14-16 The Samurai Trilogy

[Drucker]

Beaver 1
Beaver 2
Beaver 3

[Michael Kerpan]

I suppose it's just me -- but (based on the screen shots) the color looks more attractive (and possibly more correct) in Criterion's DVD version of part 1 and some of the otherwise poor-looking versions of parts 2 and 3. The new version looks too pink (among other things).

[tajmahal]

I suppose it's just me -- but (based on the screen shots) the color looks more attractive (and possibly more correct) in Criterion's DVD version of part 1 and some of the otherwise poor-looking versions of parts 2 and 3. The new version looks too pink (among other things).

Yep, it sure has been 'Criterionized'. I thought they had been swayed once and for all by recent non-US editions to fall into line with the now univerally accepted Japanese colour balance.

[Michael Kerpan]

Yep, it sure has been 'Criterionized'. I thought they had been swayed once and for all by recent non-US editions to fall into line with the now univerally accepted Japanese colour balance.

Mystifying. Oh well, saves me money.

[manicsounds]

I always thought the greenish hue from older Japanese films were just faded colors. The new transfers look fantastic. Glad I waited instead of going for the DVD releases.

[Michael Kerpan]

The give-away is the skin colors. Criterion has a distressing tendency to color balance Japanese films as if Japanese actors andd actresses were the same color as ordinary American "whites" (i.e. a bit pinkish). This obviously throws off the overall color scheme. See this vintage poster -- which confirms (I think) the intended non-pinkness of the characters: http://madamepickwickartblog.com/wp-con ... ifune5.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

[zitherstrings]

Everyone is tricking their eyes. You compare an overtinted green to a proper one and the proper looks pink. But compare to a western colour film of same period and the Samurai films still contain a much more blue/green/yellow shift.

Example

[captveg]

Yeah, if anything the "pinkishness" is very slight, IMO. The improvement in every other conceivable category of visual measurement is significant, so a slight move to the magenta side of the coloring won't prevent me from picking it up.

[jojo]

Maybe everyone in those screenshots is just doing this

[Michael Kerpan]

Has anyone ever found any screen captures of the Toho remastered HD version?

[tenia]

Yeah, if anything the "pinkishness" is very slight, IMO. The improvement in every other conceivable category of visual measurement is significant, so a slight move to the magenta side of the coloring won't prevent me from picking it up.

Same for me here.
If I don't take the new Criterion box set, what will I bought then to be able to watch correctly these movies ? :-k

[Napier]

Same for me here.
If I don't take the new Criterion box set, what will I bought then to be able to watch correctly these movies ? :-k

Maybe a 17th century haircut and some sake. Other than that, you should do just fine with the CC BD's.

[Matango]

Same for me here.
If I don't take the new Criterion box set, what will I bought then to be able to watch correctly these movies ? :-k

Maybe a 17th century haircut and some sake. Other than that, you should do just fine with the CC BD's.

Or a pair of green-tinted glasses.

[movielocke]

Caught up with these. they have a fun aesthetic that I previously associated with B westerns, which I suppose this is somewhat equivalent to (I'm well aware of the pitfalls of presuming too much with such associations). Toshiro Mifune, over the course of the three films gives a very nice performance. I did miss the sense of openness and epic sweep the first film had, with the big battle scene at the start, but there's really nothing wrong with the more set-bound sequels. My biggest problem with the films was the Akemi storyline, if only because there was no sense of choice for Miyamoto, he never had any interest in Akemi, and she was often just a plot device, only there to provide a suspicious visual for Otsu at opportune moments.

The new transfers are very nice, not stellar, which is to be expected since the harvest originates with prints rather than the negative, I have no real complaints, color was excellent (and not hollywood, nor was it the presumably desired green-blooded japanese). The brief interviews that comprise the extras are fine, they give a teeny bit of context, but I wish there was more, as the subject seems to have a lot of possibilities for a better criterion treatment.

[Der Spieler]

I watched part 1 and I really don't know what to make of this movie. Really it's more like a long introduction than anything else. Since it's the first movie of a trilogy I guess it kinda makes sense.

