Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (Blu-ray)
APPROX. 116 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2003 - MPA RATING: R
" Zatoichi is a bloody film that also manages to be beautiful and funny.
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Like its protagonist, "Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman" is simple, but also satisfyingly complex. Japanese director Takeshi Kitano also gets in front of the camera this outing, playing Zatoichi, a blind masseur who wanders from village to village righting any wrongs that happen to come his way. In Japan, Zatoichi was a folk hero who was popular on TV and in movies during the mid-Sixties. Here, he's the sagely samurai version of the American western hero, and his actions belie a similar code. He carries himself with quiet confidence, he has an easy-going personality, he treats women with respect, he's a highly skilled fighter, and he only uses those skills when provoked . . . never to initiate contact.
Zatoichi helps an older woman (Michiyo Ookusu) carry her vegetables home, and because he has no roof to sleep under, she invites him to stay with her. She lives alone. And while you'd expect a late-night massage to turn into something sexual (it probably would, in an Americanized version), Zatoichi's code doesn't even allow for the possibility.
His counterpart in this film is another itinerant, and another story. Hattori Genosuke (Tadanobu Asano) is a samurai without a master, which is kind of like being a man without a country, because it leads him to take on "bodyguard" work for presumably one gang boss after the other before moving on. He kills on command and without conscience at the whim of his employers, but in his defense he needs the money. His wife, who walks the traditional five paces behind him, rather than the side-by-side Zatoichi and Aunt Oume enjoy, is apparently quite sick, possibly tubercular. She needs medical care, but one also suspects that the care will never come, because the ways in which Hattori uses his skill with a sword keep them always moving.
If these were the only plot elements, it would still make for an interesting film, because in two polar opposites Kitano has nonetheless created two sympathetic characters who are morally superior to the petty gang bosses that fight for control in these villages. Here, Boss Ginzo (Ittoku Kishibe) and Boss Ogi (Saburo Ishikura) have teamed up to eliminate the rival gangs in a move that would be easy to recognize and understand in Capone's Chicago. They're a couple of Jabba the Hutts who are greedy, Fascist, bullying, and Hedonistic.
But Kitano also throws in a revenge plot and two Geishas who are also itinerant. We get a backstory of thugs who killed an entire family, with only two girls surviving--girls who become Geishas and then wander in search of the killers. In a number of interesting ways Osei (Daigoro Tachibana) and Okinu (Yuko Daike) are not what they seem, and that adds more texture to a work of art that in less-skilled hands could have been a straight martial arts "slice-and-dice" action film. Minor characters are a strength of this film, whether it's the hunched over "Gramps" (Ben Hiura) who tends the tavern, a mentally challenged young man who dresses like samurai of old and runs circles around a house shouting "AHHHHHHHHH," or Shinkichi (Gadarukanaru Taka), a gambler to gloms onto the blind masseur when he sees the man can't lose.
As Yunda Eddie Feng pointed out in an earlier review, "Zatoichi" is a "complete re-imagining of a key Japanese pop-culture artifact," and part of that re-imagining involves the addition of humor and an intersection of background music and onscreen visuals. In addition to the village idiot who thinks he's a samurai there's Zatoichi himself, who is always smiling and unsettles his host at least once by "looking" at her with eyes painted on his closed eyelids. Throughout the film the bad guys are bumbling, and as they draw their own weapons they inadvertently slice each other up. No slash is performed without deep gash, and blood spurts as if a fire hydrant had been suddenly turned on. Limbs are routinely severed and swords plunged into bodies yield instant, exaggerated geysers of blood. It's the extreme exaggeration that nudges this from the gory world of violence to the world of humor. And the whole artistry of the film is underscored by Kitano's interesting use of music. On a number of occasions the tympanic rhythm of xylophones is captured visually--in a barrel collecting rainwater, or by farmers hoeing in the fields to the precise rhythms--and nice touches like that and attention to detail make the quiet moments as powerful as those we share with the blind masseur.
