsense!
Don’t be afraid of change. Most often they happen at the moment when they are needed.
A 10-year-old girl quotes Confucius, but her grandfather is more practical: “You study too much, you never get married.” The prolific classic Yamada over a half-century career, of course, managed to hone the katana of his script and directorial art so much that the cut of the central theme is visible even in the passage dialogues. In the myriad intricacies of the spiral of Japanese history, it is possible to distinguish those loci where it, clashing old and new ways, has undergone epochal breaks. The Twilight Samurai captures the country shortly before the Meiji Restoration, which put an end to all samurai. And after watching any question, why the bloated era of the shogunates itself held a suffocating reception, does not arise.
The girl’s father, Seibei Iguchi, seems to be a man of more modern views: “No matter how the world changes, if you can think, you will still survive.” One could safely put the label “intellectual”, if not for a way of life, at the beginning of the story more like survival. After the death of his wife, Seybei, nicknamed “twilight”, got into such debts that now from morning to these very dusk he is crooked in his clan, and at night he completely left with craftsmanship unthinkable for bushi - making cages for crickets. And where to go if the income is only 50 Coke of rice a year, and on your hump is still an elderly mother with amnesia and two young daughters?
Carefully filming the novel of a prominent Japanese writer of the second half of the 20th century, Shuhei Fujisawa, Yamada in the first minutes disarmed not only his samurai, who sold a sword to arrange a magnificent funeral for his wife, but also the viewer. No one has ever landed a slightly pompous and extremely brutal image so strongly. Combat romance breaks down on everyday life, shown with the meticulousness and slowness of a wise master, an attractive warrior is lowered to the rank of a small civil servant.
The bushy side of samurai life fades into the background, if the main character then comes to work with a bad-smelling ragman, since there is no more strength to watch himself, then he does not hesitate to admit that he was rather created for the peasantry, and the animal rage necessary for murder has long lost. But it is only a cunning ploy by experienced strategist Yamada in the party's debut. Sacrificing the obvious external heroic attributes of a slightly downtrodden and overly modest samurai, he masterfully works for resistance, makes a hidden fictitious and subsequently shows his huge inner strength much more vividly. When Seibei beats a sword-armed opponent in a duel with a training stick, you realize that he is not shy, but simply a wakizashi master who is aware of the lethality of his impeccable art. He is not a beast just because he does not thirst for blood, his fangs and claws are able to tear any prey.
This combination of modesty and strength has some mysterious noble charm and for a samurai film is not typical. Yamada deftly evokes to his characters exactly the emotions that he intended: positive ones, negative ones. This rare quality speaks of the most skillful casting. Star handsome samurai fighters Hiroyuki Samada here is mature enough to show not only the dexterity of skills in kenjutsu, and, looking at playing his beloved Tomoe actress Rie Miyazawa, it is impossible to imagine that once she was the most scandalous nude model in Japan. Here Tomoe is a man’s dream, a rare synthesis of beauty, humor, vitality and true Eastern sensitivity.
The drama is that their reunification is constantly hampered by external circumstances, a system of social stratification. No matter what new conflict, “Samurai” does not rely on the originality of scripted twists and turns. Its plot can be told in literally three sentences, but Yamada does not try to twist the multi-step intrigue. There are not so many scenes, and therefore he has a special attitude to each of them, each he tries to draw to the smallest details of the era of the 1860s, leaving no gaps, whether in everyday life, peculiarities of communication, manners, historical context or hierarchy. Therefore, you feel with your skin the hidden, suffocating air of that time, where the famous “tradition” is a word with a negative color.
Yamada blows glossy dust from it and other time markers of ancient Japan and convincingly shows why the warrior romantic era was not so romantic and why it came to an end. Any code, rank, and hierarchy that interferes with living and loving will sooner or later cease to exist, no matter what sacred power they endow themselves with and no matter what high ideals they call for. The final conversation between the gloomy samurai and the chief of the guard, whom he was sent to kill for refusing to dissect his belly on the orders of his lordship, is a real revelation of time, the undisguised truth of the collapse of the world of the shoguns and their vassals. If a samurai disobeys to make himself a seppuku, the samurai age is over.
