Yôjinbô
Director ~ Akira Kurosawa
Writers ~ Akira Kurosawa, Ryûzô Kikushima
1961, Japan
Stars ~ Toshirô Mifune, Eijirô Tôno, Tatsuya Nakadai
A seminal film of the anti-hero-playing-two-opposing-sides narrative. Here you have Kurosawa aping American Westerns and then in turn influencing American Westerns through the aping of Italian Sergio Leone’s.
A whole town built for this wandering Ronin to swagger into, and with the first thing he sees being a dog with a hand in its mouth, he senses an opportunity and the audience that Kurosawa means business. The town retreat being the tavern which becomes the locus for some brilliant/blatant exposition dispersal. The framing and blocking are exceptional throughout as well, underpinned by an almost jazz-funk score by Masaru Satô: on these merits alone, one can sit back and just soak in. Mifune scratches and schemes his way around town, playing both sides, sure of himself and yet that doesn’t stop him from biting a little more than he can slice up.
The lines between commerce-corruption-gangsterdom are all in clear sight with the locals barely a presence, keeping their heads down. The trade and gang war only leaves the coffin maker profiting, and even then, his boom only lasts as long as the conflict; pretty soon, he’ll be out of customers. Mifune’s samurai is an opportunist but like all decent anti-heroes, leans towards doing right.
Social commentary is all there, but mostly this is a fun anti-hero against bad guys. There’s little of the conscience to the fore of ‘Sanjuro’, although the bodyguard’s games here arguably cause more destruction, even if it inadvertently brings the chance of peacefulness for the town. Rather, there’s just a “See you around,” and moving on.
Sanjuro
Tsubaki Sanjûrô
Director ~ Akira Kurosawa
Writers ~ Ryûzô Kikushima, Hideo Oguni, Akira Kurosawa
1962, Japan
Stars ~ Toshirô Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Keiju Kobayashi
Nominally a sequel to ‘Yojimbo’, Kurasawa having been convinced by the studio to do more with the character. Kurasawa converted Shûgorô Yamamoto’s novel “Hibi Heian” into a sequel centring Mifune’s shabby, scratching and scheming ronin. Set in mid-19th-century Japan, but it would seem to be a different era, and certainly, our protagonist is a little changed. Either it’s a prequel and he’s yet to give in to cynicism, or it’s a continuation and he’s learnt to be less mercenary. He’s not so much an anti-hero and more in the wrong place at the right time, saving a bunch of foolish young samurai from themselves. They’re embroiled in a local coup against their lord chamberlain, but naïve to who their real enemy is because they’re superficial enough to judge on looks.
The pleasure – aside from the brilliant framing and black-and-white vibrancy – is in watching Mifune embody someone who can barely restrain his super-warrior nature, however much he scratches and sloths around. One of the finest set-pieces is seeing him single-handedly dispatch twenty-plus adversaries in on swoop. It’s a showpiece highlight that, despite being exuberant and admirable in its execution, is undercut by Sanjuro being forced to do it. The scrabbling of the enemies allows a sliver of their individuality to show, so that they are not only enemies but victims. He berates the young samurais for causing him to slaughter everyone in the room. All the killings now come with conscience attached. The wife that they rescue tells Sanjuro that he is a sword always unsheathed, and this is what seems to unlock his self-reflection. It’s a similar trick with the finale: it’s a showstopper and then he speechifies to lament killing as a solution. The film has its cake and eats it.
But the most noticeable difference between ‘Sanjuro’ and its predecessor is the sweep of humour. Not so broad or light that it overwhelms the drama, but just another texture. Mostly this is at the expense of the nine young samurais, but even then, the film doesn’t condescend or make them outright comic, but merely as foolhardy from naïveté (my favourite is the centipede line).
There’s a lot of commentator feedback that ‘Sanjuro’ is more enjoyable then ‘Yojimbo’, perhaps because its humour, plot and ethics are more evident, but they are both equally great chambara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_cinema and filmmaking. And when adding ‘The Seven Samurai’, the influence of Kurosawa on the American Western – which he was inspired by in the first place, and influential not least from the impact on Sergio Leone’s ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ and its own knock-on effect – cannot be underestimated.
