Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Writers: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Stars: Masahiro Motoki, Masaki Suda, Yuriko Yoshitaka
Synopsis: Based on Honobu Yonezawa’s novel. Set in 16th century Japan, follows Lord Murashige Araki who, besieged in his castle, confronts mysterious crimes and allies with imprisoned strategist Kanbei Kuroda to uncover the truth.
When introducing Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai and the Prisoner at the 30th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival, programmer Rupert Bottenberg called the movie “a fascinating intellectual challenge.” There probably isn’t a better way to describe Kurosawa’s latest movie, and first foray into the world of the jidaigeki. Kurosawa isn’t much interested in the warfare aspects of Japanese period movies and instead focuses entirely on a confined chamber piece that continually flips its story in intriguing, often confounding (read: cerebral) directions.
It’s hard not to compare Kiyoshi’s painterly sense of image-making in The Samurai and the Prisoner with that of Akira Kurosawa (though the two aren’t related), especially during scenes where we go outside of Lord Murashige’s (Masahiro Motoki) castle. There’s a real feeling of absorption when the movie veers into the unexpected, especially as Kurosawa’s camera moves so precisely to lure us into its labyrinthine story, set across four seasons, starting with a murder that puts Murashige’s empire in disarray and signals its end. Murders beget more murders, and he is now forced to work with an unlikely ally to figure out who is causing such violence within his four walls.
From there, Kurosawa inverts the traditional jidaigeki structure and keeps throwing one twist after another, until it becomes hard for the audience to catch their breath and figure out the grand conspiracies at the heart of the crimes. Some of the most well-known period movies are arguably remembered for their intense, artful action, but Kurosawa keeps that aspect at a minimum. That doesn’t stop him from staging a few tension-filled fights that are both exact in their execution and editing. However, instead of showcasing broad strokes of bloodshed, there’s a deliberate choice to always cut away (or never show) the violence, only implying that it’s occurring in front of our eyes.
One scene in particular is stomach-churning, as Murashige is forced to do something he doesn’t want to. Kurosawa doesn’t hold anything back. He shows us images we probably don’t want to think about (without explicitly pointing his camera at the violence being inflicted), and his patient lens focuses on the protagonist’s tormented face in the process. It’s a lot to assimilate, but the camera is so attuned to the movie’s needs that we’re quickly swept into the drama, even if it can sometimes be complicated to put everything together. Kurosawa has never worked within the confines of the jidaigeki before and certainly doesn’t want to do what his contemporaries have already done. By attempting to flip the structure on its head and create a more character-driven mystery, he refreshes an age-old sub-genre of Japanese films and gives The Samurai and the Prisoner a real sense of purpose.
It also helps that Kiyoshi is working with performers at the top of their game, with Masahiro Motoki particularly excellent as Murashige, who is watching his empire crumble before his eyes and doing everything he can to preserve what’s most important. War isn’t fully shown, but it is taking a toll on him, and those aspects are probably the most fascinating of Kurosawa’s movie. It’s also really funny, which is a particular trait for the filmmaker to insert humor in the oddest of places. One such scene delivers an amazing payoff that had the Fantasia crowd go wild, but it’s also an interesting exploration of Murashige’s belief that divine intervention is at play and that spiritual forces are here to test him.
I won’t sugarcoat that the film is quite dense to assimilate, perhaps much denser than Kiyoshi’s previous two movies, Chime and Cloud. That said, he makes the film’s central drama so legible that anyone who has difficulty understanding might not be paying attention. It is a slight intellectual challenge to parse everything together, but it’s also such an utterly fascinating piece in Kurosawa’s oeuvre that one even wonders why he spent most of his time behind the camera in the realm of J-horror. It feels as if The Samurai and the Prisoner have unlocked something deep inside him that he has kept dormant until reaching the age of 71, but there’s hope that such a reinvention of his own filmmaking form (and of the jidaigeki) will not be his last period drama, because the world needs his movies more than ever…
