A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: The Last Samurai

Date Viewed: 12/29/03

Details:

Ken Watanabe (Katsumoto)

Tom Cruise (Captain Nathan Algren)

Billy Connolly (Zebulon Gant)

Tony Goldwyn (Colonel Bagley)

Koyuki (Taka)

Director: Edward Zwick

Score: ++

The Review: July, 1876: 22 years after the "opening" of Japan by Commodore Perry and the Treaty of Kanagawa, and only a week after Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn. The young emperor's advisors are continuing to negotiate with the West. Disgruntled veteran of the Civil War and numerous Indian skirmishes, Captain Algren (Cruise) is now drunk and disillusioned -- and when he is even marginally sober, shilling for Winchester rifles. It doesn't take much to convince him to become an advisor to the Japanese, to travel to Japan, and for the princely sum of $500 a month to help train newly recruited troops in the Western way -- to fend off the depredations of a rebellious "barbarian" warlord. This certainly provides an opportunity for massive culture shock, but when Algren encounters Katsumoto (Watanabe), we both stumble across the last of the Samurai, and Algren's life undergoes a sea change. Set mostly in Japan, filmed mostly in New Zealand, this is historical fiction, but quite powerful fiction.

Cruise is initially unattractive and annoying, as befits any wallowing drunk, but the character's arc changes in much the same direction (and for many of the same reasons) as Clavell's Blackthorne changed in Shogun (although many generations earlier). Watanabe's Samurai lord is excellent, multifaceted, and nuanced; his performance is in many ways superior to Cruise's and much more interesting, but both are worth watching. Taka (Koyuki), as Katsumoto's sister and a widow of one of his Samurai, is quiet and superb. And Billy Connolly took time off from dancing naked around Orkney's Ring of Brodgar to take the curious role of British ambassador, erstwhile author and photographer. This movie has some of the epic flavor of Gladiator, but there is no grounding in a single, easy-to-hate antagonist -- it's not that easy. Ultimately, heroism and honor are easily discovered; Western (American) culture comes off a poor second.

Another reason why I grant this movie high ranks is that it recapitulates the learning, the sense of attraction to and wonder about, and the growth toward that clearer view (is it too bold to say understanding?) of, canonical Japanese culture and spirit that seems to happen when a Western visitor finds the time to observe. In Captain Algren's case, this is the result of a winter's immersion in an intentionally regressed country village. Yes, this is fiction, it is stylized, it is derivative. But the mood evoked is real, and it echoes my personal trajectory over the past decade or so. It also mirrors the mood and clarity invoked by two particularly transcendent scenes in the (1980) mini-series Shogun: when first Yoko Shimada's character Lady Ono, then Richard Chamberlin's Blackthorne, decide -- with the full understanding of an entranced Western audience -- that ritual suicide is necessary and right.

(30-Dec-03)

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