Movie Review: Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai

Directed by: Takashi Miike.

Written by: Kikumi Yamagishi based on the novel by Yasuhiko Takiguchi.

Starring: Ebizô Ichikawa (Hanshirô Tsugumo), Kôji Yakusho (Kageyu), Hikari Mitsushima (Miho), Eita (Motome).

Remaking a masterpiece is hardly ever a good idea – and make no mistake about it, Masaki Kobayashis 1962 film Harakiri is a masterpiece – one of the greatest of all samurai films. Unlike many samurai films which are set near the end of the samurai era, to show the crumbling of a honorable society, Kobayashi set his film near the beginning of the samurai era to show how the samurai era was never great – that their much vaunted concept of honor was really just a hollow, meaningless veneer. Kobayashi made a masterpiece, and every other telling of this story should pale in comparison.

But Takashi Miike has never been a filmmaker who is easily intimidated. He has made a career – and developed a rather healthy cult following – by being the most extreme of all the extreme Asian directors. Since he made his directorial debut in 1991, Miike has an astonishing 88 directing credits – ranging from theatrical features, to straight to DVD titles, to TV miniseries, to episodic television, as well as the odd short film or segment of an omnibus film. He has developed a reputation because his most well-known films are extremely violent and disturbing – from the bloody as hell Ichi the Killer, to the Hitchcockian thriller with a disturbing twist in Audition, to his over the top musical of a murdering family The Happiness of Katakuris, to the demented Visitor Q about the most disturbed family you could possibly imagine, to his surreal, Lynchian diversions like Izo and Gozu, to his episode of the short lived American TV series, Masters of Horror, deemed too disturbing for broadcast. Miike has made one extreme film after another after another. You would think with so many films on his resume, that some would feel merely phoned in – rushed through shooting and editing and put out there simply to make money. But although I have not liked all of the films of his I have seen (which is really, just a fraction of what he has made), that has never been the case. Last year, Miike took a step towards respectability with 13 Assassins, which for me was the best samurai film in years. And with Hara Kiri, he has even outdone that. Some of his fans may want him to go back the extremes of his earlier films – but for me, I like the new, tamer Miike. He seems to be learning that sometimes, less is more.

The movie follows the same storyline of the original. A masterless samurai, or ronin, Hanshiro Tsugumo (Ebizo Ichikawa) shows up at the gates of the great Iyi clan, requesting the honor of seppuku – or ritual suicide – or their hollowed grounds. The master of the Iyi samurai is frustrated – “another one” he says – and we get the story that many masterless samurai are showing up at their gates – and the gates of the other big clans – feigning seppuku, hoping that the clan will take pity on them, and either give them a job, or at least a few coins, to simply go away. They let Hanshiro in, and tell him the story of the last samurai who requested the honor – a young man named Motomo – who when he realized the Iyi clan was actually going to grant his request – and not just give him some money – requested time, and then begged for just 3 ryo to leave. But the Iyi clan wanted to send a message – and made Motomo go through with it – even going so far as making him use his own, pathetic, bamboo sword, to do it, and make him go through agony before finally ending his life. Do you still want to go through with seppuku, they ask Hanshiro. Of course. He has only one request – that the same man who was Motomo's second (or the man who will end his life after he eviscerates himself) be his as well. The only problem is they cannot find him. So Hanshiro asks for one of two other samurais – and again, they cannot find them. At this point, the Iyi clan is getting genuinely suspicious of the man they have let in. They want to know his story – and so he tells it.

Most of the movie is made up of Hanshiro's tragic story – going from a high ranking, and wealthy samurai for a great clan, to a penniless single father, raising his daughter and the son of an old colleague who has died. He is a loving father, and eventually a doting grandfather. But things go horribly, tragically wrong – and that is what has led him to the Iyi clan’s door. He fully intends to die – he just wants to shame the Iyi clan first – and show their thin veneer of honor for the hollow lie that it really is.

I’m sure that many of Miikes most diehard fans are going to be disappointed by Harakiri. The movie is mostly talk, and although when the violence in the movie happens – the brutal seppuku of Motomo early in the film, and the epic, one against many samurai battle climax – happens, it as bloody and violent as they could hope for, they really are a minor part of the movie. This is a tragic story about how those who are punished are not the ones who are responsible. Hanshiro, and Motomo, are powerless to change their lot in life. They were not responsible for the collapse of their clan, but it is they, and not their master, who has to pay the price of that collapse.

The film is the most gorgeous film that Miike has ever made. The opulence of the Iyi palace is offset by the dire, shacks that Hanshiro lives in. Miike, like Kobayashi before him, favors long takes – often shot through doors or windows, and slow tracking shots, that often times is obscured by polls on their journey. When the beautiful snow falls at key points in the film, we know that death is near.

In Harakiri, Miike pays tribute to one of the great samurai films of all time – but one of the greatest Japanese directors ever. His film is very similar to Kobayashis, which will probably lead some to question why he decided to make it at all. But while Miikes film is respectful of what has come before, this is a new version – one that is even darker that Kobayashis, with an even greater sense of tragedy at its core, and ends with Hanshiro shaming the Iyi clan even more than he did in the Kobayashi film. No, I do not think it is quite the masterpiece that Kobayashis film was – that also had the added benefit of being more timely, a definite statement on Japan in the post WWII era, whereas this Miike film remains merely an excellent period piece. But Miike has shown great restraint here – he is no longer simply try to shock the audience, but to make them feel as well. And that in itself is shocking from Miike. I was a fan of his extreme films near the beginning of the 2000s, but gradually I outgrew them – admiring the skill in the execution much more than the films themselves. But Miike has finally shown growth – and this is one the best films he has ever made. 