This is an insurmountable existential and ideological crisis of the Bushido philosophy – no artificial codes, written or not written, can kill a person: his eternal desire for life, his sense of justice and, especially, injustice. It’s hard to kill someone who doesn’t know what to die for. Not every warrior is ready to recognize himself as a grain of sand blown away by the wind of internecine changes. All this is compounded by the root economic crisis of the technically backward, isolated agrarian society of the Shogunate, where a samurai could live unworthy of another peasant. Humanism and hedonism, as always, win: there is no idea for which a man renounces his goods, and no better measure of all things than himself. The spirit of a warrior is not to take life, even oneself, but to save it. The samurai era may have passed, but the warriors remained.
The film was very pleasantly surprised. I prepared myself for resistance on the verge of tragedy, for lips squeezed into a thin strip and for long beautiful fights, and got something so light and bright that neither in a fairy tale nor in a pen to describe.
A film about love, about the ability to feel the beauty of life, about friendship, about family and about what a real man should be. All this is the way of a true samurai, a worthy man.
I perfectly understand the main character of Tamoe: it is impossible not to love someone like Seibei Ikuchi. I think this is the kind of man every girl dreams of. And dreams not as about James Bond or vampire Lestat, but as a real person with whom I would like to go through life. It is amazing to feel that this samurai from distant and mysterious Japan and no less distant 19th century so close and understandable. I would like such people to be more, because they hold our restless world.
10 out of 10
I rarely turn my attention to Asian cinema. Today, this gaze fell on the wonderful Japanese film directed by Yoji Yamada “The Dark Samurai”. After watching, I am delighted and will now write a laudatory ode. However, I will immediately make a reservation that this film is still an amateur. It does not have a large number of action scenes, beautifully choreographically staged fights, fascinating views of nature and enchanting outfits of the main characters. Personally, this film hooked me not with the picture and views, but with a certain philosophy contained in the film.
The narration of The Dark Samurai takes place slowly, showing us the hard life of a lower-ranking samurai, Seibei, performed by Hiroyuki Sanada. Throughout the film stretches the thread of the fate of an honest man able to sacrifice himself (including the opinion of other people about himself, which at that time in Japan, apparently, was a lot important) for the sake of people close to him. Others took his selflessness with irony, considering Seibei unhappy. Was that true? Everyone who watches this movie will have an answer to this question. The people around Seybei called him a gloomy samurai, but no one saw the true sunlight in his soul. I think that a person in whom real love lives cannot be unhappy. Happiness brings not the possession of a loved one, but the fact that this person in the world is alive, healthy and full. And it does not matter that for this, albeit minimal, well-being of loved ones you have to sacrifice something of your own. The actor, who played the main role, perfectly transferred and embodied this idea on the screen, I believed every emotional torment.
These were almost all the impressions received from the film, which, having formed into a beautiful, sometimes very gloomy and heavy, whole picture, left a positive imprint. But still, to watch this film or not, it is necessary to decide taking into account the reservation in the first paragraph of this “opus”, because someone’s philosophy in the film and excellent acting for a good film will not be enough.
9 out of 10
I can tell you right away that I love Hiroyuki Sanada, and when I was advised to watch this film, I was very surprised that he played the lead role. Now to business. In general, Japanese cinema, like Chinese, Korean, Indian, is an amazing thing. They know how to shoot below average quality pictures and shoot something amazing and magnificent every 1-2 years. This is the most amazing and magnificent and became for Japan in 2002, the “Gloomy Samurai”.
The film tells the story of the lowest-ranking samurai, Seibei Iguchi, who lives with his young daughters, a decrepit old mother, and a salary of 50 koku rice a year, which is very, very low income. One day, Iguchi during a duel, in which he got involved, you can say accidentally, overcomes an asshole with a sword with a stick. Word spreads quickly and Seipei is forced to kill the chief of the guard, who refused to commit suicide during an intra-clan infighting.
Of course, this description of the plot may give the impression that Seibei is a kind of cartoon samurai, throwing enemies left and right in order to get to his goal. Nope. Seipei is a humble, polite, loving father and, until the death of his wife, a caring husband. The plot is very smooth and calm. Most of the film shows us the life of a samurai, his everyday life. How he works, goes home, does the craft and sometimes meets people who just give the storyline. And that's what I liked so much. The picture is simply imbued with this Asian calm and spirituality.
