Went to go see it yesterday with Bill. Here's his review ... I completely agree about Ken Watanabe who plays samurai warrior Katsumoto - it is an amazing performance. I would even venture to say that it is "his" movie, although Tom Cruise is the major star.
The battle scenes are unbelievable. Tom Cruise is obviously doing most of his own stunts - and that adds such an authenticity to the action. It is him, galloping on that horse, sword held high.
One of the strengths of the film, I think, is that it creates characters - characters you can care about. Maybe that's a girlie response - but action movies without well-developed characters leave me cold.
It's why "Braveheart" is so effective, for example. They seem like real people, albeit a bit widely-drawn.
The samurai fights are breathtaking. The first shot of them appearing through the mist in the forest - on horseback - wearing horned masks - I mean, you could totally understand why the regular Japanese army all turned around and fled. It was terrifying.
Three things I could have done without:
1. All of the Japanese soldiers (not the samurai, but the Western-trained soldiers) bowing down to Tom Cruise in the second to last shot of the film. I cringed at the sight of the Western man being deified so openly - especially when Katsumoto was the brains behind the operation, the teacher ... The rest of the movie doesn't fall into that trap. Tom Cruise's character has just as much to learn from the samurai culture as they have to learn from him. It's not an imbalance - but that moment of everyone bowing at him was ... a bit ikky.
2. The "love story" should have ended up on the cutting room floor entirely. But it was good, in a way, because the woman in the movie had a couple of kids - little boys - who were so dear - so cute - and good little 5 year old samurais too - that (again with the wanting to eat up small children phenomenon we discussed earlier) I just wanted to eat them up. These kids were GREAT. But the love story was a big fat YAWN.
3. Tom Cruise has a very affecting scene with the emperor at the end of the film. Throughout the scene, tears are slowly rolling down Cruise's face. This reiterates what I said in my post about Emotion in Performance. I somehow DIDN'T have a catharsis - because Tom Cruise was too busy having HIS. I felt left out. If he had been tearless, and yet, obviously, very deeply moved - it might have been more effective.
But the battle scenes - the sword fighting - the conversations between the samurai and the American - amazing stuff. Amazing.
[slapping myself on the head]
I can't believe I forgot to mention the last five minutes. I blame the cold medicine!
I thought the Japanese soldiers were bowing down in honor of Katsumoto, not Algren. As I said at dinner, the thing that kind of got to me was the scene with the Noble White Man showing the Emperor the True Path.
Posted by: Bill McCabe at December 8, 2003 6:23 PMAm I too much of a historian for my good?
I haven't seen The Last Samurai yet, and I do want to to like it, and yet I come to it with all sorts of baggage: it will be hard for me to step outside of what I know of the period and all the previews and reviews I've seen keep telling me that, as is far too typical, Hollywood appears not only to have gotten the lesson of history wrong, but diametrically wrong, since, truth be told, the Meiji Restoration was probably the single best thing that ever happened to Japan. Seriously: the Tokugawa Shogunate by the time Perry arrived in 1857 was a crumbling but still authoritarian police state, and most of the Samurai were a calcified ruling class only going through the social motions of being credible warriors, since there hadn't been a real war in Japan for over 250 years.
I'll let you know if I manage to get past all this. It's the same problem I have with Braveheart, BTW, which I like, but still can't quite to manage to completely accept since it plays so fast and loose with what actually happened and, as far as I can tell, gratuitously, for no particularly good reason.
Posted by: Dave J at December 9, 2003 12:06 AMcough syrup: tablespoons not shots not bottles...
looking forward to seeing this one - like Samurai, like Watanabe, like Cruise, like cough syrup...
Posted by: Jim Moran at December 9, 2003 12:10 AMDave,
I did go into the film prepared to root for the Emperor's forces, but Katsumoto was so well written than I changed my allegiances halfway through. Perhaps if I'd known more than the most basic details of the Restoration, I wouldn't have. I didn't mind playing fast and loose with history in this film because I didn't think they to portray it as a true story of the Meiji Restoration. I saw it along the lines of "Gladiator", a fictional story that uses historical characters.
