Intricate, razor-sharp black-and-white cinematography by Kenji Mizoguchi’s Kazuo Miyagawa gives Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo—literally, The Bodyguard—only the appearance of being a great work of visual art. It entertains but is scarcely important. However, this satirical action-comedy towers above its sequel, Kurosawa’s tedious Sanjuro (1962), and its spaghetti-western remake, Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) starring Clint Eastwood.
Its most brilliant aspect is Toshiro Mifune as ronin Sanjuro Kuwabatake (best actor, Venice, Kinema Junpo), who in the 1860s drifts into town and into the middle of the longstanding feud between two gangster-lords, Seibei and Ushitora. Sanjuro, all business, thinks he is on top of things; he offers his services as bodyguard to both sides, intending to take the better offer. But this opportunism covers a good, just heart that presses his return to the village after barely escaping with his life following a confrontation with Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai, marvelous), Ushitora’s pistol-packing son. His affliction is the human condition, a sign of which is the shoulder twitch by which Sanjuro is introduced to us with the camera at his back. The principal circumstance attached to Sanjuro is his reduction from pride and confidence—really, overconfidence—to humiliated humanity. One might describe this awesome event as a disintegration and descent upwards, in effect, for the masterless samurai, a becoming (psychologically, not socially) his own master. Yojimbo contains a famous image. When Sanjuro first enters the village, a dog crosses his path carrying a severed human hand in its teeth. Perhaps the animal is biting the hand that once fed it—as one might end up doing if, like Sanjuro, one seeks employment on the mercenary basis of who will pay most. Or has the dog scavenged up the hand in its bloody midst, surviving as it can?
This entry was posted on June 19, 2009 at 8:39 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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YOJIMBO (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
By grunesIntricate, razor-sharp black-and-white cinematography by Kenji Mizoguchi’s Kazuo Miyagawa gives Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo—literally, The Bodyguard—only the appearance of being a great work of visual art. It entertains but is scarcely important. However, this satirical action-comedy towers above its sequel, Kurosawa’s tedious Sanjuro (1962), and its spaghetti-western remake, Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) starring Clint Eastwood.
Its most brilliant aspect is Toshiro Mifune as ronin Sanjuro Kuwabatake (best actor, Venice, Kinema Junpo), who in the 1860s drifts into town and into the middle of the longstanding feud between two gangster-lords, Seibei and Ushitora. Sanjuro, all business, thinks he is on top of things; he offers his services as bodyguard to both sides, intending to take the better offer. But this opportunism covers a good, just heart that presses his return to the village after barely escaping with his life following a confrontation with Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai, marvelous), Ushitora’s pistol-packing son. His affliction is the human condition, a sign of which is the shoulder twitch by which Sanjuro is introduced to us with the camera at his back. The principal circumstance attached to Sanjuro is his reduction from pride and confidence—really, overconfidence—to humiliated humanity. One might describe this awesome event as a disintegration and descent upwards, in effect, for the masterless samurai, a becoming (psychologically, not socially) his own master.
Yojimbo contains a famous image. When Sanjuro first enters the village, a dog crosses his path carrying a severed human hand in its teeth. Perhaps the animal is biting the hand that once fed it—as one might end up doing if, like Sanjuro, one seeks employment on the mercenary basis of who will pay most. Or has the dog scavenged up the hand in its bloody midst, surviving as it can?
Tags: Akira Kurosawa
This entry was posted on June 19, 2009 at 8:39 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.