Viewed on DVD. Subtitles/translations = eight (8) stars; restoration = seven (7) stars. Director Tadashi Imai (and his film- creation colleagues) have walked a fine line between reality and audience-conditioned violent expectancies. The approach taken seems to be one of extracting narrative guidance from historical documents published in the 300-400 years prior to the onset of the 20th Century and the full modernization of Japan. Romanticized fiction of the samurai warrior class and its codes of conduct as popularized in historical/modern novels and, especially, motion pictures (shades of the fictionalized American Old West!) has been studiously avoided. The result is a film with a lot of talk (a bit too much) and very little (or no) sword-swinging action (except for wooden sticks). Sword welting is pretty much limited to murdering uppity peasants, committing suicide on the battlefield (to avoid capture), and the entertainment of sadistic and corrupt, but wealthy, feudal lords. Samurai conduct codes are realistically shown to depend on the customs of each feudal clan with samurai depicted as following the money trail with their allegiance switching from one feudal clan/domain to another sometimes in the midst of fighting. (It is to be noted that: (1) few samurai actually died in direct sword-to-sword combat--perhaps less than 10% overall--when employed to defend a feudal lord/clan; (2) no unified, national samurai code of conduct EVER existed in old Japan; and (3) author Inazo Nitobe invented samurai Bushido in his internationally-popular 1899 small book--"BUSHIDO Samurai Ethics and the Sole of Japan"-- published (in English) well after samurai had moved on to other pursuits (like business, finance, and writing). (Nitobe's volume proved also to be domestically popular, especially with Japan's military and business cartels.) Acting is fine, with the male lead playing seven roles in seven historical epochs (it would have been even more interesting if the same actress had played seven roles!) Cinematography (wide screen, black and white) is good. Set lighting is a bit on the dark side (perhaps to hide cheap set designs for historical periods?). Costuming "cries out" for color photography (maybe this process lay beyond the production budget?) Film score is fine. Restoration is great. Subtitles are exceptionally good. All opening credits are translated! Historical information (especially the identity of original-source information) is summarized in white letters at the top of the screen. Dialog subtitles appears at screen bottom in yellow and (if more than one character is speaking) simultaneously in gray. (An excellent technique.) Subtitles are also, for the most part, kept to a minimum and remain on-screen long enough to be fully read (no easy feat given the dialogue-heavy nature of the film). Further, yellow subtitles often remain while the gray ones emerge to help provide a seamless transition in line readings for the viewer. (Historical information flow and subtitles can be selectively turned off.) The DVD menu is very poorly designed, and exceptionally hard to navigate. To see if an intended selection has been made, the viewer practically needs to put her nose against the screen! A samurai movie for grown ups. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.
Review of Bushido