The genre of the film itself is difficult to define. It's pretty much everything. Drama, melodrama, light action, a slice of life, politics and a small pinch of traditional comedy. And on the output all this is formed into a beautiful film with a rating
The Dark Samurai is a film directed by Yoji Yamada based on the historical novel The Bamboo Sword and Other Tales of Samurai by Suhei Fujisawa. The film is the first part of a trilogy about samurai directed by Yoji Yamada.
The plot of the film tells us about the plight of Samurai Seibei Iguchi. The story is based on the memoirs of one of Seipei’s daughters. The action takes place in the second half of the 19th century, a few years before the Meiji Restoration. Gloomy samurai, so called his fellow workers because of his alienation. Poverty did not allow him the luxury of resting with friends or comrades. After the death of his wife, Iguchi was left alone on the farm. He worked day and night to feed 2 children and a sick mother. The plot of the film was the appearance of the girl Tomoe Iinum, a childhood friend of Seipei.
Yoji Yamada's film is made believable, meticulous to small insignificant at first glance details, love for their culture and customs. Mid-19th century. For more than a few centuries there has been a peaceful life: no wars, no rebellions. The samurai loses his important position and a strong need for them. Over time, they turn into artisans, traders, politicians and even ronin. Seibei is the transformation from a samurai into an artisan. The sale of the sword is the interpretation of the transition from one estate to another. A samurai sword is his heart and soul. A samurai names his sword and takes care of it as if he were his child. Miyamoto Musashi said, “The sword has a soul of its own” – this only proved the importance of the katana for the samurai. To renounce the sword is to refuse service.
I also want to say a few words about love. After all, in this film she plays almost the most important role. It is love that Seipei sought all his life, and even finding it, he did not hold it for long, because the war took his life. His happiness lasted three years. Seibei was not from the high class of samurai, he lived poor, and if you look from the outside, his life is boring and difficult. But if you remember the words of his daughter at the end of the film: "Seipei's life was short but full, and that she is proud of her father."
I would also like to add to the conclusion that a samurai is often identified with a medieval knight. Wrong comparison. A samurai is the servant of his master, while a knight is for the most part an independent warrior who seeks fame. An example is knightly tournaments. The samurai did not seek glory in battle, his main task was to protect and carry out the orders of the master. In the final scene of the film, this is clearly seen. Seipei had no desire to kill Zen'emon and was even willing to let him go, thus violating the order, which could later be a death sentence for him. The samurai is fraught with a symbiosis of moral values for which he is ready to pay with his own life. Comparing him to a knight, we compare a man of honor and loyalty to a vain warrior ready to kill anyone for glory.
And finally, the film turned out very good, thanks to wonderful directorial and camera work. The actors got used to their role and each of them had their own personality, which is a very important detail in the film. Thank you for the great work of art by Yoji Yamada and his crew.
Japan, the second half of the 19th century. The Ego era, like the Tokugawa shogunate, will soon fade into oblivion, giving way to the Meiji Restoration, which will transform the once backward rural country into one of the world’s leading states. The main character of the film is Seipei Iguchi, an ordinary samurai who works as a small employee in the clan. The average accountant's salary is naturally short, and he makes cricket cages at night with his two daughters. The mother of the children died, the grandmother has senile insanity. Soon, he has to stand up for a friend’s sister, who is pursued by her ex-husband, and accept his challenge to a duel. And this is not the last test that fate has prepared for him.
The amazingly prolific classic of Japanese cinema, Yojo Yamada, who had created more than 70 films by that time, managed to shoot perhaps his best film at the age of 72. All genre clichés used during the filming of hundreds of "Tambara" (a Samura film), ranging from third-rate poverty projects to genius masterpieces ("Seven Samurai" by Akira Kurosawa), were discarded. This film is rather a leisurely story of the life of a “little man” than a visual canvas of the mores of a medieval feudal country. The case when the love of Japanese intellectuals for Chekhov and Dostoevsky resulted in an outstanding author’s visualization. Authentic, colorful surroundings of local life, coupled with interspersed dot mosaics of characters and their characters, are the strongest sides of the film, giving the greatest sense of involvement in the process of viewing. A drama about a man whose dreams of a peaceful family life are shattered by the notions of duty and honor, the cultivation of which is elevated to the rank of absolute. The idea of the priority of life over learned dogmas gives rise to the culminating thought of Seipei Iguchi: “To win, I must be in a completely wild rage and with deep contempt for my own death, and I am not ready for this”, where catharsis is seen in the glimpses of lead clouds, because of which endless rays of sunlight penetrate.
