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| RETURNING SATURDAY, JULY 5, 2008 AS PART OF OUR NAKADAI FESTIVAL | ||
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“The revelation of the four-week extravaganza will be the fiercely beautiful work of Masaki Kobayashi. His two movies here, Harakiri (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967), are amazing: stirring, subversive and, beneath their dauntingly severe surfaces, sneakily lyrical. Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion are slow-burn movies, in which everything builds to a climactic bloodletting, and the point of the violence is not so much its kinetic exhilaration as its tragic inevitability. Travis Bickle, the ticking time bomb of Taxi Driver, might well recognize the profoundly alienated warrior heroes of Kobayashi's pictures as his ancestors. Rebellion is the opening film, and it deserves the honor.” – Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times. Read full review here (registration required) “Kobayashi's stately yet subversive epic. No one could seethe
better than Mifune. “SAMURAI REBELLION distinguishes itself as not only impressively
intellectual... – Philip Strick, Sight and Sound |
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(1967)
A samurai paces restlessly alongside a sand garden, then suddenly stalks
diagonally across the carefully raked pattern. Think he’s made a
decision? In a time of peace under the shogunate, faithful retainer Toshiro
Mifune tests swords on straw dummies and always plays it his Lordship’s
way, even when the lord decides to unload mistress Yoko Tsukasa (ladylike
Ozu regular and female lead of Yojimbo), who has already borne him
a son, on Mifune’s son Takeshi Kato. When the couple actually find
love and have a child of their own, everything seems for the best. But
when the lord’s eldest son dies, making Tsukasa’s first child
the heir, the lord wants her back.. . The incredibly built-up tension is
orgasmically released in Mifune’s — or anybody else’s — most
dramatically powerful one-against-all fight (“the sight of Mifune
cutting, turning and crashing through paper walls has rarely been equalled” – Richard
Tucker), with Mifune acting throughout the flailing steel: there’s
one thing he wants, and that’s all he’s focusing on, no matter
how many warriors jump him. And in some ways topping that, in the final
sequence, one of the cinema’s greatest images: the wounded Mifune’s
bracing himself with his sword to rise. But since powerful social critic
Masaki Kobayashi (The Human Condition, Harakiri, Kwaidan) uses the
period form for a devastating take-no-prisoners attack on feudalism, and
ultimately, the arrogance of power and mindless loyalty in any context,
even this is not the end. Produced by Mifune himself, and with a screenplay
by unsung writing titan Shinobu Hashimoto (Harakiri, Samurai Assassin,
Sword of Doom, not to mention eight collaborations with Kurosawa, including Seven
Samurai) and a score by the great composer Toru Takemitsu. Winner,
Kinema Jumpo Award for Best Japanese film of 1967. View the trailer High | Low | ||
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Available at Amazom:
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Alain
Silver, author of The Samurai Film 