Mostly Samurai Cinema

Doppelganger ***1/2 - Kiyoshi Kurosawa takes on Dostoevsky, Poe, everyone else who has made a doppelganger film. Koji Yakusho plays a scientist working on an artificial body - things are not going well, and when one of his coworkers tells him about a woman whose brother saw his double and killed himself, it's not long before Yakusho's own double shows up. The double, as is usually the case, is pure id - raising money and chasing women - while Yakusho sticks to moping and science. Then he finishes the machine, and the film gets strange... as usual with Kurosawa, it is very stylishly done - especially when the double shows up, and he splits up the screen, sometimes synchronizing the image, sometimes doubling it, sometimes dividing it. Throughout, though, the themes and images of doubles persist and multiply - as the literal doppelganger is joined by doubled characters - Yakusho and the girl (whose brother saw his double) - Yakusho's former manager and the kid he hires as an assistant - the kid and the double (the manager and the double) - etc. And mirrors, and windows, and movie quotes (Raiders of the Lost Ark!), and resurrections and of course the artificial body itself.... The first 2/3 or so has a nice spookiness to it, mixed with irreverence and wit - then gets very silly at the end. Very nice film all around.

Where The Truth Lies * - a strange experience, watching this film, knowing it is Atom Egoyan, knowing he has made great films - and this one is so dull. Empty, dull. It's getting some attention for the sex - the NC-17 rating, etc. - what on earth for? female nudity, some humping, a little bit of girl on girl - the only thing less explicable than why this got an NC-17 is why Egoyan thought he had to have all that sex in there in the first place. For a film that pretty much turns on sex (it's integral to the plot), the onscreen sex is a complete waste. This would have worked every bit as well (actually, badly) if it were rated PG-13. One wonders if there might have been other motives in not cutting it down - the knowledge that it was a stinker and needed all the help it could get? Maybe I'm too harsh. It's perfectly watchable, it moves along nice enough, but really... about the only thing it had going for it was the sex, and it was dull, conventional looking - just Hollywood sex.

The Squid and the Whale ***1/2 - brilliant film written and directed by Noah Baumbach, based on his parents' divorce. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney play the parents - both writers, he's on the way down, she's on the way up (a fact that hangs around in the background, but doesn't quite take over the film) - he's a shaggy professorial type who uses his knowledge and taste - for everything. It charms people, it's a defense against emotion, and a way of expressing emotion, it's a way to blot out the vulgar things like where the money comes from. She's quieter, less of a bully, but - maybe - not much better... They have two sons, Walt and Frank - Walt sides with his father, blaming his mother for everything at first - Frank with his mother, defying his father, claiming that he wants to be a philistine... But these categories don't hold. The film, in the end, does not take sides - though Daniels might steal the show a bit, because he is louder, more of a showoff - he may cover it in wit and Godard quotes, but he wears his heart on his sleeve... It's great, though, a moving, funny, sympathetic film...

Kill! *** - yes, it's Samurai week at the Brattle - this one is directed by Kihachi Okamoto, and it's a wild ride indeed. Let me attempt, somewhat feebly, to describe the plot. You have: 7 idealistic young rebels; a farmer who wants to be a samurai; a yakuza who used to be a samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai, channeling some of Mifune's Sanjuro); a yakuza who survived the massacre of his gang; a villain; a traitor; a commoner swordsman who wants money to redeem his wife from a brothel; the wife of course; a prostitute with dirty feet; a sleepy old man; swarms of extras, fit to be cut down by Nakadai and the commoner. This lot is turned loose on a dusty town straight out of Leone (complete with twangy guitar on the soundtrack), an old fort in the mountains, a samurai house, and a brothel, where they plot and scheme and fight and pretend to fight and argue and switch sides and pretend to switch sides... describing the actual plot would take longer than the movie, though in practice, it's not all that hard to follow - a good sign - anyone who can get keep this many people and stories moving, and straight, is doing something right. It's fast and funny, but manages to give some personality to a surprising number of the characters, and remain, as I say, startlingly coherent. It's quite a treat.

Sword of Doom *** - also directed by Okamoto, 2 years before Kill. This also stars Tatsuya Nakadai, this time as a master swordsman who is also a psychopath. He starts the film cutting down an old pilgrim on the Daibotsu pass, leaving a pretty girl orphaned (her story provides a subplot to his); the next day he kills an opponent in a kendo match, then wipes out a mob of men out for vengeance, and is obliged to leave the province, with the dead man's widow in tow. Things don't go well for them - and 2 years later they are poor and miserable, and he is a hired sword for a gang of pro-shogun thugs (this is 1863), skulking about in his black kimono and a big straw hat. Meanwhile, the dead man's brother is training with Nakadai's good twin, played by Mifune - and the orphan girl is misused by cads and sold to a brothel in Kyoto, despite the aid of her uncle the thief. Through it all there is much mayhem - not all of it perpetrated by Nakadai's character - and some nice swordplay... It all comes down to a confrontation in Kyoto - with the brother ready for his vengeance, the thugs divided against each other and ready to use and discard our anti-hero, and then - he meets the girl and his sins finally exact their toll. Then - there is a fight.... Contains 3 total blowout type swordfights - the one vs. all thing: Nakadai vs. the avengers after the kendo match; then Mifune obliterating a gang of assassins in a snowfall, while Nakadai stands in the back and stares in wonder; and then Nakadai vs. the thugs in a burning brothel. This tops it all, with Nakadai staggering through the place, wiping out all comers, even as they get a few cuts in, weakening him, but never enough to make him miss... all to the end, to a stunning and perfect ending...

Yojimbo **** and Sanjuro **** - nothing more needs to be said here does it?