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Title: Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior)

Date of original theatrical release: 1980

Details:

Tatsuya Nakadai

Tsutomu Yamazaki

Kenichi Hagiwara

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Executive producers for the international edition: George Lucas & Francis Ford Coppola

Score: 1/2

The Review: Show, don't tell -- this is the dictum by which authors and directors are encouraged to construct their art-forms: no lectures, immediate and total immersion in the culture, experience the world directly. And for well-constructed works of art, or familiar cultural situations, this works quite well. But for an audience suffering through linguistic disjunction or historical ignorance or total cultural novelty, this can be a painful dictum. Such is the beginning of Kagemusha -- at the cost of a very cryptic first hour, it is difficult to identify names and relationships, impossible to ascertain history and background, and only by sheer dint of interest in a purported classic does one persevere. At the end of three hours, the themes will have drawn together, even if you're still having troubles with the character's names.

On the face of it, this is a battle flick: the conflict between warring clans for control of a central and rich domain, the conflict between an aging leader (Shingen: by Nakadai) and his impatient son (Katsuyori: by Hagiwara), the conflict between changing mores and lifestyles -- with some of the most drawn-out character development you'll see. The aging leader is concerned about being assassinated before his time, and his brother (Nobukado: by Yamazaki) contrives to find a double (also Nakadai) who can substitute for the leader as a decoy (hence the title, translating as "shadow warrior").

Among other things, Kagemusha is director Kurosawa's view of conflict in an era of paradigmatic change in technology and tactics. It's 1573, in the midst of the period of dominance of Samurai warlords. Battle is changing from honor-bound personal involvement and the use of mounted soldiers with lances, to the more remote and mechanized weaponry of the matchlock rifle. The battlefield apocalypse this would seem to presage takes a long time to develop, but the effect is even more devastating when it finally arrives.

Kagemusha is also the clear vision of an historically-based novel that many Japanese might have once known, but long forgotten. Carefully assembled on a Noh scaffold, one of the traditional Japanese dramatic forms, the very structure, sound, sensibility and pace of this film revolves around cryptic inner knowledge and almost plodding development of character and situation. The background score is almost entirely shakuhachi and a tabla-like drum; there is even a Noh drama embedded in the plot, if you didn't already get the picture.

The cinematography is amazing, worth watching even if you turn off both the soundtrack and subtitles. Kurosawa knows his geography, and the home domain of the Takeda clan (in central Kyushu) is documented with both stark and lush colors, stunning composition, and glorious scenery. The transition from a monochrome room to a blue-tinged landscape merely upon opening a window; a gorgeous sunset occluded by the shadows of marching and horse-riding warriors against a dusty foreground; a death scene composed with a cloudy, nearly invisible, Mt. Fuji in the background -- this is wonderful viewing.

Even though the US-released version was 20-30min shorter, find and watch the longer original cut (just over three hours), which is now available on a Criterion edition DVD. The commentary track on this DVD is also of significant value -- provided by Steven Prince, author of The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa (1991). I strongly recommend that, when you play the movie for the very first time, you do not listen to the Japanese dialog, but turn on instead the English commentary -- if you listen for only the first 30 minutes, you will get all the clues you need to watch and enjoy the film. Then restart the film from the beginning with its original dialog, and you can now survive total immersion in a culture you never before knew or understood.

(3-Dec-06)

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