Yesterday I saw "The Twilight Samurai" at the Cornerhouse Cinema. This film comes highly recommended, particularly as an antidote to "The Last Samurai".
"The Twilight Samurai" functions almost as an revisionist Samurai film, stripping away some of the romanticisation that characterised not only "The Last Samurai", but also the Kurosawa epics which established the tropes of the genre. Focussing less on combat scenes and more on human stories, "The Twilight Samurai" gives us a more rounded, less rose-tinted view of feudal Japan that we have perhaps seen before.
The film's setting, in Japan at around the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868) makes comparisons with "The Last Samurai" almost inevitable. The latter film suffered from a simplistic knee-jerk reactionary point of view in which everything in feudal Japan was wonderful and was only spoiled by the advent of industrial modernity. By contrast, "The Twilight Samurai" gives us a sense that while the passing of old Japan can in some respects be mourned, the modernisation of Japan did bring a variety of benefits to many people. At the same time, there is an acknowledgment that, despite the great social changes which took place in Japan, in some respects there was remarkable, and perhaps regrettable, continuity.
I typically dislike discussing the plot of films that I've seen, and I'm not really going to change that here. I will, though, say that I felt that this film, as a portrait of people struggling with obligation whilst trying to live their own lives, and perhaps trying to turn circumstances to their advantage, is a great success. I also felt that there was a great success in the underplaying of some of the film's aspects, particularly a swift and brutal sword-fight with only birdsong and a gurgling river as background sound. Once again, this is in marked contrast to the bombastic style shown in "The Last Samurai". I also found the somewhat cynical view of the samurai's military role interesting: in "The Twilight Samurai" there are no more heroes any more, and maybe there never were any. At the same time, any death is presented as a tragedy.
All in all, I found the two hours spent watching this film well worthwhile, and as such I would recommend it to everyone that I know.
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