The Twilight Samurai
dir. Yoji Yamada
All the samurai movies I've ever seen (and I must admit, I'm no expert--limited mostly to Kurosawa classics and big-budget Hollywood dramas) portray the warriors as iconic, powerful, legendary characters that are preceeded by their own vast mythos. The Twilight Samurai shatters this image with the character of 'Twilight' Seibei Iguchi, a petty samurai who does little more than keep stock of food provisions at a fort. Seibei, who could almost be the lead character of a Nick Hornby novel, is a struggling single father with two young daughters, a senile mother and a wife lost to consumption. He's nervous and stammery around his childhood sweetheart Tomoe, almost ashamed of his skill at swordfighting and deep in money trouble. The fact that his job is a samurai and he walks around with a katana tied to his waist seems almost incidental for most of the film--a refreshing and interesting portrait. The Twilight Samurai follows Seibei through various difficulties he faces, including dealing with Tomoe's drunken ex-husband, considering proposals of marriage and finally, his clan ordering him to kill a wayward samurai who refuses to commit suicide. In this final showdown, Seibei meets a man whose life reflects his own, and whose sad state of affairs and dismissal of the strict samurai codes provides a vision of a possible future.


As Seibei, Hiroyuki Sanada (who hammed up in a much more traditional samurai role in Edward Zwick's overblown The Last Samurai) is wonderfully controlled and subtle, letting slip glimpses of powerful emotion and feeling at just the right times. It is a complete and real characterisation, easily one of the best performances of the year so far. The supporting cast do very well alongside him, there's not a single misfire among them. Yamada tells the story traditionally (with a voice-over from one of Seibei's daughters occasionally filling us in) but it's never too sentimental or mawkish--preferring even the most emotional moments to be conducted in a quiet and measured fashion. The slow pace means the film does drag a little, but it's still an involving drama with a great central character that provides a welcome counterpoint to the samurai myth.
****