The whole and completely Japanese philosophical picture, narratively disproving the essence of its name, which, a priori, answers the question of humanity in the person of the individual: “To be or not to be?” This is the case when one chooses the greater of two evils.
A warrior does not need a sword.
Spirit dissolved in emptiness -
This is his sword.
"Hagakure"
There are cliches in culture that make it seem to us that we know a lot, if not all, about some things. In particular, it is worth uttering the word “samurai” – and we have a superman with two swords, crushing everyone to the right and left. A tea ceremony connoisseur who commits harakiri for the slightest offense.
Yoji Yamada’s film completely breaks down stereotypes and opens the veil of who these Japanese warriors really were. True, the film shows not the period of their heyday, but the time of extinction. The twilight of an era. Fragments of former greatness are like fragments of a mirror in which the last reflections of the sun have already set. Fallen leaves. Seibei Iguchi is one of them. A man who has lost his wife, a man who has been neglected, who has given up on himself, an employee of the lowest rank in the supervision of his master's supplies, who has no prospects for a career, is almost beggar. In order to feed his family, he was forced to sell even his sword, and as it is said in Hagakure, “the sword is the soul of a warrior.” There was no greater insult to a samurai than to see his sword in someone else’s hands, but two and a half centuries of peace in the era of the Tokugawa Shoguns did what the wars of the past could not. Proud warriors, turned into petty officials, forced to leave the service and engage in business unworthy of soldiers: trade, craft, or even turn into ronin – vagrants, warriors without master and honor. So Seipei is lucky, his master pays him a salary, and he has a piece of land, thanks to which he does not die of hunger, like poor peasants. And all this modest entourage Yoji Yamada recreates with Japanese meticulousness, and love for the most insignificant at first glance details. It is as if we are with Seibei in his wretched dwelling. It's hard to call it a movie. Especially successful was the scene in the house where Seipei goes on the orders of his master to punish a disobedient from his clan. We, the audience, are waiting for a spectacular scene of a sword fight in the style of a la Kurosawa, and we are waiting for a long conversation “heart to heart”, during which Seipei is even ready to break his oath of loyalty, but the way of a warrior is the way of a warrior, and Seipei kills his opponent. This seems to be the long-awaited happiness. Increase in salary, honor among colleagues, as well as the opportunity to marry a beloved woman. But the clock of history has already counted. The old world has collapsed, although those living in it do not yet know it. A new time is coming, in which Seipei has no place. And he, as a true warrior, will pass it to the end and perish, or as it is said in Hagakura: “In a situation of choice between life and death, always choose the path leading to death.”
"You can't change your fate!"
Nothing to avoid
Impossible!
Samurai Seibei, with an income of 50 koku rice, leads an almost impoverished existence. His wife has died, so he has to raise two children alone, besides he lives with a half-witted mother who does not even recognize her son. His job is to account for the food stocks of the clan he serves. He works properly, but refuses to drink after serving with other samurai, for which he receives the nickname “dark samurai”. One day he has to stand up for a girl who was offended by his ex-husband. Having fought the offender, Seibei proved his mastery of the sword. In the clan, fame spread about him. He is now tasked with killing a guilty vassal who has barricaded himself in his home, refusing to do the harakiri prescribed for him. Seibei does not want to kill this man, but is forced to do so, obeying the will of the clan.
The Dark Samurai is a film about an ancient concept of Japanese debt that was on the verge of reform before the Meiji era. One of the first decrees of the Meiji is a ban on carrying weapons, but Seibei will not survive and will be forced to live and act according to the rules of his clan, not the future Japanese Empire. In fact, before the restoration, he will not even live, because he will die in battle with the imperial forces. Seibei embodies not only the image of the right samurai, but more importantly, the right person. He is not only a man of duty, but a man of humility. For example, he is ready to give up the girl he loves without a fight, just because she has already given him her consent. Seibei also shows humility in everyday life. Feeling constantly underpaid, he tries to earn money by making wooden cages for birds. He doesn't mind working in the field. In general, Seibei anticipates the type of new Japanese who already doubts the need for murder or suicide for clan reasons. This is a rare progressive thinking for the 19th century. Vassal, whom he is tasked with killing, Seibei gives him the opportunity to escape to the last, but in the end he is forced to kill him because he raises the sword first.
