Starring Toshiro Mifune, Daisuke Kato, and Tikashi Shimura
Written and directed by Akira Kurosawa
Surveying the situation after taking refuge in a small, rundown restaurant, the Samurai decides on a plan: he'll play both sides, decimating the gangs and allowing the town a chance to break free and start over. After proving his worth in a fight, he is courted by both sides, and eventually begins to play them against each other. He'll lie, and set one gang's men against the others, then sit back and watch the fireworks, all the while asking for money in advance for his unique services.
Eventually, though, his plan begins to backfire. When he's eventually found out, events are set in motion leading to a final showdown in the streets that will finally decide the fate of this small country town.
"Yojimbo" is a fairly interesting construct - it's modeled after the Western genre, only set in Japan and starring a Samurai, and yet it proved infinitely influential on all the Westerns that came after it. It was remade by Sergio Leone as "A Fistful of Dollars" starring Clint Eastwood. That film became the first of Leone and Eastwood's "Man With No Name" trilogy, which stand today as classics of the Western genre, the standards by which other Westerns are judged.
Despite the seriousness of the premise, the tone of the film is somewhat comical, though darkly so. The jokes are often at the expense of downtrodden characters. Several of the characters are outright caricatures, like the town Constable who greets the Samurai by offering to sell his services and informing him about the local brothel.
Mifune plays the Man With No Name here, and having seen Eastwood's version first, it's interesting for me to watch Mifune. He doesn't speak much, probably even less than Eastwood does. But when he does, his delivery is gold. His scene in which he reveals his plan to the old man at the restaurant is hilarious. Mifune's character often seems heartless, playing with peoples' lives for money, but eventually shows an honorable side.
Kurosawa's direction is as excellent as his script. The fights are quick and brutal, and the movie moves at a good clip. The acting is top-notch, the comedic bits are hilarious, and the whole thing looks utterly gorgeous in black and white. The presentation on the blu-ray is pretty great, too. Even with a movie this old, the film shows remarkable detail especially in costume textures and hair. It's even better looking than Kurosawa's "Ran," which is kind of unfortunate considering how much newer and more colorful that film is.
The film spawned a sequel, "Sanjuro" in addition to being the template for any number of Westerns and other Samurai films to follow. Kurosawa is a legend in Japanese cinema, and "Yojimbo" is a fine, fine example of this ultra-talent at work.
“Yojimbo” by Akira Kurosawa can stylistically be considered as a “study” for his “Sanjuro” made a year after “Yojimbo” (with the same main character played by a unique actor in the history of cinema Toshiro Mifune). But thematically it is quite an independent film that concentrates on the specificity economically determined fight between rivaling groups of entrepreneurs with taste for semi-legal or just outright illegal strategies of self-enrichment (the types we are today in the 21st century know only too well). Kurosawa uses a tiny provincial city in Japan of 19th century as a setting for metaphorizing up-to-date behavior of international cast of predatory money-makers. Like we today (after invented wars and financial collapses) Kurosawa in “Yojimbo” thinks what to do in a situation when pathological greed of the financial decision-makers endangers the life of human populations. Again, as we are today, Kurosawa was disappointed with the traditional idea of “revolutionary transformation” of a corrupt society – the experience of Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is enough to discourage us from this way. Instead, Kurosawa offers in his two films Sanjuro as, in essence, a role model for our hope. Instead of “revolution” as a strategy for social-psychological transformation of life Kurosawa offers “non-participation”. Sanjuro is an outsider by moral reasons. This status (under-status) “of not belonging” colors his personality as a moral alternative to those who while being horrified by the cruelty of the system are doomed to participate in its everyday rituals because they share many of its conventions and prejudices. The intensity of “Yojimbo’s” critical energies joins the elaborateness of its analysis of today’s formal democracy’s vices and sins hidden under the beautiful make-up of its proudly humane ideological pronouncements. “Yojimbo” is full of wit and humor, but also of human emotions, suffering and joy, and real problems everybody can relate to. Please, visit: www.actingoutpolitics.com to read essay about “Yojimbo” (with analysis of stills from the film), and articles about Kurosawa’s other films and the films by Godard, Resnais, Bergman, Bunuel, Bresson, Pasolini, Antonioni, Cavani, Bertolucci, Fassbinder, Alain Tanner, Herzog, Wim Wenders, Jerzy Skolimowski, Rossellini, Maurice Pialat, Moshe Mizrahi and Ronald Neame.
ReplyDeleteVictor Enyutin