KAGEMUSHA (1980)
A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2002
Homage to the great men can be paid in many different ways. One of them could be noticed by those who play SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR, computer strategy game that puts players in the role of 16th Century Japan warlords. Introductory segment of the game features the battle scenes taken from RAN, 1985 epic directed by Akira Kurosawa, Japanese filmmaker whose best known films were set in that particular period of Japanese history. However, the game authors could have been more on target if they chose different film Kurosawa. Five years earlier great filmmaker shot KAGEMUSHA, film that is somewhat less spectacular and graphic in its depiction of the combat, but it is historically accurate and features many characters familiar to the players of the game.
The plot of the film begins in 1572. After decades of endless civil war it seems that one of many feuding clans is finally going to get on top of everybody else and thus unite the nation. This clan is Takeda, led by Shingen (played by Tatsuya Nakadai), charismatic warlord known for his great military skill and reputation of invincibility. While besieging one of the remaining enemy strongholds Shingen is shot and mortally wounded. Fearing that the news would demoralise troops and give morale boost to rival clans led by Oda Nobunaga (played by Daisuke Ryu) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (played by Masayuki Yui), Shingen's generals decide to hide their master's demise from the public. Shingen's brother and part-time double Nobukado (played by Tsutomu Yamazaki) had already found a solution for this problem in the form of petty thief (played by Tatsuya Nakadai) who just happened to be physically identical to the deceased warlord. Thief becomes Kagemusha, full-time impersonator of Shingen and gets coached by the small circle of Shingen's closest and most trusted associates. At Kagemusha is reluctant to take this role and he, like many people around him, doubts his ability to impersonate the charismatic warlord. His presence infuriates Shingen's son Katsuyori (played by Kenichi Hagiwara), whose rise to power was postponed by the impersonation scheme. The war erupts again and Kagemusha is forced to put his impersonation abilities to the test. When his presence alone shifts the outcome of the important battle, Kagemusha is finally convinced that he actually be Shingen. He gradually wins the hearts and minds of his subjects in a way real Shingen never could, oblivious to the fact that he could jeopardise both himself and Takeda clan if he forgets who he really is.
Kurosawa shot KAGEMUSHA after one of the most difficult periods of his career. Shunned by the commercial-minded Japanese cinema industry, burdened by the commercial failure of DODESKADEN and still traumatised by unsuccessful suicide attempt, he had to rely on foreign admirers to keep his career alive. After Soviets in 1974, another injection came in the form of American filmmakers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas probably felt that he should repay great master of samurai films that had inspired STAR WARS. Americans injected couple of million dollars which resulted in samurai epic in many ways different from those who had characterised Kurosawa in the earlier part of his career.
Unlike Kurosawa's earlier masterpieces of "jidai-geki" genre, KAGEMUSHA is shot in colour and features spectacular sets and hundreds of extras, all of them wearing elaborate and expensive costumes. However, production and costume design wasn't that important for Kurosawa. He used KAGEMUSHA as an excellent opportunity to experiment with the use of colour, especially red. Some of shots in KAGEMUSHA are almost enchanting, especially those which use colour to set the atmosphere of impending doom and tragedy. Use of colour is also evident in the Kagemusha's dream sequence, where the bright tones give surreal tone to otherwise mundane surrounding made of cheap sets. Unfortunately, Kurosawa's skill, so beautifully demonstrated in the use of colours, was missing when he dealt with some more mundane aspects of the filmmaking, like the lightning or pacing. This is especially evident in the night battle scene that would leave most of the viewers confused - despite the presence of hundreds of extras and non-stop action, the audience would need to wait for the next scene in order to find what actually went on.
Kurosawa also made some mistakes in staging of certain segments, unnecessarily repeating the trick used in the first, excellent scene. In that scene the audience is introduced to the characters of Shingen, Nobukado and Kagemusha - they all dressed-up and made-up to look the same and shot from the distance, thus preventing the viewers to distinguish them even by the movement of their lips. The same effect is used later in the film, thus preventing the audience to distinguish between various Japanese warlords and other characters. The staging of some scenes is too theatrical and otherwise excellent Tatsuya Nakadai seems to over-act in some scenes.
However, these flaws could be forgiven, since Kurosawa could afford them. Like many of his essential films, this one uses the medium of a genre movie to actually explore some important philosophical issue. In this case KAGEMUSHA deals with man's inability to overcome physical and psychological limitations. This theme is repeated on several occasions. Dying Shingen wants to overcome his own mortality by giving orders to followers and thus setting the stage for impersonation scheme. His impersonator at first desperately tries to keep his own identity, then tries to become someone who he is not. At the end, all their efforts are in vain and as pointless as Kagemusha's last heroic act. Dark and depressive tone of the film in many ways reflects Kurosawa's own experiences at that particular point of his career. When we compare the tone of his early "jidai-geki" films we could notice at least some traces of optimism. Not in KAGEMUSHA, which remains serious and pessimistic from the beginning to the end. This was underlined by Shinichiro Ikebe's haunting musical score that symbolises doom that awaits the protagonists.
In KAGEMUSHA Kurosawa, author whose works could always be seen as a cultural bridge between traditional Japan and Western civilisation, also deals with something that was usually ignored or left out from most of his country's films dealing with that particular period of history - presence of Europeans and their economic, cultural and political influence. This influence was most visible in the arrival of Christianity (presented in the scene that features Catholic priests from West giving blessing to Oda Nobunaga before his campaign) and firearms. For Kurosawa firearms, more than anything else, symbolise human weakness. They not only raise human destructiveness to new level, they also show how frail humans, despite all their skills and strength, really are. This is best illustrated in two important scenes, one at the beginning and one at the end. The first scene explains how the most competent and most feared warlord of Japan is taken out by pathetic-looking little man armed with primitive musket. To make things even more ironic, the anonymous soldier is obviously unaware that he actually changed the course of Japanese history. The final battle scene is even more compelling. Kurosawa first shows hundreds of cavalrymen and infantrymen charging into battle and displaying old-fashioned samurai bravado. Those shots are followed by the images of barely visible musketeers pouring fire from the entrenched position. Kurosawa doesn't show bullets actually hitting their targets, but the outcome of the battle is never in doubt. The next shots feature what the battlefield looked like after the shooting ended, and the image features aftermath not very different from Gettysburg, Somme or some other places where the frail human bodies encountered new technologies of killing.
One of the greatest ironies in this period of Japanese history is the fact that Japanese not only accepted European firearms but improved on them, in some ways creating models and tactics superior to anything comparable in Europe at that time. That favoured only those warlords who could afford to have large armies equipped with new and expensive weaponry. Because of that it could be argued that firearms played great part in bringing civil wars to the end. Ironically, that also resulted in almost two and half century of peace, isolation and little need for firearms or improving art of war. The popular culture re-embraced the old samurai ways and the firearms were gradually erased from history books, thus creating the myths that would cost Japan dearly in 20th Century. Kurosawa could have dealt with these issues more directly, but KAGEMUSHA, even like this, is a powerful film that could be interesting and entertaining even to those who don't like computer simulations of historical warfare.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
Review written on October 2nd 2002
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.purger.com/users/drax/reviews.htm - Movie Reviews in English http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society
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