Posted by: Bill McCabe at December 9, 2003 6:11 AMLike I said, I really will try to approach it with as open a mind as possible. Now that you mention it, unlike Braveheart, I had absolutely no problems at all with Gladiator. And my favorite historical epic is still The Last Emperor, which contains mountains of fictionalization, so maybe I'm worried over nothing. I hope I am.
Posted by: Dave J at December 9, 2003 9:11 AMI say: if these fictionalized accounts of historical events spur audiences into finding out what actually happened - then I say: Good.
I saw "A Beautiful Mind" and loved Russell Crowe's performance. I love learning about scientists and mathematicians as well - and didn't know much about game theory. So I read the biography of Nash - The film made me read the biography of Nash. I discovered everything that had been left out: that he was gay, that he and his wife actually split up for many many years until she finally took him back in because she felt bad for him ... but he basically lived in the house of his wife as a boarder, not as a husband and lover, as the movie suggests.
I can understand the filmmakers desire to pick ONE theme from the many - and focus on that. A film cannot do everything. Stanislavsky, the great Russian director and acting teacher, talked about the "superobjective", the "spine". A play can only have one. The great plays can pretty much be boiled down into one "spine". The struggle to forgive. The desire for revenge. The plight of the common man. Whatever.
I think that the fact that John Nash was gay - and tortured by this - and the fact that his wife handled it, and forgave him, and loved him anyway - is far more interesting and complex than the "Love conquers all" message of the film.
However: I still think that Ron Howard was right to pick a theme - to not try to give a history lesson. He did dramatize Nash's game theory, and focused on Nash's mathematical genius - which, to my taste, is far more important to the "theme" of Nash's life than the fact that he had a penchant for young pretty boys.
Filmmakers must always grapple with this issue.
I guess my point is: I am curious about what actually happened in Japan now - because of The Last Samurai. I did not take the film as a presentation of truth. I took it as a poetical expression of an event in history, seen through a storyteller's eye. Now I want to learn about it myself.
Posted by: red at December 9, 2003 9:56 AMSheila, as much as it might possibly have sounded otherwise, I completely agree with what you've just said, in principle. It's putting it into practice on my part that's sometimes difficult.
Posted by: Dave J at December 9, 2003 2:30 PMSheila,
The History Channel has a "History vs. Hollywood" for "The Last Samurai". It's not a bad place to start. It next airs Saturday at 7pm.
Posted by: Bill McCabe at December 9, 2003 3:41 PMSheila you misted the point at the end of the battle where everyone is bowing. Just as Algren misted the point when Katsumto beheaded his old comrade the General of the New Japenese army. The army at the end were bowing to show there respect and recognition of the way the Samurai choose to end their way of life. It was heroic, honorable and as Katsumoto said at the end perfect way for a warrior to end his way of life.
Dave J. you should read the review by S.Lovgren see link below). "We're dealing with a fantasy, and fantasy always tops reality," he said. The movie rebellion is led by a samurai named Katsumoto, who is loosely based on the real-life samurai Takamori Saigo. Also I believe it was the Germans and not the Americans that aided in the training of armies for the new Japan. But this is an American film and as such it does not try to tell history but instead tries to build on a popular idealized image of the Samurai. Being a historical buff you should appreciate the source of inspiration for a film rather than judge it by where it deviates from history. I loved this film because it showed me something worth seeing
Posted by: James at December 21, 2003 7:30 AMHere's that review:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/12/1202_031202_lastsamurai.html
Posted by: James at December 21, 2003 9:18 AMJames:
thanks for that article - wow! great information.
Posted by: red at December 21, 2003 9:45 AMI majored in history and solely took asian history classes with an emphasis on Japan. I was able to oversee the outright fabrications and appreciate it as a good film. Dave J., to say that the Meiji Restoration was the best thing to happen to Japan is both accurate and inaccurate. Certainly, it renewed an ailing country's government and ushered in a new era of modernization. However, in many ways, it paved the way for Japanese imperial aggression in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Japanese paid dearly for this (Hiroshima/Nagasaki/). Still, I drive a Subaru WRX so it couldn't have been all that bad!
Posted by: David at January 11, 2004 1:30 AM