Seibei is a simple man who wants simple human happiness and who only involuntarily obeys the clan. He is ready to endure poverty, he is ready to defend justice and will never commit a crime, but he sees no point in killing for no reason. Such a man will be the builder of the new Japan. He will submit to the emperor as the bearer of reason and common sense and will find himself in the work for the good of the homeland.
The "Dark Samurai" allows you to partially recreate the appearance of Japan before the Meiji Restoration. Here you can see poor peasants, not always rich samurai and rich, always adamant leaders of clans, for the slightest misconduct obliging vassals to commit suicide. Such a Japan is a country of impasse. Its limit is the rice economy and the resulting inability to compete with Western countries. But change for the better begins not only from above, where there is a struggle for power, they begin with ordinary people, as Seibei, ready to work and in any situation to recognize the value of human life.
8 out of 10
Remembering the classics – old or modern, I realized that I wanted to share something special, rare, and for some reason necessarily exotic and oriental. The East always beckons – its mystery, its soul, its mystery, and all because it is a completely different world, incomprehensible to us. After all, there, beyond the mountains, beyond the seas and oceans, beauty is perceived differently and eaten with chopsticks.
The historical canvas authored by a seventy-two-year-old (at the time of 2002) veteran of the Japanese mainstream, as it seemed at first, did not promise anything good, and did not turn into a completely unexpected and complete pleasure.
The main gem of the “Dark Samurai” is its naturalism, nudity and some absolutely honest openness; here everything is as it should be, without unnecessary embellishment and confusing metaphors, and this already makes the picture something fresh and special. The director makes us get used to other people’s fates, see them with our eyes, feel them with our hearts (forgive me for being so rude), and makes it as easy, slow, unpretentious a significance as a good, real movie should actually show. The director allows us to breathe the clean mountain air, or the aroma of musty rooms of rice warehouses and impoverished samurai pagodas, makes convincing even inappropriate (in places) words of the main characters who do not skimp on the quotes of Confucius at different moments of their lives. The word must be true, the action must be decisive. Emptiness is form. When you don’t know the forms, you can’t know people.
The story of a poor samurai who lost his wife and lives with two young daughters and a sick mother. This man fights every day so that his whole family can see tomorrow, so that they are fed, dressed and healthy. The life and life of Japan of those times are shown here more openly and naturalistically than ever, because of which the cinema immerses itself from the very beginning and does not let go to the final credits. This is the same gem: the film has a real vitality, and so that you want to look (or even enter) beyond the frame, and go to places that we were not shown, and communicate with people who did not say a word. I want to, you know, more fully embrace the life shown to us.
Another feature is that the creation of Yamada is open to everyone, that is, it does not oblige the viewer to be a high connoisseur of the East and a connoisseur of local culture, and all this because the director exposed before us the whole essence of the Japanese soul, behind which hides what is close to all people on Earth – humanity. This is perhaps the only thing that unites all distant peoples, which we understand without language and explanation. It's a picture of a man. This is a picture of the struggle for life. A picture of honor, family values, and, of course, love. All these stories seem to be watching through a thin window, realizing with slight resentment that the window cannot be opened and you cannot get out, you can only contemplate and absorb.
All events take place near the viewer, completely immersing him in the story. For two hours, I was happy, worried, supported and condemned the main character, who was brilliantly shown on the screen by the talented Hiryuki Sanada.
The most beautiful thing is that the film, with all its historical context, is not romanticized in any way, but is shown truthfully, vitally, and naturally, without unnecessary propaganda and accents on distracting little things. This is a real Samurai movie, the only problem is that on our land this phrase evokes uneven associations with a stupid oriental action movie, but in fact everything is a little wrong. This movie is about life, about people, about faith, and only then about everything else. “The Dark Samurai” is prose in cinema, and it is especially valuable in our time, when directors give us only poetry.
