07.21.06
The Hidden Blade
Yoji Yamada’s latest film is a follow-up to his previous film, The Twilight Samurai, and hits the same themes: the changing of the feudal system with Japan’s opening to the West, the decline of the samurai, conflicts of class, love, and honor. Munezo (Masatoshi Nagase), a minor samurai, nurses a quiet, secret love for his family’s maid (Takako Katsu), a love that’s wildly inappropriate due to their differing stations. As he watches the system he was trained into morph away around him, including profound change in what it means to be a samurai, he struggles with how to reconcile his desires with what he believes and what he sees happening. Yes, this is film about men who carry swords, but swordfighting is just about the last thing on anyone’s mind; this is a drama, not an action film, although the fight that does happen is a little gem of mood and moment.
This is a lovely, tender, and melancholy film, with sympathetic characters carved with precision and performances to match. The main problem with it, from my viewpoint, is that it’s too much like its predecessor; I found myself continually comparing its plot to the same notes in The Twilight Samurai, and generally finding them less effective. The sense of change and loss was much stronger in that film, the melancholy of its central character more pronounced, the issues of love and class keener and more heartbreaking. This isn’t a bad film by any means; it just comes up lacking in comparison to its forebear. If someone hadn’t seen the previous film, I think this one would seem outstanding, and it is definitely worth seeing for its glimpse at a world-changing time drawn at the miniature level and the warm it shows to its characters.
The most interesting thing for me in seeing this was seeing Masatoshi Nagase as a figure of gravity. Ever since he became my Japanese-movie boyfriend over a decade ago, in The Most Terrible Time in My Life, a jumpy, jangly take on film noir gilded with the neon of modern Japan, he’s represented for me defiant, uncageable energy with the hint of a refusal to grow up. To see him in this role, grave and composed, straitened by the strictures of culture and decorum, and carrying it so beautifully, was a bit of a shock. What happened to that energetic, vaguely disreputable young man? And then I realized: he grew up after all, just as I did. And while growing up might mean a tradeoff in energy, the result is usually that sense of wisdom and authority that I saw in his performance. Thinking that I’ve gained that, just as he did, is a pretty cool thing.