It wasn’t my intention to see Nolan’s blockbuster Odyssey aspect by aspect with an advance screening of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai and the Prisoner. Nonetheless, they complimented. Two historic epics that convey the worry and awe that comes from watching your period come to a violent finish, and the way it weighs on the crowns of those that lord over it. For Odysseus, it weighs heavy, to see custom and honor crumble to pebbles on the bottom. For Lord Murashige, who rallies his clans in opposition to Oda Nobunaga, tempting the wrath of the gods may be definitely worth the consequence.
In The Samurai and the Prisoner, Araki Murashige (performed by pop star turned actor Masahiro Motoki) is a properly revered lord on account of his potential to maintain Nobunaga’s armies at bay and his properly which means philosophies. Whereas his court docket has their misgivings, Murashige frequently defies the samurai approach, refusing to torture or execute prisoners of conflict. His private code is examined when the son of a traitor, refused an honorable finish, turns up useless anyway, killed by a seemingly inconceivable arrow. It’s then that Murashige turns to an unlikely ally, one in all Nobunaga’s advisors chained up within the basement, to unravel the more and more weird string of mysteries occurring in his home.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is greatest identified for supernatural thrillers like Remedy, Pulse and Candy House. Typically they rope-a-dope the viewers right into a false sense of safety, achieved by way of sterile, even homely environments. By the point the true form of the menace turns into clear, it’s too late for his characters, or the sentiments of the viewer, to flee. I particularly adore his remake of Séance on a Moist Afternoon, which begins as a close to comedy earlier than submerging to the forehead in dread. Everybody trapped collectively in a painted nook.
Regardless of sharing a reputation with Japan’s most celebrated director, that is Kurosawa’s first samurai epic. The truth that it kicks off right into a homicide thriller so rapidly ought to alert his followers that this in all probability isn’t going to revolve round fixing zany crimes. Whereas there’s no cannibalism to talk of, the stress between Murashige and the eloquent Kuroda has an air of Clarice and Hannibal, tete-e-tetes between two males attempting to unravel the opposite. Certain sufficient, the true thriller isn’t magical arrows or reanimated physique components, however Murashige’s deal. Is he actually sparing lives out of principals, politics, guilt, scheming, or one thing between these routes.
Like Odysseus earlier than him, Murashige is witness to the tip of a strong empire, discovering himself a nexus of historical past. The way it passes by way of him makes an extremely wealthy and interesting portrait. How excessive Motoki’s shoulders are to protect himself communicates greater than any smoking gun.
How Nolan selected to speak guilt was overly coy, mistaking a twist for nuance, as provocative because the flashes of bombastic imagery may be. Evoking trendy conflict campaigns and even the hooliganism of January 6, Nolan workouts Homeric ideas to talk of our personal unraveling empire, the way it delivers indignity and struggling. Humanity, one way or the other, has survived its ending eras regardless of all of it. New issues develop within the rubble. Perhaps misplaced on these within the Bronze Age, however weighing on Murashige as he considers what sort of man he’ll be, past lord or chief, when new leaves start to bloom.