8 out of 10
My first encounter with Yoji Yamada will be remembered for a very, very long time. One of the best Japanese movies I’ve ever seen.
The pearl of this picture is its naturalism and nudity. Here everything is as it is, without embellishment and metaphors, and this already makes the picture special. This is the story of a poor samurai living with two young daughters and a sick mother, struggling every day to make tomorrow come for everyone, forgetting about himself and his own needs. The life and life of Japan of those times are shown here more openly and naturalistically than ever, because of which the film immerses itself from the first minutes and does not let go until the very end.
Yamada’s creations are open to everyone and do not force the viewer to be a lover of the East, simply because the director exposed the Japanese soul, behind which was hidden what is close to all of us – this is humanity. This is the only thing that unites all peoples far from each other, and the only thing that we can understand without knowing languages. A film about a man, a film about the struggle for life, about honor, about family values, about love, and all this is shown so realistically and so close that it seems as if you are looking through a window and not into a closed screen. All events take place next to the viewer, completely immersed him in the story. For two hours I was happy, worried, supportive, nervous, sometimes even condemning the hero Hiryuki Sanada, watching his life, but in everything was with him to the end. This is a very valuable phenomenon, and extremely rare.
The most beautiful thing is that the film, having a historical context, is not romanticized in any way, but is shown clearly, vitally and naturally, without unnecessary propaganda and accents on distracting little things. It does not want to be classified as a Samurai film, because this film is primarily about life, about people, about their faith, goals and their philosophy. “The Dark Samurai” is prose in cinema, and it is especially valuable now, at a time when filmmakers feed us only poetry. And so prose is especially valuable now.
Japan, shōnai. The second half of the nineteenth century. The end of the Tokugawa shogunate. An era of turmoil and inter-clan wars. The poor samurai Seibei Iguchi serves in the clan's vault and receives a modest, even humiliating, salary of 50 koku of rice a year. After the death of his wife, who died of consumption, two young daughters and an old mother remain in his care. Every night after the service, Seipei rushes home, where he is still waiting for housework. The comrades laugh at Seipei, calling him “a dark samurai.”
However, all ridicule ceases as soon as it becomes known that Iguchi won with a wooden stick in a duel with a sword-armed opponent. Immediately scattered around the fame does him a disservice. When deciding on the heir to the head of the clan, Seipei is ordered to kill one of the opponents of the new government, who refused to do harakiri. Iguchi tries to refuse, but this is an order of His Grace, and therefore he is forced to obey.
The Dark Samurai is a film adaptation of three novels (" Daytime Seibei, Sunehachi the Beggar, and The Tale of the Bamboo Sword) by Suhei Fujisawa, who inherits the Akutagawa tradition, who committed suicide just the year Fujisawa was born. The film, shot in warm pastel-brown tones and almost exclusively at dusk, is sustained in the intonation of “the trembling fragility of every moment of life.”
This makes you look at the fate of the characters with the thoroughness that can only be in a real psychological film. Even though the most significant changes in Seipei’s life occur in the foreword and afterword, in the credits or in the voiceover comments... The life of the Japanese of the XIX century in itself is so spiritual that it seems as if in the script basis - adapted Confucius or national classical poetry.
Beautiful artist Hiroyuki Sanada in an unstopped kimono is the image of that decent person who is alien to all the fuss and desire to make a career. His ability to be content with small makes us remember, first of all, Chekhov’s intellectuals, who do not grumblingly carry their cross through life. And only then does the Bushido code come to mind, on the postulates of which (" to win, I must be in a completely wild rage and with deep contempt for my own death) the philosophy of the tape is based. This strange, it would seem, a mixture associated with the conflict of inner convictions and duty, allows you to look into such nooks of life, which rarely goes to the cinema of the new century.
Not without surprise it turns out that this film is only the first appeal to the historical cinema of 72-year-old Japanese classic Yoji Yamada, 41 years of filmmaking and put during this time 77 (!) pictures. Before proceeding with The Dark Samurai, he finished the last 48th film of the longest series in the world of cinema - "Hard for Men" (" Torah-san), which was shot for 26 years.
