Edward Zwick, of "Glory" glory and "Legends of the Fall" legend, desperately aspires to become, by some weird transformative process of yearning and hoping, Akira Kurosawa, and to make a great Kurosawa movie.
And that explains also why, under its beauty, its lush production values and its superficial spell of enchantment, the basic product feels lame and thin, wan and stale. It's wannabe-ism on a multimillion-dollar scale, with an icon of Japanese culture somehow crudely penetrated by an interloper and turned inside out.
If you're not a fan of the great director Kurosawa and don't care a whisker for Japanese film, you most likely won't give a damn. What's up there is, at least at that immediate level, engrossing. Endless yen have been spent on swords and armor and horses and costumes -- Zwick adores the flag-helmets so beloved by Kurosawa
That doesn't stop Zwick. Nothing stops Zwick. He's like General MacArthur returning. He marches through everything, immune to subtlety, nuance, sense of appropriateness. So he's got Tom Cruise, as earnest and hopeless as the day is long, as both Toshiro Mifune and Kevin Costner. And to make this travesty worse, you can feel the handsome little guy "acting" with every fiber of his being. It's kind of unsettling. He resembles Sean Penn in "I Am Sam," except he seems to be shouting "I am Samurai." His face is a perpetual mask of scorn, his body a knot of anxiety, his eyes cranked down to laser glare. He's a poster boy for the concept of "trying too hard." He's not a hero, he's the guy at the party who's so intense you want him to stay away. (詳細はリンク先へどうぞ)
Dances With Swords 'The Last Samurai' Rides Lamely Into the Sunrise By Stephen Hunter Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 5, 2003; Page C01
The great fabulist Jorge Luis Borges has a story called "Pierre Menard, Author of 'Don Quixote.' " It's about a French critic who so loves the great Spanish novel that he wants to write it. Not copy it, not rewrite it; no, to make an empathetic connection with Cervantes to such a degree that he is actually writing anew a novel that was written 400 years earlier.
Borges, ever so niftily, is getting at a basic but often unacknowledged circumstance of creation: Younger artists are so taken with a certain established work that they have to, in some fashion, make it their own. This seems to be the mechanism that underlies the Tom Cruise film "The Last Samurai," in which the director Edward Zwick, of "Glory" glory and "Legends of the Fall" legend, desperately aspires to become, by some weird transformative process of yearning and hoping, Akira Kurosawa, and to make a great Kurosawa movie.
And that explains also why, under its beauty, its lush production values and its superficial spell of enchantment, the basic product feels lame and thin, wan and stale. It's wannabe-ism on a multimillion-dollar scale, with an icon of Japanese culture somehow crudely penetrated by an interloper and turned inside out. Movies set in Japanese history should not be about handsome white people. It just feels wrong and, in the end, leaves in your mouth the taste of desecration.
If you're not a fan of the great director Kurosawa and don't care a whisker for Japanese film, you most likely won't give a damn. What's up there is, at least at that immediate level, engrossing. Endless yen have been spent on swords and armor and horses and costumes -- Zwick adores the flag-helmets so beloved by Kurosawa -- and New Zealand, which has made a pretty good Middle Earth, turns out to make a pretty good 1870s Japan, all shire and hill for battleground. Those battles are reasonably well staged, and lots of people die. There's some cool sword-fighting. But still, it's junk
In the end, Katsumoto, with Algren by his side, faces a battle with newly industrialized forces. This is set up to showcase the uniquely Japanese value called "The Nobility of Failure," to quote the title of Ivan Morris's book on the subject, evidently an inspiration to Zwick. In the last battle of "The Last Samurai," Katsumoto, Algren and a few hundred others ride into Gatling guns. We're supposed to feel, I don't know, sorry for them, because their little con game is over, because Japan is achieving a central government and a unification under national leadership, along with other little things included in the bargain like education, medicine, and so forth.
This movie thinks that's terrible; it yearns for a medieval country to remain medieval. What sane person could buy into such absurdity? "The Last Samurai" stands for the Banality of Failure.
this year, there were some major movies set in japan(kill bill, lost in translation, last samurai) and i don't know..i am getting kinda sick of seeing japan all the time in movies. since when i was young, i remember watching hollywood movies with lots of japan influence like people wearing kimono in japanese style settings (eg. Demolition Man with sylvester stallone and sandra bullock which was kinda bad) i was young when i lived in korea so i remember people being ticked off when subject of japan came up due to bad history between korea and japan... i've been watching the LAst samurai trailer, and keep seeing words like "honor, intergrity.blah blah blah" but there really should be movies about the lack of human decency japanese showed towards other weaker nations..
most people have NO idea how cruel japanese were.. during Japanese invasion of korea, there was an earthquake in japan, and japanese people blamed Koreans FOR THE EARTHQUAKE so they slaughtered thousands of korean people...that was really sad
i don't blame the people of japan right now,(even though i should because japan has NEVER issued an apology to China or Korea) but portraying them as so nicely and beautifully in the past kinda makes me angry.. probably SOny has lots of power i guess..
people should be more brave to take on darker subjects occured around the world that have never been exposed much..
__________________ In this life, it's not what you hope for, it's not what you deserve -- it's what you take. -from Magnolia-