Film Review
After the phenomenal success of
Yojimbo (1961), director Akira
Kurosawa would have been mad not to have made a sequel, so, bowing to
public demand, he rushed out
Sanjuro
and scored another easy box office triumph. Toshirô
Mifune, Kurosawa's star performer, reprises his most famous role, that
of the maverick samurai who can fell a dozen armed opponents with as
little effort as someone flicking a light switch, and once again
Tatsuya Nakadai, another great Japanese actor, is cast as the ronin's
deadly opponent. The mood of
Sanjuro
is noticeably lighter than that of
Yojimbo
- it is a riotous, no holds barred send-up of Kurosawa's previous
Samurai films and the
jidai-geki
genre in general - and the film is easily one of the director's
slickest and most tirelessly entertaining.
Although nominally a sequel,
Sanjuro
clearly takes place at an earlier period in Japanese history than
Yojimbo, as there is still some
remnant of social order. It is always difficult to give a precise
date for Kurosawa's period films but it is likely that Sanjuro takes
place at some time in the 1840s, some years before the collapse of the
shogunate in the later years of the Tokugawa period. Once again,
the central protagonist fails to disclose his true name. Here,
when asked, he calls himself Tsubaki Sanjuro, which translates as
'Camelia, thirty years old'. Since the ronin also refers to
himself as Sanjuro in
Yojimbo,
which takes place twenty or so years later, this presents something of
a narrative conundrum and reinforces the notion that Sanjuro is not an
individual but a concept - the mythical unnamed hero who drops into
town to clear up a spot of bother and then disappears before the admin
men turn up with all their timesheets and self-assessment forms.
The Sanjuro we see in this film is markedly different to the one we
encountered in
Yojimbo.
In the earlier film, the ronin saw himself as an angel of destruction,
happily engineering the total annihilation of two rival gangs, killing
all and sundry without the slightest pang of conscience. In
Sanjuro, the same character not
only dislikes killing, he actually goes to great lengths to avoid
shedding blood and does so only with the greatest reluctance. He
is just as mercenary as he was (or rather will be) in
Yojimbo, breaking all the codes of
the Samurai, for example by accepting payment for his work, but he is a
far more moral (and lazier) individual, and kills only when he
must. Unfortunately, he finds himself in a series of situations
in which, in order to achieve his honorable aims, he has no choice but
to kill, and the carnage he reaps ends up being on the same scale as
the mass slaughter he brings about in
Yojimbo.
Sanjuro's best efforts to resolve matters without bloodshed are
constantly thwarted by the nine young samurai he has taken under his
wing. Ignoring the advice of their reluctant mentor, these
impetuous nincompoops cause no end of trouble and you end up wondering
which is Sanjuro's greater enemy - the ruthless superintendent and his
vile henchmen or the nine trainee samurai who seem to be competing for
the title of idiot of the century. Most of the humour of the film
comes from the fact that Sanjuro's desire to turn over a new leaf and
live as a 'sheathed sword' is continually frustrated by necessity and
the stupidity of others.
The film not only mocks the conventions of the period drama, it also
pokes fun at Japanese society in general, in particular the difficulty
that the rule-obssessed Japanese have with affirming their
individuality. The nine young samurai typify the unthinking group
servility that Kurosawa despised, a collection of people who, unwilling
to act on their own initiative, must look for someone else to make all
the decisions for them and do all their dirty work. Kurosawa also
mocks that peculiarity of the Japanese to adhere, come what may, to a
rigid code of etiquette and always to judge a book by its cover.
The ronin Sanjuro looks like the antithesis of the mythic Samurai - his
is bluntly spoken, scruffily dressed, takes bribes willingly (and
probably has a personal hygiene problem) - most definitely not the kind
of person you would invite to your garden party. The two genteel
women who are saved by Sanjuro (the lord chamberlain's wife and
daughter) can hardly disguise their contempt for the ruffian and his
total disregard for the finer points of social etiquette. Heroes are most definitely
not what they used to be.
Whilst
Sanjuro was made on a
noticeably smaller budget and in a fraction of the time of Kurosawa's
other
jidai-geki romps, there
is no sign that this is a rushed job - in fact it is as intelligently
scripted and as artfully rendered as the directior's other great period
films. Once again, Kurosawa makes superb use of the possibilities
afforded by the widescreen process, particularly in the elaborate and
faultlessly choreographed action scenes which surpass almost anything
seen in a contemporary Hollywood action film, in both their energy and
stylish grace. The pace and humour are unflagging, and the film
gallops along so fast that it is over before you know it. And how
shocking is the abrupt change of tone that comes right at the end of
the film, when Sanjuro must finally face his nemesis, Muroto. It
is one of the great showdowns of cinema. The two men face one
another in deadly silence for what seems like an eternity (actually it
is barely twenty seconds) and the next thing we see is a quick
flash steel and then a gigantic geyser of blood suddenly erupts
from Muroto's chest cavity - a literally heart-stopping climax to
Kurosawa's most enjoyable film.
© James Travers 2012
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Next Akira Kurosawa film:
High and Low (1963)