Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by tinear (A) on January 09, 2009 at 08:27:24

should be as well-known as any of Kurosawa's efforts.
It was directed by Kihachi Okamoto and stars Tatsuya Nakadai who, arguably, was Japan's finest actor during the sixties and seventies.
The intriguing and novel story makes it very hard for the critic to comment without giving away the delights the viewer will experience as each unexpected event unfolds.
The film begins with an old man being helped by his beautiful granddaughter to crest a mountaintop. Making towards the same destination are a man, hurrying distractedly along, and a samurai, mysteriously dressed completely in black with a hat shading his face. The collision of these figures will set the course of their fates and paint their futures in blood.
EVEN is you find samurai epics not to your liking, I strongly urge you to watch this film if for no other reason to see one of the silver screen's most memorable performances and for a study in perfect film acting. Nakadai's savage warrior, the owner and perhaps slave of "The Sword," is no killing machine but a man possessed, but of what?
Okamoto doesn't easily answer this question or many others, preferring to let the viewer work through the many scenes to find clues, arguments, and possibilities. In other words, the central character, and indeed all major ones, are complex people with many motivations, some not apparent perhaps even to themselves.
Though it sometimes is noted as being one of the finest Japanese sword films ever made, and two scenes involving Toshiro Mifune (yes! He plays a samurai school leader in a small but brilliantly portrayed role) and Nakadai indeed impress, it rather is the dramatic intensity, the characterization of the collapsing Shogunate of mid-19th century Japan, and the incendiary personality of the "evil" sword-master that makes this a classic.