Samurai Rebellion

SAMURAI REBELLION
Japan
1967
121 Min
Black and White
2.35:1
Japanese
DIR Masaki Kobayashi
SCR Shinobu Hashimoto
DP Kazuo Yamada
CAST Toshirô Mifune, Yoko Tsukasa, Go Kato, Shigeru Koyama, Masao Mishima, Isao Yamagata, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Tatsuo Matsumura
PROD DES Yoshiro Muraki
MUSIC Tôru Takemitsu
My Rating : 5/5 (Great Movie)

I think Kobayashi could have been a freedom fighter if he wasn’t a filmmaker. Rebellion against injustice is a concept that seems to have been close to Kobayashi’s heart and Samurai Rebellion does full justice to it. This movie is similar to Harakiri in many ways but one, and that is that in Samurai Rebellion we empathise with the protagonist’s anger, much more than in Harakiri. Mifune’s anger is so pronounced that when he is demolishing enemies we seem to join him in his effort. Mifune doesn’t die easily like most of Kobayashi’s protagonists who test the levels of human endurance and even in death appear unvanquished.
A special mention of Nakadai’s character in this movie which has a significantly short screen presence and would almost appear to be wasted but strangely he has one of the most interesting characters I have ever seen in cinema. He is Mifune’s friend and also a person who seems to read into people’s actions much better than anyone else. He advices Mifune, not directly but through little nuggets of wisdom that seem to impress Mifune, like this one:
Push and you step back.
Push, you step back farther.
But at the last moment you change from defense to offense.
You never attack. You wait till your opponent tires and quits.
Mifune gets talkative only in his presence and shares his deepest feelings with him; and through him, with the audience. In the end the two friends face off against each other in a fight similar to the one in Harakiri except that here there is no sense of triumph but only defeat.
Nakadai and Mifune have acted together in several movies but this movie appears to me their best collaboration.