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Chushingura Actors: Koshiro Matsumoto, Yuzo Kayama Director: Hiroshi Inagaki Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Letterbox Format: Color, Widescreen Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 207 minutes Studio: Image Entertainment Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2001-02-27 Buy from Amazon |
 "Inagaki's "Chushingura"""Chushingura" may be Inagaki Hiroshi's best film. It is certainly his most widely known outside Japan. The film is also quite beautiful to see. Yet I cannot help but feel that this often told story needs something more than another straight foward retelling.  "Epic Saga of Loyalty!"One of the greatest veiws into the Japanese culture, Chushingura is the story of the 47 Loyal Retainers. The story, originaly written as a play and performed as a puppet show and a play, is sweeping and enthralling. Beautifully panoramic, the costumes are very acurate(especially the weaponry and how it was worn in that era) and shows the majesty and treachery of fuedal Japan. Although this movie is about three hours long it wraps you up and carries you away to a time when people put their lives on the line on a daily basis, something that most modern people cannot directly relate to but yearn for the opportunity! A masterpiece. "One of Masterpieces - both actors' play and plain beauty!"This movie is fantastic! Set in Tokugawa period Japan, it describes a story, which shook Japan in seventeenth century. Young lord Asano (for those, who do not know the history of samurai, the clan of Asano was a prominent clan assisting Tokugawa in his quest for power) coming from very conservative clan is insulted by a corrupt official. In rage he draws the sword in the Shogunal palace - a grave offence punishable by seppuku. He is ordered to commit suicide without a proper investigation of all facts and his counterparty, lord Kira, lives on. Shogunate orders to abolish Asano clan leaving all samurai ronin and several dosens of samurai swear the revenge. By this time private disputes in Japan were to be resolved by the Shogunate. However, the law and the moral contradicted on this point as both Confucian and samurai codes of honour did not allow samurai to live "under the same sky" with lord Kira, who was the cause of their lord's untimely death. The samurai found themselves in conflict of rules of moral and laws and decided to act pursuant to the former. Scenery is beautiful and actors' play is amazing. I keep recalling Oishi's time at the teahouse with children and geishas when he is told of one of the samurai (his former subordinate) committing seppuku. He sheds tears yet he manages to conceal this from others! Another powerful scene is when one of samurai is attacked during the raid but saved by his own son. The old samurai rebukes the son, but then we see that he proudly smiles when his son turns away. In addition, the raid schenes have some good fight scenes as well. As opposed to Holliwood mainstream movies, all feelings in this movie are shown somewhat "indirectly" and every scene has many "sub-contents". I highly recommend this movie to everyone who is interested in serious cinematography: you will find yourselves wanting to rewatch this movie again and again. "Japan's National Story"Chushingura is a great film whose subject is the deep difficulties of being an honorable person in Japanese society, where the national dilemma is conflicting obligations. In the film, the central dilemma that Lord Asano's samurai face is that they have sworn to avenge his death, yet by doing so they will clearly violate the law of the Shogun they have sworn to uphold. Other subplots illuminate the same theme--for example, while the samurai are pretending that they have no plans to attack Kira, one falls in love with a fearful, insecure woman. When the time comes for the samurai to gather, she will not release him. Unable to meet both obligations, suicide becomes his honorable solution. Another samurai, far too sick to travel, dies in a valiant effort to reach the rendezvous. The samurai who races from the Shogun's palace back to Asano's fiefdom with the news of his death is carried in a litter. Running through the mountains, the bearers accidentally strike and kill an elderly woman. When her family of low rustics come to the samurai to demand justice, he acknowledges that even they can expect his honor and commits suicide. Oishi, the leader of the samurai, cannot tell Asano's wife the truth about the plan to avenge him for fear of revealing it to a spy, and he must leave her house in apparent shame. He sends her a letter at the time of the attack on Kira to explain. She is left mortified that she doubted his loyalty. In one way this is all a mystery to a modern American. Yet there is a profound appeal in the idea of such pure dedication and love. Who among us is willing to die for an ideal? At least we can appreciate why this story has been made into dozens of plays, stories, poems and films--it is at the heart of Japanese identity. Chushingura is well worth seeing just for the treasures of Japanese art you are unlikely to ever find in any museum. Toho Films made this version in honor of their 50th anniversary, and they filmed inside magnificent palaces and castles. Gorgeous rooms, screens, kimonos, wall paintings, uniforms--the finest art of 18th-century Japan--makes it hard to concentrate on the story the first time you see the film. "A Most Expensive Debacle"Inagaki's "Chushingura" was easily the most expensive version of a very popular and well-known epic in Japan. There had been several versions on film, the best directed by Furuda in 1959 (never seen outside Japan). Inagaki was an old favorite among Japanese critics, having directed the trilogy of Musashi Miyamoto, known herebaouts as the "Samurai" trilogy with Mifune. He was coventional, lacking in all but the most rudimentary visual imagination, and yet he was safe enough to invest a huge (for the time) budget, with the biggest box-office star of his day, Yuzo Kayama, in the making of what has become the most popular version of the ancient Japanese legend of the 47 Ronin. It is excellent as "chambara" (sword-film), but severely lacking in every other area. The action scenes, which always had the advantage of grandeur when compared to a simple Western gunfight, carry the film. But the emphasis on ritual, on character development, and on fidelity to the details of the legend, make the film seem rather stodgy. |