When asked, “What was it like to play villains?” he replied, “I’ve never played villains.” They were people who woke up in the morning and did what they had to do. "
The film is about the path of a true samurai - humility and total submission to the clan. A man who fell asleep in the morning and did what he had to do. For years. Always. And you know, it's not easy. To be friendly and calm with people, despite how hard it was for you - not to show the appearance, patiently endure hardships and hardships. The film is addressed to the viewer: “Are you a viewer?” What are you? Could you do that? Would you have had enough time?
As Milton said in The Devil’s Advocate: “If you didn’t know who I was, would you think I was the master of the world?” Who would have thought, looking at a poor samurai working as a storekeeper, that he was the Great Sword Master? Amazing modesty and at the same time great wisdom of such behavior.
There is so much to learn and to think about.
The film is much deeper than it seems after watching. And the story doesn't seem complicated. However, those who waited for plot twists, drama and numerous action fights missed the most important thing. This is the best movie since 7 Samurai. I'll explain. What is the interest of Samurai Japan? Of course, culture and traditions that are different from our culture and traditions. A completely different mentality is hard to understand. It's kind of fascinating. All this is in the film and conveyed very well. No boring hollywood stuff. Exactly what you need. Only for this magnificent 2-hour immersion in the atmosphere of samurai life, you can watch the film. Absolutely hypnotic!
The main character is Seibei, a samurai of lower rank, who after the death of his wife is forced to work as a small official for pennies. Money received in the office, he barely enough to eat and care for two daughters. The samurai sword Seibei has long sold and instead wears a wooden stick disguised in scabbard. In the service of the hero of the film, jokingly nicknamed the “dark samurai”, for the fact that he always returned home at dusk, immediately after the end of the day, and did not join the rest of the samurai. However, Seibei is so skillful warrior that even with a wooden sword he was able to defeat the enemy. The rumor of his skill spreads around the district, and debt forces him to enter into a bloody battle.
Yoji Yamada is the patriarch of Japanese cinema and The Dark Samurai is his 77th film. In his interviews, the author often admitted that he was very dissatisfied with the samurai films shot in his homeland, except for some landmark films of Kurosawa, so he dared to make a “true samurai film”, which, moreover, will not be sharpened exclusively for the Japanese, but will be interesting to the viewer of any nationality and in any corner of the world. To Yamada’s credit, he did his job. The most complex and very specific genre of “national cinema” came out really accessible and understandable not only for the Japanese. With his film, the director does what Clint Eastwood did with the western, filming Unforgiven.
For most viewers, the stereotype about the genre of samurai cinema, for an entire era, consisted of films by Akira Kurosawa and other samurai films that fell into the favor of Western critics. In fact, this is a genre of real male cinema, where the characters are brave, courageous, observe traditions and are ready to defend them. Perhaps, thanks to the mentality and adherence to traditions, including those that came from the samurai, lies the unprecedented growth of the Japanese economy. The hero of the film, in fact, works as a clerk in a kind of office. By the way, Yamada clearly hints at the parallel between the customs of debt adopted by the samurai and the preserved traditions of modern Japanese culture, which regulates all areas of life of the Japanese – from everyday life to business. The main character of the film, unlike the canons, is not a classic samurai, but the complete opposite - he is poor, leads a household, smells bad, wears old clothes and raises his daughters, refusing to remarry the woman he loves. And when the plot reaches a climax, the hero is faced with a dilemma - to fulfill his duty, risking his life or refuse with shame.
It should be noted that the atypical nature of this samurai drama emphasizes that the story is conducted on behalf of the adult daughter of the hero, as well as that the film at a minimum uses the main “trick” of the genre – samurai battles and pays more attention to the everyday life of ordinary people. Even the final fight of the protagonist is filmed in half-darkness and without deliberate pathos, when tired and wounded samurai fight in a small house, while the fight is fierce, and the scene is like a strained nerve.
Atypical approach to typically national cinema bore fruit and the film was well received not only at home, but also by international criticism, so much so that it received an Oscar nomination in the category of non-English-language films.
But still, despite the unusual history and technically virtuoso production, samurai cinema remains a specific genre, which even in this performance remains more “on the amateur”. And this is precisely the case when, with everything “good” subjectively turns out “satisfactory”.