182 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
182 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
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The Last Samurai
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<p>Hollywood has given us a run of surprisingly good movies recently.<br />
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By ‘surprisingly good‘ I mean that they’re rather better<br />
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than one might expect from their genre. <cite>Loony Toons: Back In<br />
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Action</cite>, for example, could have been a mere merchandising<br />
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vehicle, a repetition of clichés and tired sight gags. Instead<br />
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it was a wickedly funny combination of Animaniac edginess with classic<br />
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Warner Brothers wackiness. It has a few moments of true brilliance<br />
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— the sequence in which Elmer Fudd chases Bugs and Daffy through<br />
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Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” (think of melting clocks)<br />
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is jaw-droppingly wonderful, sublime art.</p>
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<p><cite>Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World</cite> was<br />
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also a surprising treat. I’ve read all 20 of the Aubrey/Maturin<br />
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novels. The movie doesn’t capture their texture and depth —<br />
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that would be impossible, they are deeply literary works — but<br />
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as an adventure movie that refers to the books without insulting the<br />
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reader’s intelligence it works quite well.</p>
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<p>The <cite>Lord of the Rings</cite> and <cite>Harry Potter</cite><br />
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movies are so good that hard-core fans of their respective books are<br />
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still pinching themselves, wondering when they’re going to wake up to<br />
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the discovery that they’re actually watching the usual dumbed-down<br />
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Hollywood crap. (I say this as a Tolkien fan so hard-core that I was<br />
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able to catch nuances of the spoken Elvish that weren’t in the<br />
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subtitles.)</p>
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<p>Of course there have been dreadful turkeys where we expected<br />
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better, as well. The third <cite>Matrix</cite> movie and <cite>Star<br />
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Wars: Attack of the Clones</cite> leap to mind. But dreadful turkeys<br />
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are part of the normal scene; what’s <em>abnormal</em> is that New<br />
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Line gave Peter Jackson the money and freedom to make<br />
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<cite>Rings</cite> movies that, while rushed and not without the<br />
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occasional compromise, are almost achingly good.</p>
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<p>Think about it. When was the last time you saw a movie that (a) was<br />
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a book adaptation faithful enough for the fans to cheer it, (b) got<br />
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great reviews from movie critics, and (c) was boffo box office? Just<br />
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counting the Rings and Potter movies and <cite>Master & Commander</cite>,<br />
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we’ve now had five of these in relatively quick succession. Something<br />
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is going on here. Can it be that Hollywood is having an attack of<br />
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intelligence and taste?</p>
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<p>(My wife Cathy suggests <cite>Saving Private Ryan</cite> as a<br />
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precursor of the trend.)</p>
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<p>The movie that pushed me to think about this as a pattern, rather<br />
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than a series of isolated incidents, is <cite>The Last Samurai</cite>.<br />
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I’d been wanting to see this one since the first trailers six months<br />
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ago, but was braced for a disappointment on the scale of <cite>Pearl<br />
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Harbor</cite>. Hollywood’s record on wide-screen historicals is<br />
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dreadful; they tend to be laughably ahistorical — either<br />
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mindless spectacles or video sermonettes for whatever form of<br />
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political correctness was in vogue the week they were made. Remarkably,<br />
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<cite>The Last Samurai</cite> almost completely avoids these flaws.</p>
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<p>I said “almost completely”. The movie is not without<br />
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flaws. But even the flaws are interesting. They illustrate the ways<br />
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in which Hollywood’s metric for a good (or at least successful) movie<br />
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is changing.</p>
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<p>Let’s start with the bad stuff. First, way too much camera time<br />
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that could have been better employed gets spent on emotive closeups of<br />
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the lead’s phiz (a misfeature <cite>The Last Samurai</cite> shares with the first two Ring<br />
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movies and I am thus beginning to think of as ‘the Frodo<br />
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flaw’). But this is Hollywood and it’s Tom Cruise and one<br />
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supposes such excess is inevitable.</p>
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<p>Secondly, the movie is seriously anti-historical in one respect; we<br />
