Masaki Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion (1967) is a spiritual sequel to Harakiri (1964): Kobayashi's critique of authority in a heavily dramatized form. After Isaburo (Toshiro Mifune) is forced to have his son marry a former mistress of a powerful lord the entire family discovers that the girl isn't as bad as her reputation suggests. Due to a grim turn of events Isaburo and his son decide to disobey the lord's newer orders even though it puts their family in danger.
Even though I would call Samurai Rebellion Kobayashi's bloody revenge story it doesn't involve a lot of action until the final third of the film (which has a lot of it). Most of the focus is on the fascinating central family that is used heavily for the director's strong message that is approached in a possibly better way than in Harakiri. The downside of the screenplay has to be the ending. While the final scenes are perfect it stumbles for 10 minutes before that. The tension generated in the film is released way too early and some of the scenes lose the dramatic impact they were supposed to have. There's also the mystery of Tatsuya Nakadai's character whose relevance is questionable and it almost feels like his role was severely cut in the editing room.
Kobayashi's form is full of menacing energy that stems from the absolutely brilliant photography and the intense yet "slow" editing that hits the viewer like a ton of bricks when it is needed. The approach to the climactic action scenes is surprisingly tame, but they are still powerful enough. Toru Takemitsu's soundtrack is great again. The entire cast delivers magnificent performances and especially Toshiro Mifune is in top form this time.
Samurai Rebellion could have become another masterpiece for Kobayashi in the vein of Harakiri, but the slight (but drastical) mistake near the end hinders the film a bit too much.
Score: 9 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment