And some have greatness thrust upon them

Akira Kurosawa was arguably the greatest film-maker ever. His string of black-and-white masterpieces starring Toshiro Mifune included Stray Dog, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Sanjuro. After that collaboration ended with the 1965 film Red Beard, and, especially after the debacle of "Dodesukaden" in 1970 (the one Kurosawa movie I actively dislike), Kurosawa had great difficulty in getting funding for his movies. The 1975 classic "Dersu Uzala" was both funded by and shot in the Soviet Union. In 1978 George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola got American funding for "Kagemusha" (The Shadow Warrior), which Kurosawa had storyboarded and all but despaired of being able to film.

"Kagemusha" is the most thoroughly planned Kurosawa movie, having been elaborately storyboarded. There are some moments when it seems overplanned with some very static scenes of clan councils meeting. However, it also has some very fluid battle sequences.

Before getting to the matter of the story, I have to say that for costume design, particularly the helmets, it may be the greatest film ever. The only contenders of which I can think are Kurosawa's next movie, "Ran," and Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky." As a meditation on power and royal appearances, "Kagemusha" is also linked to "Ran" and to Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible. These are all very stylized, operatic movies (and occupy the number-one and number-two position on my list of the greatest films ever.

The Story

In the late 16th century, there were three major war lords on the main Japanese island of Honshu: Oda Nobunaga, Takeda Shingen, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. At the start of the film, the Takeda clan has learned that the other two have formed an alliance. Shingen (Tatsuya Nakadai) and his brother Nobukado (Tsutomu Tmazaki) who looks enough like Shingen to have impersonated him on various occasions are conferring. Nobukado has found a thief condemned to death who looks even more like Shingen than Nobukado does. In that Tatsuya Nakadai also plays the thief, the resemblance is exact.

Shingen is displeased that so base a creature could look like him. The thief is not cowed and tells the lord that he is a petty thief, whereas the lord has been responsible for hundreds of deaths and is more a criminal.

On to the siege of a Tokugawa castle and Shingen rashly getting himself shot by a sniper. The enemies are very interested in learning whether Shingen is dead. The double is very reluctant to become a permanent stand-in for the charismatic military leader, but decides to do so. He must pass as Shingen not only before the scrutiny of enemy spies and the Takeda troops but with Shingen's staff of courtesans and a devoted grandson. How he does so is the main comic part of this tragic tale.

The double's performance is constantly on the edge of disaster. The double is carefully prepped by his handlers to preside in silence over a war council set to decide how to respond to an invasion by the armies of the other two clans and ratify the recommendation worked out in advance by the generals. What throws this plan off is the impetuosity of Shingen's son Katsuyori (Kenichi Hagiwara) who asks the actor he knows is not really Shingen for his opinion. The pseudo-Shingen replies: "Do not attack, do not move. The mountain does not move." (Shingen has been known as "the mountain.")

Katsuyori attacks anyway and the battle is on the verge of being lost. All depends on the morale of the troops, and that depends on their faith in their master. I doubt that the whole history of cinema has another instance in which so much rests on immobility! The double has to maintain his poise overlooking the field of battle as a number of his bodyguards around him are shot. He has become Shingen, the mountain who does not move. (And, although Nakadai moved plenty as a master swordsman in Kill and other 1960s samurai movies, another of his greatest triumphs involved lengthy stasis in "Harakiri"—before a big fight scene.)

With this success, the double finally oversteps. He has fooled the troops on both sides, the concubines, and the grandson, so he decides he can ride the horse that tolerated no one but Shingen. Not only is his thrown from the mount, but two of his concubines realize that he does not have scars where he should. The ruse is over. The double is paid off and leaves in a typical pouring Kurosawa rain (heavy, heavy rain, as in "Seven Samurai").

Now firmly in command of the clan's armies, Katsuyori proceeds with suicidal charges (think three waves of "The Charge of the Light Brigade"). The mountain has moved and the clan is eliminated in very colorful battle scenes.

The double sees the clan he has come so completely to identify himself with cut down. He takes up a banner and hurls himself at the enemy lines. Picturesquely, he lands in a river after being mortally wounded and dies trying to reach the banner which is floating away from his grasp.

What is so great about this film?

Like "Ran," "Kagemusha" is a devastating portrayal of destruction (and suicidal obstinacy, though it is Katsuyori's mule-headedness far more than the pseudo-Shingen's). It contains intense close-up portrayal of battle and more distant, stylized views of Takeda charges, though in my opinion the most dramatic sequence is the impostor warlord holding his place in the view of all as the confident general.

Originally conceived as a sardonic comedy like "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro," it became a color-drenched successor of "Throne of Blood" with the Takedas, including the criminal who is engulfed by the role he is asked to play, being destroyed. If the film is "about" reality and illusion, as it seems to be, it would seem that death is the reality, life the illusion. In Buddhism, the self is illusion. Many foreign observers have contended that there are not Japanese selves, only roles in which Japanese are engulfed. Without endorsing such views, Shingen is clearly a role to which the thief dedicates himself totally, even after he has been dismissed from it--to the point that he feels he has to die as the rest of the Takeda clan has, in a totally futile attack. (The Tokugawa clan eventually unified Japan, and the pax Tokugawa extended from the beginning of the 17th century until its overthrow in 1858.)

The western that is closest in spirit and execution to "Kagemusha" is Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch," though the latter is cheery and upbeat in comparison. Both films have respites from violence and both films have very uncompromising visions of duty and honor. (And some audiences find both films slow!) "Kagemusha" is visually richer and has some longer takes than the hyperactively edited "The Wild Bunch." Both end in wholesale carnage. And both should be seen and reseen! (I saw both in their original American theatrical release and thought them masterpieces; my valuation has only risen with additional viewings, and I now prefer "Kagemusha" to "Ran," great as it (and Nakadai's Lear in it) are.)

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For more on Kurosawa, I recommend Donald Richie's book that includes information from many conversations with the master and the documentary Kurosawa.

I have also reviewed two of Kurosawa's movies set in 20th-century Japan, both of which need the Criterion treatment, both for restoration and for hideously bad subtitles: No Regrets for Our Youth and The Bad Sleep Well. I could not muster much enthusiasm for Kurosawa's final film Madadayo, or, indeed, any of his final films after the culminating masterpiece of "Ran." The "modern-day" Kurosawa movies I think masterpieces are Stray Dog, Ikiru, and High and Low (with the early "Drunken Angel" close behind).

©2001, 2006 Stephen O. Murray