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are supposed to believe that traditionalist Samurai would disdain the<br />
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use of firearms. In fact, traditional samurai <em>loved</em> firearms<br />
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and found them a natural extension of their traditional role as horse<br />
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archers. Samurai invented rolling volley fire three decades before<br />
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Gustavus Adolphus, and improved the musket designs they imported from<br />
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the Portuguese so effectively that for most of the 1600s they were<br />
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actually making better guns than European armorers could produce.</p>
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<p>But, of course, today’s Hollywood left thinks firearms are<br />
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intrinsically eeeevil (especially firearms in the hands of anyone<br />
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other than police and soldiers) so the virtuous rebel samurai had<br />
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to eschew them. Besides being politically correct, this choice<br />
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thickened the atmosphere of romantic doom around our heroes.</p>
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<p>Another minor clanger in the depiction of samurai fighting: We are<br />
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given scenes of samurai training to fight empty-hand and unarmored<br />
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using modern martial-arts moves. In fact, in 1877 it is about a<br />
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generation too early for this. Unarmed combat did not become a<br />
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separate discipline with its own forms and schools until the very end<br />
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of the nineteenth century. And when it did, it was based not on<br />
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samurai disciplines but on peasant fighting methods from Okinawa and<br />
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elsewhere that were used <em>against</em> samurai (this is why most<br />
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exotic martial-arts weapons are actually agricultural tools).</p>
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<p>In 1877, most samurai still would have thought unarmed-combat<br />
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training a distraction from learning how to use the swords, muskets<br />
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and bows that were their primary weapons systems. Only after the<br />
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swords they preferred for close combat were finally banned did this<br />
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attitude really change. But, hey, most moviegoers are unaware of<br />
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these subtleties, so there had to be some chop-socky in the script to<br />
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meet their expectations.</p>
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<p>One other rewriting of martial history: we see samurai<br />
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ceremoniously stabbing fallen opponents to death with a two-hand<br />
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sword-thrust. In fact, this is not how it was done; <em>real</em><br />
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samurai delvered the coup de grace by decapitating their<br />
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opponents, and then taking the head as a trophy.</p>
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<p>No joke. Head-taking was such an important practice that there was<br />
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a special term in Japanese for the art of properly dressing the hair on<br />
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a severed head so that the little paper tag showing the deceased’s name<br />
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and rank would be displayed to best advantage.</p>
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<p>While the filmmakers were willing to show samurai killing the<br />
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wounded, in other important respects they softened and Westernized the<br />
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behavior of these people somewhat. Algren learned, correctly, that<br />
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‘samurai’ derives from a verb meaning “to<br />
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serve”, but we are misled when the rebel leader speaks of<br />
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“protecting the people”. In fact, noblesse oblige was not<br />
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part of the Japanese worldview; samurai served not ‘the<br />
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people’ but a particular daimyo, and the daimyo served the<br />
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Emperor in theory and nobody but themselves in normal practice.</p>
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<p>Now for some of the good stuff. It begins with an amazingly strong<br />
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performance by Ken Watanabe as the rebel daimyo Katsumoto. From the<br />
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first moment that you see him, you believe him; there are no moments<br />
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of hey-I’m-<em>Tom-Cruise</em> to mar his immersion in the character, for<br />
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which excellent reason he actually upstages Cruise at several key points.</p>
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<p>Through Katsumoto and the other Japanese characters, we are made to<br />
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see the intertwined quests for perfection of both technique and self<br />
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that was so central to the samurai warrior-mystic. Indeed, there are<br />
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points at which the filmmakers have some subtle fun with the fact that<br />
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Americans of our day, having successfully naturalized Japanese martial<br />
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arts into our own culture, have learned to understand that path rather<br />
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better than Cruise’s Captain Algren does. I’m thinking especially of<br />
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the point at which a bystander watching Algren lose at sword practice<br />
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tells him he has “too many minds”. The viewer probably knows what<br />
