Vive le difference!
My review was done with a sort of grumpy humour, and is more cathartic than considered. Pretty much the usual then :)
DANCES WITH SAMURAI (3/10) Pip and I saw 'The Last Samurai' today. Gave me a right proper case of the irrits it did, put me right off my choc-top, so I'm exorcising my extreme displeasure the only way I know.
In 1,000 words or less. Grrrrrrr.
The Last Samurai runs an epic, humourless two and a half hours. It seemed much longer.
I really wonder why they bothered? For me, it was a shallow, confused, obvious and ultimately chaotic mess.
I love samurai films. I have a love of Japan and a love of Japanese film. I
can watch even a bad Japanese film because the minutiae of the Japanese
culture and environment can captivate and engross. Yet the Last Samurai is
so stripped
of meaning, context or detail that I came away wondering why they bothered.
The Meiji Restoration and Satsuma Rebellion are a fascinating period of Japanese history. The Last Samurai examines it with all a finesse and insight that can only come of producing it entirely in New Zealand. Japan looks a lot like Middle Earth. Come to think of it, the badlands of Little Big Horn look a lot like Middle Earth. No amount of blue tinting can disguise this basic, unsettling visual impairment. In the first battle sequence, you are expecting bands of orcs to come grunting out of the forest. Instead, you get samurai in *medieval* armour. Welcome to 1876. And yes, its the Americans, not the French and Prussians, who are training and outfitting the Japanese army.
Confused? Don't worry, you're not alone.
In The Last Samurai, for all its bushido posturing, Japan and the Japanese are a mere afterthought.
They got the US flag wrong, apparently. And San Francisco. Given this, you don't have much confidence in their treatment of the history and politics of
the Meiji period, or the intricacies and beauty of Japanese culture. Luckily, there's almost none. It mighty as well be Arrakis as Japan. The Last Samurai is pure fantasy. Just keep your eyes on the poster boy.
OK, so this isn't the first hollywood romance to commit this sin, and it won't be the last. For what it's worth, the Emperor Meiji was restored and 'run' throughout his reign by a *samurai* clique. The historical 'last samurai', Saigo Takamori, got grumpy when the government wouldn't let him invade Korea (they later changed their mind). When the government cut off their rice stipend, Saigo led the students of his samurai school on a rampage against the Imperial palace. (Aah Bush Week... we have that here as well. :)) They got shot up, retreated, and Saigo did what samurai do in every movie. He asked for his head to be chopped off by a follower. So there are 'flashes' of historicity in the movie. If you're quick.
All unimportant. This is a nothing so much as boys own adventure, and brings the very best and worst of the genre. There are few women, in fact only one who counts, and she is...uh huh, got it in one. Tom Cruise is Nathan Algren, the curiously centreless, amoral hero, a character without subtlety who (of course) out-samurais the samurai in just a few short months. Whitie wins again. Doomed foreign culture shown to be useful in helping Whitie find himself. You can practically hear the dancing wolves.
Cruise can bring little of the necessary gravitas to the role, little to make Nathan anything more than a action figure who can talk and bend. There's an overdose of bushido-lite with no examination of its consequences, or even of the reality of the type of nation it produced. Watanabe Ken does much better as the rebel leader Katsumoto, the noble, zen-y, inscrutable samurai straight out of central casting. Sadly, not a baby carriage in sight..
The next paragraphs contain spoilers, an odd term in this context because there is very very little in the plotting to surprise.
American comes to Japan to fight rebel samurai. American is captured. Despite surviving seven years in the American badlands massacring Indians, American is unable to hop it to the next village. So American lives with samurai.
You can guess the rest. Everything is perfectly two dimensional - noble rebels, complete with rebel leader who is *really* loyal to the you-know-who, grudging tough guy warrior who, uh huh, and beautiful widow who, uh huh. Its join the dots fantasy, rarely rising above stereotype... weak Emperor, two faced cowardly politicians, amoral Europeans. There's the obligatory 'use the force, Luke' scene, a few token culture clash scenes, and of course, the meat of the movie, lots of noble, chop-suey style battle scenes.
Well choreographed, drawn out and messy, they are the heart of the film, and the measure of its appeal or lack thereof. There is a colourful final battle, with one of the most blatant examples of disappearing NPCs in film history. Where did all the dead bodies go between the artillery attack and the final cavalry charge? Must be those dancing wol-efs again.
The bushido way is death before dishonour, but heck, there's always a Hollywood exception, right? Once again, no surprises, but a dramatic cheat that seriously deflates the ending.
The entire effort is curiously humourless, even given the serious themes and supposed dramatic depth of Cruise's character. The film has one good joke, completely out of genre, that takes us into Kevin Smith territory. (What was the name Ethan gave to his minder?)
Billy Connolly makes an all-too-brief appearance as Nathan's loyal NCO. As the film dragged on, I kept thinking what a much more satisfying movie this might have been if it was Zebulon who was captured and whose story we followed. There would have been a film of much greater humanity, sensitivity and humour, if less macho posturing. Alas.
On its good side, there is plenty of colour and action after the seemingly-lost middle section. I sadly was reduced to watching for car tracks in the mud and counting the number of armed westerners allowed into the Imperial throne room, the sort of nitpicking I usually reserve for my second or third viewing. For me, it was that sort of movie - a sure sign of dramatic failure. Watch for it soon on MST3K.
What *really* troubled me most of all was the moral confusion at the heart of the film. What was the message again? Exactly *why* was Nathan a hero? Why was modernisation and the banning of armed criminal gangs such an unequivocal evil? A generation on, the bushido values trumpeted by the film led to the Japanese invasion of China, Pearl Harbour, and beyond.
Kurosawa, at least, never forgot that.
Cheers
John
For a fantasy RPG enthusiast I think the movie is more evocative than
>the Lord of the Rings movies. Go see how that 2-h Sword 10w3 hero of
>yours really fights!
>
> -Adept : astonished, in the best possible way
>John Hughes
Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 2600
Phone (02) 6125 0649
Visit CAEPR on the web at http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/
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