Sure the acting and directing are fine but that's about it. Everything else is run-of-the-mill bad guy turned good samurai movie. I know this trilogy is considered somewhat a classic, so before I make my final judgement I will watch parts 2 and 3.

[Kokomo Blues]

The real life swordsman Miyamoto Musashi and zen priest Takuan Soho were anything but run-of-the-mill. It's that added layer of historical biography (however fictional) that adds to the appeal of the first movie.

[knives]

Of course given how many films are based on Miyamoto that in itself is not a terribly strong defense.

[manicsounds]

Criterion UK release in September 2016

[colinr0380]

I've finally upgraded from the original DVD editions to the new UK Blu-ray and the films are a substantial improvement from the warbling sound, dark print, damage speckled versions from the first DVD edition way back in 1998. A lot of the power of these films comes from the beautiful colour cinematography, so its wonderful to see them in better quality.

I really like the first film for the way that we see a man going from fame hungry to an infamous pariah. Takezo gets his wish in some ways, but his ambitions backfire on him to some extent. Yet they also get him noticed by the priest Takuan enough to get shaped and moulded after he gives himself up to the town again. It struck me that Kojiro Sasaki in the third film is kind of the contrasting alter ego of the headstrong Takezo in this first film, in that he achieved success without too much introspection or soul searching, and is interestingly played to have a kind of assured arrogance about him as someone who has never had to face particular challenges in life and love.

But back to this first film. This is really the only film I like the character of Otsu in, as it feels like she is taking part in some of the action here by siding with Takezo, going into the forest with the priest to confront Takezo, pleading with Takuan to cut Takezo down and then cutting him down herself and fleeing the village with him. That feels as if Otsu is being as daring and transgressive as Takezo is by her actions. Especially since really this is a film as much about Otsu transferring her affections for her fiancé Matahachi towards Takezo, and having to come to terms with being betrayed and the obligations she has towards Matahachi's mother, as it is about Takezo's frustrations with his hometown. I felt a lot for Otsu in this one and it felt fully earnt that it is Takezo's abandoning of her once he has become Mushashi Miyamoto that is used as the big climax of this first entry.

I also liked the handling of Osugi and Akemi, who are the duplicitous mother and daughter figures who try to seduce the two would be samurai, and succeed in Matahachi's case, unfortunately ending up with Osugi landing a fey coward rather than the aloof macho guy! I know Onibaba came later but the mother and daughter here felt similar to the older and younger woman in that film - was there kind of an archetypal character of women preying on post-battle samurai that this film was tapping into?

Of course Akemi is more sympathetic than her mother, and in this entry is just as much abused by her mother as the two men are, with Matahachi trying to take advantage of her in the hay, then just having to accept her mother's concoted story that Takezo tried to assault her. I think that her character only becomes stronger in the second and especially the third film, interestingly in direct proportion to Otsu's character becoming increasingly entitledly irrelevant!

I'm very partial to the first film also because I really like films in which people are driven to the brink of despair and then manage to pull themselves back or get saved from being destroyed. Takezo is almost destroyed by everyone around him, is broken down and then gets almost reborn with a new name (though ironically the name of his home village will forever be attached to him!) and a new reason for being. Though of course that makes the final break with Otsu, the one person who did stand up for him throughout, the most painful yet necessary test of will.

Samurai II is the film that I like the least. It really feels like a middle film of a trilogy where all the big dramas are just spinning their wheels until they get resolved in the final chapter. There are some impressive battle scenes, though I never really felt that the duels with the Yoshioka School were anything more than a side issue. It also felt rather contrived in the way that Musashi, Otsu, Akemi and her mother were all brought back together again. And having Matahachi played by a different actor in the second film perhaps showed more than anything that this character was rather irrelevant by this stage of things, suitable more to set up Kojiro Sasaki than to ever interact with Musashi or Otsu again.

