Movie: When the Last Sword is Drawn Part One

*Disclaimer: my thoughts on movies in this blog tend to follow a format.  I do not write about movies unless I have a lot to write.  They are generally broken into 2 parts.  One is a personal history with the subject matter, maybe a little learning thrown in there, and some other stuff.  Part 2 is where I focus on the movie.

Part 1

I grew up loving samurai movies and not realizing it.

I am of course referring to the mass of spaghetti westerns that my father watched all the time.  To make a long story short, basically a few Italian directors saw the masterpieces that the 1950's Japanese film industry were churning out, and decided they could adapt them for a Western(both literal and figurative) audience.  Seven Samurai was turned into Magnificent Seven.  Yojimbo was turned into Fist Full of Dollars.

Much of the intensity and focus of those spaghetti westerns comes directly from the influence of men like Kurosawa.  The directors of the Italian adaptations largely put their own spin on things, but that intensity of the moment, the drama of long camera pans lasting just a little bit longer than they felt they should, that comes from the samurai movies they emulated.  I think that is why I really don't care for many Westerns that come out today.  They've lost that intensity.  They are more concerned with getting their half-historical, half pandering plot out on the table than filming something with intensity and drama.

I think I now seek out Samurai movies to fill that void left by good Westerns.  I have watched many of the Kurosawa classics era, and a handful of more modern treatments.  I expected that the later I go, the closer it would come to the same cycle as Spaghetti Westerns.  I expected the old to be raw and intense, while the modern to be overly concerned with getting things "right" and less concerned with getting things "watchable".

I hate Kill Bill.

Kill Bill poisoned the well and caused many of the greatest samurai movies ever made(the 2000's are a revival of them in Japan) to be passed over because they were not "Kill Bill" enough.  Ironically, what Kill Bill did was pave the way for a lot of mediocre Hong Kong action movies to get brought over here, while the Japanese renaissance of Samurai movies were passed over.

Yojiro Takita.

I first saw one of his movies when I watched Departures.  Departures will be getting its own posts eventually, it is one of the best, most heartfelt movies I have ever watched.  Now that I have watched his Japanese Oscar winning "When the Last Sword is Drawn", I now realize why.  Every scene, every emotion, is INTENSE.  Just like a Samurai, Yojiro Takita has fashioned his film making into never wasting energy, never wasting emotion, never wasting a moment.

It makes me wish we had a Neo Sergio Leone making modern Westerns, but I guess that whole style is still found where it originated over half a century ago, and I have a lot of movies to go through that I had never thought to go looking for.

 Much of the thanks has to go to Netflix for bringing a lot of this stuff to view here in America.