Kurosawa admitted in interviews
that this film was, essentially, an uncredited adaptation of elements
from Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest" and "The Glass Key"; in addition,
as so many samurai films are, it shares many tropes with the American
Western, which made Sergio Leone's swipe of the swipe, turning
"Yojimbo" into "Fistful of Dollars" all the more logical.
Bits from this film -- the confrontation and sword fight with the
boastful thugs and one of them losing an arm -- and even more from
another Kurosawa film, "The Hidden Fortress" -- made up much of the
inspiration for the first "Star Wars" film, as well.
Mifune's wandering ronin is deliberately made almost the antithesis of
the samurai ideal -- scruffy, surly, lazy and so lost to proper manners
that he scratches himself in public -- to point up that it is difficult
to judge good or ill from surface appearance (a point made even more
strongly in the sequel, "Sanjuro").
Arriving in a town that is being destroyed by the running battles
between two gangs of small-time gamblers and gangsters, the ronin plays
both gangs against each other, hoping to lead them to destroy each
other.
It almost works. And it almost gets him killed, too.
Kurosawa, like Leone, was a master of the meaningful silence, the
understated gesture -- and the sudden shocking violence that releases
tension gradually built up so quietly we almost haven't noticed it.
Like most of his films, at the heart of this one is a meditation on
honor and strength and on what a man owes to himself and to those
around him, and on whether having the ability to clean up a bad
situation compels one to do it.
Is it true, as Spider-Man says, that "With Great Power comes Great
Responsibility", or is it unreasonable to ask someone to risk his neck
for a bunch of people he doesn't know, just because he's The Only Man
Who...?
One of these days, i'm going to re-read the Hammett, then i'm going to
rent "Yojimbo" and "Fistful of Dollars" and "Last Man Standing" and i
am going to watch them all -- in order -- and then i'm going to reread
David Drake's recent SF novel reworking the same themes, "The Sharp
End"... just as a sort of crash course in how five masters of narrative
tell the same story and make it theirs. |
