$ Kagemusha The Criterion Collection Blu ray

Watching two of Kurosawa's later films, "Kagemusha" and "Ran" (1985) reminds me of an anecdote concerning the great director. In the aftermath of the terrible 1923 (Kanto) Tokyo earthquake which killed an estimated 100,000 to 140,000 people, Akira's older brother took the young boy to see the mountains of bodies. Akira, understandably afraid, averted his eyes, not being able to bear the sight of the charred bodies (many of the casualties were caused by the gas pipes rupturing and causing flash fires). His brother forced him to look at the carnage, pointing out that to look at anything in the eyes is to dispel the fear that it brings.



I always find the anecdote oddly comforting, because I always think that out of this terrible tragedy and Kurosawa's traumatic experience came the seeds of a temerity, a boldness and assuredness in confronting the horrors of the world. I tend to think that "Kagemusha" and the even better "Ran" are the culmination of Kurosawa's fearless examination of human frailties. Both films are wonderfully expressive in their use of colour and lead by renowned actor Nakadai Tetsuya; both deal with the ugliness of human conduct under extreme circumstances, and yet the times the films are set (in "Kagemusha"s case it is the 1570s) can be seen as a mere setting to portray the extremes of those universal qualities of human betrayal and cruelty that know neither time nor place.



To be honest, "Kagemusha" isn't up the standard of Kurosawa's classics such as "Rashomon", "Throne of Blood", "Yojimbo", or even the slightly overrated "Seven Samurai". But seeing as "Rashomon" basically invented the idea of the relativity of truth in cinema and "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" the Spaghetti Western tradition, it doesn't mean "Kagemusha" is a bad film. Certain scenes -the desperate flailing of upturned horses after the final battle, the bold dream sequence that almost represent Nakadai's thief character as a Godzilla tottering over a psychedelic landscape- have the power to move. And the final bleak portrayal of human carnage -even if that carnage helps to bring about the eventual reunification of Japan- imprints upon the mind of the viewer Kurosawa's unflinching view of the destiny of human greed.



DVD: Criterion have pulled out all the stops for this DVD release. The print of the film itself could perhaps be a little sharper, but it's no worse than Studio Canal's print for "Ran", and the bold coulour schema really shines through. Extras-wise, an excellent book, an insightful commentary and a second disc with a Japanese documentary on the master director and extensive interviews with project funders George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola really make this a set worth getting, even in the age of Blu-ray.


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• KAGEMUSHA BLU-RAY (BLU-RAY DISC)