| Samurai Movies (2) |
September 30, 2021
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| Maybe a new type of samurai movie was made from people's needs to want to know more about the Edo period. For 270 years there were no major fights or wars. During this time, farmers were so poor, and merchants were so wealthy. If it was in any other country, there would have been a revolution. Were people in the Edo period nicer, more tame so that there was no major revolutions? Maybe movie directors nowadays, sensing a decay in public decency or morals, seek to find the humanity of the good old days. From his memory as a movie fan, maybe 'Twilight Seibei' was the first movie that had reality about samurai life. Before this movie, samurai movies typically consisted of fighting with swords, meetings in the castle, drinking sake in a bar, battles with ninja, riding a horse, and beautiful kimono wearing women, that's all. There was never anything about the common lives of samurai, like office working, feeding children, even quarrels between a husband and a wife. 'Twilight' is the nickname of Seibei. Seibei was a lower-middle ranked samurai who had a house and a servant. He had to take care of his senile mother and his two young children. His wife passed away a couple years before. He worked at the office of the castle of a local domain, called a 'han'. Every day, after working, his colleagues would ask him to go out for a drink, but he would never say yes because he couldn't afford to. But truthfully, he was making  small cages for insects or small birds as a side job. He wore the same non-washed kimono every day and his hair-style was wild, so his colleagues called him 'twilight' as his life seemed to have no more brightness. This movie was sensational, and took all of the major movie awards that year in this country. For the director, it was his first samurai movie. The director had been making good movies, a series of comedies, serious dramas, and some of them got awards. But, he hadn't made a samurai movie until then. And people had never seen this type of movie before. The movie contradicted the image that samurais were always smart, open-minded, and strong. But recently, he happened to watch a movie on TV named 'The Rain Has Stopped'. He thought that it was directed by Akira Kurosawa, a worldwide famous movie director. But he was wrong. At the beginning of the movie, there was a subtitle reading, "This movie is dedicated to the director, Akira Kurosawa." After watching the movie, he checked on the internet and came to know that the scenario was his, but the director was another person. After his death, there remained this scenario. His son, who is a movie producer, talked with the "Kurosawa Family", the regular staff who had been working with Mr. Kurosawa and his movies for a long time, and they decided to complete this movie as his memorial movie. Now that he had watched it, he would say that was a 'Kurosawa movie'. Kurosawa was famous for insisting details. He wanted to make his pictures as real as possible. He put stains inside of a cup on the table, even if it wouldn't be seen from the camera. The movie started with the scene of the protagonist, a middle aged samurai, and his wife having to stay in a cheap inn with other travelers because the rain hadn't stopped for days, and the river was too high to cross. The detailed inside of the old inn, the travelers' clothes, the way of this samurai and his wife's actions seemed to be exactly of that era. All of the travelers were poor, but kind people. However, they felt stressed because of the long stay. Some of them started to quarrel. The protagonist went to a dojo, a weapon training school, to challenge them in a swordfight so that he could get money in order to hold a small party for the travelers at the inn. He did this even though a bet fighting was strictly prohibited. The 'Rain' movie was released in 2000, as Seibei was released in 2002, 2 years later. But why did Kurosawa choose this movie as his last movie? (To be continued) |
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No.448
*tame : 従順な
*decay : 腐敗、衰退、堕落
*decency : 礼節
*senile : ボケた
*truthfully : 実のところ
*contradict : 矛盾する、相反する
*dedicate : 捧げる