I think the film is important in an expositional sense in introducing Kojiro Sasaki and pushing Akemi's story on further (they're the subjects of two of the best scenes of the film - the rape/loss of virginity of Akemi to Seijuro Yoshioka with the full consent of her mother that begins with a shot of impermanence with water flowing down a stream. And then the scene with Kojiro being confronted by Yoshioka's men whilst Akemi hides behind the door on the very righthand edge of the frame. Those are both beautifully filmed sequences, as is the scene with the attendant singing during Musashi's duel with Denschichiro Yosioka), yet has little if anything to say about Musashi and Otsu aside from both facing trials before going back to the situation they were in at the start of the film.

And this time Otsu rejects Musashi in a shot of Musashi 'forcing himself' on Ostu that mirrors Matahachi's attempted seduction of Akemi in the first film, though that struck me as a false equivalence between characters who could never have known the significance of the roles they were repeating (it seems entirely for the audience to make that subliminal connection), as after all the mooning that Otsu had been doing throughout the rest of the film it seemed bizarre to fall to the ground sobbing in disgrace when Musashi attempted to kiss her! And strange for Musashi to then run off so quickly without trying to understand Otsu's response! Its also as if he was looking for an excuse to escape from her at the end of the film! But it didn't ring true to me at all, for either party involved!

Then we get to Samurai III, which I think is the best film of the trilogy. I'd long tired of Otsu by this point, and she doesn't really change in rather annoying whiny behaviour here (I'll become a nun, but no perhaps not. I must commit suicide in this lake, but won't get my dress entirely wet before I inevitably get saved! I'll fall ill, but be OK when Musashi arrives, or as the subtitles put it "my illness is so whimsical!", and so on), but luckily Akemi becomes an amazing character in her own right and almost steals the show. The whole film is built around duelling characters, most obviously in Musashi and Kojiro finally having their long postponed duel, but Otsu and Akemi get to duel too (with meat cleavers no less! Though only Akemi seems into it!). And you even get the two complimentary acolytes in the form of the young man Jotaro and the older Kumagoro, only one of whom can survive to reign supreme!

Akemi also struck me as the truly abused and beaten down survivor figure compared to Otsu's mooning faux-martyr figure. She has to survive having been involved with many disreputable characters who do not particuarly care for her wellbeing (including her mother! And Kojiro!) and eventually ends up working in a brothel before seemingly being bought by Kojiro and sent to Musashi (who in the meantime has travelled to a remote village to 'develop himself' and protect them from bandits, in perhaps a veiled allusion to Seven Samurai) to keep an eye on him until their duel. Then she ends up captured by bandits and told to trick the village into thinking the bandits have been captured and then burn Musashi's house down to signal their attack. I particularly liked that while she spreads the rumour about the bandits having been captured to the village as requested it is left rather ambivalent about whether Akemi actually intends to burn the house down, or just accidentally does it during the brawl with Otsu. Or maybe she instigates the brawl with Otsu in order to have 'plausible deniability' later on when asked about how the house caught fire?

And then Akemi's sacrifice removes not just her from the picture but also Otsu herself in some ways, as now that there is no literal enemy left to fight against (and even a benediction to be happy in their relationship together from Akemi!) Otsu is reduced to coming down with a feverish illness in order to keep Musashi nearby, and to begging him not to proceed with the most important duel of his life.

The duel itself with Kojiro is beautifully filmed, and I like the idea that success might come down as much to who is able to make the light from the sun work in their favour as much as it is about who is more powerful or skillful. Also in another nice doubling, the wooden oar Musashi uses in the duel reminded me a little of that first duel that Kojiro had with a retainer for a job with the Shogun, where he uses a wooden sword that accidentally cripples his opponent. Maybe that is meant to prepare the audience for the wooden weapon prevailing again at the climax?

The film ends in the most perfect manner too, with the cut from Kojiro's corpse on the beach (still with an almost self-satisfied smile, as if glad that if he was going to die then this was the perfect way in which to do so), to Musashi on the boat leaving the island, with tears in his eyes. Tears for the death of his greatest opponent, or for having to return definitively to Otsu now? I think its telling that we never see the reunion between Musashi and Otsu after this point, her last scene being abandoned as Musashi leaves for the duel and instead leave Musashi at his most supreme moment of being, but also in some ways adrift, at the end of his wanderings.