DVD Review: 13 Assassins

13 Assassins *** ½

Directed by: Takashi Miike.

Written by: Daisuke Tengan based on the screenplay by Kaneo Ikegami.

Starring: Kôji Yakusho (Shinzaemon Shimada), Takayuki Yamada (Shinrouko), Yûsuke Iseya (Koyata), Gorô Inagaki (Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira), Masachika Ichimura (Hanbei Kitou), Mikijiro Hira (Sir Doi), Hiroki Matsukata (Kuranaga), Ikki Sawamura (Mitsuhashi), Arata Furuta (Sahara), Tsuyoshi Ihara (Hirayama), Masataka Kubota (Ogura), Sôsuke Takaoka (Hioki), Seiji Rokkaku (Otake), Yûma Ishigaki (Higuchi), Kôen Kondô (Horii), Ikki Namioka (Ishizuka).

13 Assassins is a throwback to the days when Japanese movies were defined by the samurai genre. True, from the earliest days of Japanese film, they produced a wide variety of films and genres, but most observers concentrated on their samurai epics. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is easily the best the genre ever produced – although there so many to choose from its hard – and Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins strikes some of the same notes as Kurosawa’s masterpiece did (although it is a remake of a later film, unseen by me). This being a Miike film, the film is of course brutally violent, and yet given what he has directed before, it’s almost tame when compared to films like Ichi the Killer or Visitor Q. It also just may be his best film.

13 Assassins takes place at the tale end of the samurai era of Japanese history. Most samurai are already dead or retired or no longer practicing their trade when the film opens. The Shogun has a half brother who he plans on naming as his successor, and giving him enormous power even before then. The problem is that this half brother Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira (Goro Inagaki) is a cruel, sadistic man, who kills and tortures for the sheer pleasure of it. For the Shogun’s senior adviser Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira), this is unacceptable, and knows that if Natitsugu were to actually rise to power, it would be devastating for the empire. So he reaches out to his old friend Shimada (Koji Yakusho), a samurai pretty much forced into retirement. His job is to kill Natisugu so they he cannot rise. He can assemble any team he wishes, but he, and they, must know that it is essentially a suicide mission. The chances of success are slim, and the chances of survival pretty much non-existent. Shimada accepts.

The story of 13 Assassins is familiar to anyone who knows samurai movies – or pretty much any action really. At first, we are introduced to the villain, a snarling caricature of evil, and then we are introduced to the hero, who in a long sequence will assemble his ragtag group of men to pull off the impossible job. And then, the action comes in, and an extended battle sequence will ensue. 13 Assassins is no different in its storytelling that movies like Seven Samurai or its American remake The Magnificent Seven. Or for that matter movies like The Dirty Dozen or even The Expendables. And yet, with a movie like this, it is all in the execution – and that’s where Miike has succeeded greatly.

First of all, in Natitisugu and the performance by Gorô Inagaki, Miike has found one of the most memorable movie villains of the year. Here is a man who is so casual in his cruelty that it’s shocking. The rapes the wife of an underling, and when the woman’s husband comes in, shocked by what he sees, Natitisugu cuts him down with his sword – finishing by decapitating him. Later, he will slaughter an entire family that Sir Doi had told him not to touch. How does he do it? He ties up the entire family – small children included – and casually shots each repeatedly with a bow and arrow until there’s no one left. In perhaps the only scene in the movie where Miike goes a little too far (which, after all, is his trademark), we see his handiwork on a woman who family Natitsugu slaughtered. He kept her around afterwards as a sexual plaything, and eventually discarded her after cutting off her arms and legs, and removing her tongue. Her ravaged body is an image that won’t likely leave by head anytime soon. Natitsugu is quite clearly insane – which is brought into full focus in the film’s final, epic battle – which he enjoys way too much.

And the heroes, especially Shimada, are sketched with great skill. It’s one thing to assemble a large group of killers for a suicide mission, it’s quite another to make them all unique characters, and make the audience care about them at the same time. Kôji Yakusho is excellent in the lead role – a wise, old samurai who thought his warrior days were behind him, and until Sir Doi approached him, thought that an honorable death in battle would not come to him. But now he has his chance. On the other side Hanebei (Masachika Ichimura), an old classmate of Shimada’s, who is now the leader of Natitisugu’s soldiers. He knows his boss is crazy, and dangerous, but that’s not his call to make. His job is to follow orders – and no doubt he, like Shimada, relishes the conflict as a way to fulfill his destiny of honorable death in battle.

When the battle finally does come, it’s an epic one – taking up about 45 minutes of running time. And yet, this battle is not all flash, rapid fire editing and shaky camera movements. Miike finds a way to make this battle exciting, but never loses focus on the characters or the storytelling. I get bored when action sequences in a Michael Bay movie drag on and on, because they are essentially meaningless, empty exercises in style. But Miike’s battle is anything but that.

13 Assassins will not win any prizes for originality, but as an example of its genre, it is exemplary – the best samurai film in years. An exciting film, that is also rather intelligent and at times even moving. I never would have expected that from Miike.