Kagemusha (1985)
The legends around this are many. Even after Kurosawa won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film for DESU UZALA (the film he’d made in 1975 in the Soviet Union) he could not get financing for KAGEMUSHA, and went five years without working. Depressed, suicidal and scratching a living from whisky commercials, he spent most of his time doing paintings of what his film would look like, over two hundred of them, very beautiful, highly detailed, and had his people take them along with the script – as a kind of visual storyboard — when shopping the film around the studios, though as Kurosawa is quick to mention, movies are MOVING pictures. The film eventually got made only with the help of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, then riding high on their 70s blockbusters, who helped obtain foreign distribution guarantees. The film also began as a troubled shoot with Shintaro Katsu, of ZATOICHI fame, who was set to play the lead, fired on the first day for wanting to film Kurosawa directing on set, and replaced with Tatsuya Nakadai, who had played the handsome gun-slinging villain in YOJIMBO (1961) and would go on to play the King Lear figure in RAN (1986)
The Criterion disk has magnificent extras; a making of, two films on the paintings themselves, a commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince and much else. My favourite bit was hearing Coppola and Lucas talk about the importance of Kurosawa, arguing that for his generation, great cinema was Bergman, Fellini and Kurosawa, with Coppola demonstrating how Kurosawa’s filming of violence can be traced from Ford and then through Kurosawa to Peckinpah, BONNIE AND CLYDE, and his own work. Lucas talks of how Kurosawa had influenced STAR WARS and the work of others of his generation like Spielberg and Milius. Coppola and Lucas were both present at the shoot of KAGEMUSHA.
Images in Motion:
The story itself revolves around a drunken thief who is hired as a double for Takeda Shingen, one of a set of warlords fighting for supremacy in the 16th century, with Nakadai playing both roles. Shingen dies one evening whilst getting too close to a castle to listen to some flute-playing and his last wishes are that this be kept secret for three years whilst his generals stay put in their main castle, defend their clan, and let the others fight amongst themselves. The double fools everyone except his grandson, whose comments are dismissed as those of a child and later learns to love the man he eventually will think of as his grandfather; and finally, the warlord’s horse, who ejects him. The horse’s actions are taken as ultimate proof whereas the words of men, much less children had always been treated with suspicion. The film’s last third are motivated by the son, who has daddy issues due to being bypassed as heir by the father in favour of his own son; and who does the opposite of what his father had commanded, moving ‘the castle’ to the battle instead of keeping put, and thus ensures the downfall of the Takeda clan.
Framing, Compositions, Colour, Detail within Design:
It’s a film about identity, power and strategy, loyalty and ambition, and father-son relations. The only women one sees are the warlord’s mistresses, and not for very long. Watching the film and not well-versed in the history, I was sometimes a bit lost about the various warring factions. And yet some of the images are so astonishingly beautiful that I literally gaped AND gasped. The compositions are extraordinary from the simple ones of three figures at the beginning, to what he does with moving armies later on in the film. The use of colour has to be some of the most dazzling I’ve ever seen in cinema, sophisticated, minimalist (there’s often one or two colours that dominate), balanced. Even the kimonos the warlords wear are magnificent prints in gorgeous silks — there’s something one can extrapolate here about the accumulation of carefully chosen detail which together expresses a balanced simplicity — that might be amplified onto the film. And then there are the battles themselves, particularly the last one with the slaying of the horses, thrilling and tragic, with the slow motion emphasizing the beauty of the destruction, the sublimity of the tragedy unfolding. It’s a gorgeous film and one can only appreciate the beauty of the restoration by comparing it to the dank, dark, pedestrian tones in the unrestored clips utilised in the various extras. It was the release of this film that brought Kurosawa to my consciousness though I did not see it upon first release, probably put off by its three-hour length. I now aim to see it again.
Swift as the Wind. Quiet as a Forest. Fierce as Fire. Immoveable as a Mountain. All that is must perish and the flow of the river is ceaseless.
Compare images above to unrestored version below:
José Arroyo