HARAKIRI 切腹, Seppuku Director - Masaki Kobayashi /小林 正樹 Year of Release - September 16, 1962 Duration - 135 min. Genre - Drama, Samurai IMDB  Review Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi came of age in the postwar moment, a time when filmmakers were at the vanguard of dissident expression in that country. Drawing upon a rich history of protest in Japanese cinema, which had fallen dormant during the war and occupation years, filmmakers seized the opportunity to challenge those institutions that remained wedded to the nation’s feudal past. Of this generation of directors, none was as passionate as Kobayashi. Every one of his films, from The Thick-Walled Room (1953) to the feature-length documentary Tokyo Trial (1983) to The Empty Table (1985), is marked by a defiance of tradition and authority, whether feudal or contemporary. Kobayashi found the present to be no more immune to the violation of personal freedoms than the pre-Meiji past, under official feudalism, had been. “In any era, I am critical of authoritarian power,” the filmmaker told me when I interviewed him in Tokyo, during the summer of 1972. “In The Human Condition [1959–61], it took the form of militaristic power; in Harakiri, it was feudalism. They pose the same moral conflict in terms of the struggle of the individual against society.” Like other directors of this period—notably Akira Kurosawa—Kobayashi often expressed his political dissidence via the jidai-geki, or period film, in which the historical past becomes a surrogate for modern Japan. In Kobayashi’s hands, the jidai-geki exposed the historical roots of contemporary injustice. (Japanese audiences were well schooled in history and could be counted on to connect the critique of the past with abuses in the present.) Harakiri, made in 1962, was, in Kobayashi’s career, the apex of this practice. In the film’s condemnation of the Iyi clan, Kobayashi rejects the notion of individual submission to the group. He condemns, simultaneously, the hierarchical structures that pervaded Japanese political and social life in the 1950s and 1960s, especially the zaibatsus, the giant corporations that recapitulated feudalism. Joan Mellen Availability Criterion Collection Eureka MoS HuluPlus Netflix Amazon.com Amazon.jp |
Orion1Nov 5, 2012 11:35 AM
| Amazing entry and info. All info on Kobayashi is welcome. And what a great film this is. Nakadai is immense here. |
RobdeFRNov 12, 2012 2:21 PM
| A couple of months ago, I watched Miike's version and it forced me to go back and rediscover how amazing this version was. The added sensationalism that Miike added was gruesome, but it seemed unnecessary, but certainly Miike. I'm guessing he remade this classic as homage, but I don't see the need in remaking great classics, especially ones that stand the test of time. Tatsuya Nakadai's performance really is a thing to marvel at. Ebizô Ichikawa's performance in Miike's version was alright, but not as good. Seriously difficult performance to match. Plus the nuances of the original film's capturing of nature and darkness through his camera angles is almost other worldly. Example: Simply amazing film! Certainly one of the finest that I can think of. It deserved a spotlight. Though Miike's version also did a fine job of capturing natural elements and used some interesting cinema photography and infusion of weather like snow, it's use of color,wasn't able to evoke as much sadness and somberness that worked so well as foreshadowing to the tragedy that was about to unfold in the original black and white version.Epically difficult film to remake, so I guess I should give Miike some credit for doing as well as he did, but ultimately it was doomed to fall short without the ah inspiring acting performance of Nakadai. |
Orion1Nov 8, 2012 10:46 AM
| Amazing movie. Every person that claims to be a cine-file must see this movie. Too bad Miike's remake was not so good. |
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