Message from mferl

[Anonymous]

The Twilight Samurai
Director: Yoji Yamada

Actors: Rie Miyazawa, Ren Osugi, Nenji Kobayashi, Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Min Tanaka, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hiroshi Kanbe, Erina Hashiguchi.

This is Yamada’s 77th film, a first period drama that depicts the last days of the Edo Period (1600-1867). Twilight Samurai is based on the best-selling novel by Shuhei Fujisawa. Yamada beautifully portrays the daily life of the non-conformist Seibei, a low-ranking samurai, whose wife died of tuberculosis several years ago.

Taking care of his two daughters, Kayano and Ito, Seibei is scraping along on a stipend of 50 bales of rice a year and working as a clerk in the clan office. When his co-workers head for pleasures after work, he goes straight home. Since he disappears every day as the sun goes down, he is mockingly nicknamed Tasogare (Twilight) Seibei.

At the end of the film Seibei is given orders by his clan to slay a Samurai name Yogo, who has broken away from the Samurai way of life. Yogo believes that the days of the Samurai are numbered because western influences have created a world in which Samurai are merely relics of a bygone era.

Yogo’s tale turns into a meaningful conversation about the hardships in their daily lives and the influence of foreign culture. Seibei realizes that his intended victim is a poor man much like himself. How can he kill him with a clean conscience?

In this film Yamada depicts a darker, more tragic view of human nature but this is only after an hour of touching melodrama about “star-crossed” lovers. Above all, he shows that the life of an ambitionless, family-oriented man can be happier and more appreciated than that of an engaged warrior.

Beautiful photography; sublime nature; Confucian philosophy.

You will profit from seeing this film.

-magda ferl