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| Images courtesy of Janus Films |
Akira Kurosawa is most assuredly one of the most important
filmmakers in the history of global cinema with a decades-spanning career as a
wholly original visual artist whose works continue to influence and inspire
filmgoers and directors all around the world over. A prolific auteur behind such seismic cinema
epics as Rashomon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai and The Hidden
Fortress among others, himself heavily influenced by western cinema but
still finding his own distinctive patina and linguistics, Kurosawa was hitting
his stride as a pop visual artist.
But following hard times fallen on by the director after his
last picture with leading man Toshiro Mifune compounded with dropping out of Tora!
Tora! Tora! and the commercial failure of his first color feature Dodes’ka-den,
the brilliant artist attempted suicide before being blacklisted in the Japanese
film industry altogether. Around 1975,
Russia reached out to Kurosawa with what became his first and only 70mm film
with Dersu Uzala and with it a noticeable shift in the director’s pacing
and style began to emerge. With the
speed of the director’s output slowed down considerably, Kurosawa began taking
more painstaking time on his pictures while still finding difficulty retaining
financing for future projects in Japan.
Around 1978 following Dersu Uzala’s Academy Award win for Best
Foreign Language Film, Kurosawa visited San Francisco where he met George Lucas
and Francis Ford Coppola.
With both American filmmakers still riding high from the
success of Star Wars and The Godfather, the two pitched a deal to
20th Century Fox to help advance-finance what ultimately became Kagemusha
as Toho Studios in Japan fell short in fulfilling Kurosawa’s budgetary
demands. Considered the very first time
distribution rights for a Japanese film were presold to a Hollywood studio, Kagemusha
was off and running and the first of what became a brief series of epic
color jidaigekis followed up with by Ran came into the focus of 1980s
world cinema. Translating to the word Shadow
Warrior or political decoy, it tells the story of a thieving lowlife in
1571 Japan who is trained to impersonate a withering daimyo to dissuade
opposing warlords from launching an attack.
As he settles into the role, he becomes increasingly haunted by the
still lingering spirit of the deceased warlord coupled with his own descent
into power, possession and madness.
16th Century Sengoku period, daimyo Takeda
Shingen (Tatsuya Nakadai from Ran) is introduced by his younger brother
Nobukado (Tsutomu Yamakazi) to a petty thief (also Nakadai) he spared from
execution due to the physical resemblances to the daimyo and it is agreed upon
he should be kept around as a possible body double. During a siege of an opposing castle, Shingen
is mortally wounded and dies but not before commanding his army to keep it a
secret for three years as the new Kagemusha trades places with Shingen. While opposing warlords try to figure out why
Shingen withdrew, the Kagemusha begins experiencing hallucinations of
the undead spirit of Takeda Shingen with imagery predating much of the
painterly fantastical surrealist imagery adorning Kurosawa’s Dreams and
particularly his final film Madadayo.
Eventually the film culminates in a real historical Battle of Nagashino
of 1575, weaving fact with fiction in a painterly whirlwind of an imposter
slowly losing his sense of self as the world comes apart around him.
Exquisite, mannered, grandiose, epochal, vast and intimate,
Akira Kurosawa’s first feature co-financed with American money co-written by
Kurosawa and Red Beard screenwriter Masato Ide, Kagemusha is a
sprawling near-Shakespearean tale of madness, murder and identity crisis. Adorned with ornate production design and art
direction by Yoshiro Muraki of Throne of Blood, richly detailed costumes
by Seiichiro Hagakusawa, the film is dripping with gloriousness lensed
gorgeously by Takao Saito and Shoji Ueda who both went on to co-shoot Ran and
Dreams.
Take for instance a striking nightmare sequence where the Kagemusha
is in a multicolored field being pursued by the spirit of Shingen. It remains a visually overwhelming vista that
must’ve taken much time and painstaking care overseen by Kurosawa and as such
it feels like a blown-up version of one of the director’s paintings. Then you have legendary composer Shinichiro
Ikebe’s ethereal, haunted score which radiates through the footage of thousands
of extras in vast wide shots like rippling water. Still active in film today, mostly working in
anime, Ikebe’s music gives Kurosawa’s imagery that much more subtle sparkle or
ferocious gust of wind.
Originally intending for Zatoichi actor Shintaro
Katsu to play the role of Shingen and his Kagemusha before the actor and
director had a falling out, Toshiro Mifune was briefly considered but given his
own distancing from the director they ultimately decided on Tatsuya Nakadai who
was previously a character actor in prior Kurosawa works. Paving the way for what would or wouldn’t
become Ran, Nakadai from his physical body movement to the way his gaze
projects from his eyes all but completely inhabits every nuanced aspect of this
seemingly difficult role. Featuring a
sizable ensemble cast including a cameo from Seven Samurai star Takashi
Shimura in his final film and over 5,000 extras for the climactic battle
sequence, it is a film with many characters but ultimately revolves around the
head of this one Kagemusha caught in the middle of a maelstrom.
Winning and sharing the 1980 Palme d’Or with Bob Fosse’s All
That Jazz as well as garnering two Academy Award nominations for Best
Foreign Language Film and Best Art Direction, Kagemusha all but
completely put Kurosawa back at the top of the Japanese film industry. Becoming a major box office hit in Japan,
shooting to number one within ten days of release, the film also did well in
America amid a sizable domestical theatrical release and in total with adjusted
inflation it raked in somewhere around $125 million. In the years since, the film is still ranked
in Japanese film lists and American junkets like The Hollywood Reporter as one
of the most important releases of the 1980s and further cements Kurosawa’s
fixation on the gulf between the real, imaginary and possible afterlife as an
arena of sensory wonderment to cherish and absorb like the weather.
--Andrew Kotwicki