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he is driving at even if Algren does not.</p>
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<p>Better: the movie is properly respectful of Japanese virtues<br />
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without crossing the line into supine multiculturalism. Captain<br />
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Algren appreciates and accepts the best of an alien culture<br />
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<em>without</em> renouncing his identity as a Westerner, an officer,<br />
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and a gentleman. There is a telling scene after Algren has been<br />
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accepted into the life of his Japanese hosts in which he takes a heavy<br />
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load from Taka (the female lead), who protests that Japanese men never<br />
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help with such things.</p>
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<p>Algren replies that he is not a Japanese man. In this and other<br />
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ways he refutes an already-standard knock on the movie, which is to<br />
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refer to it as “Dances with Samurai”. But this movie,<br />
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despite the flaws I’ve pointed out, is more honest and far less<br />
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sentimental about the samurai than <cite>Dances With Wolves</cite> was<br />
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about its Sioux. This is progress of a sort.</p>
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<p>Algren’s romance with Taka is also handled with a degree of<br />
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restraint that is appropriate but surprising. We get no sexual<br />
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cheap thrills; instead, we get subtle but extremely powerful<br />
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eroticism, notably in the scene where Taka dresses Algren in her<br />
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dead husband’s armor just before the final battle.</p>
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<p>The film is visually quite beautiful. The details of costume,<br />
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weapons, armor, and the simple artifacts of Japanese village life are<br />
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meticulously and correctly rendered. In fact there are a number of<br />
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points at which the setting is stronger than the script and carries<br />
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one through places where the plotting is a bit implausible.</p>
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<p>This contrast is an illustration of the uneven way in which<br />
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standards have risen. <cite>The Last Samurai</cite>, the Rings<br />
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movies, <cite>Master & Commander</cite>, and the Harry Potter movies<br />
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all have vastly better production values than (I think) they would<br />
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have had even ten years ago — perhaps the huge advances in<br />
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special-effects technology have created a sort of upward pressure on<br />
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the quality of movies’ depictions of reality. On the other hand,<br />
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downright silly plot twists are still acceptable and the conventions<br />
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of the star-vehicle film remain firmly in place.</p>
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<p>One gets ahistorical howlers and (in fiction) violations of the<br />
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spirit of the original work, but fewer than formerly. In all these<br />
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movies, you can see where they were trimmed to fit Hollywood’s<br />
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marketing needs, but the trimming is done with a lot more sensitivity<br />
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and taste than it used to be. Occasionally one even sees outright<br />
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improvements — the moment in Peter Jackson’s version of<br />
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Boromir’s death scene in which the fallen Gondorian hails Aragorn as<br />
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his king, for example, achieves more power and poignancy than<br />
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Tolkien’s original.</p>
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<p>I like this trend a lot, but I’m not sure I understand it. The<br />
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Hollywood establishment is in business to make money, but the link<br />
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between market demand and the quality of films has always been<br />
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tenuous at best. It would be nice to think that film audiences<br />
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have required filmmakers to exhibit better taste by developing<br />
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better taste themselves, but in the face of all the awful schlock<br />
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that still gets churned out and makes money, this is a difficult<br />
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case to sustain in general.</p>
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<p>It feels to me more as though some balance of power within the<br />
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system has shifted and, for whatever reason, creative artists<br />
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have gained power at the expense of the marketeers. Thus, for<br />
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example, Rowling had more than somewhat to do with the casting<br />
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of the Harry Potter movies, and Peter Jackson’s films display<br />
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a nearly obsessive concern with getting the look of Middle-Earth<br />
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right that could hardly be shared by a typical studio exec.</p>
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<p>Whatever the reason, I’m glad of the trend. I spend a lot more<br />
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time in movie theaters than I use to — and that’s the<br />
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message Hollywood wants to hear.</p>
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