Given that I talked about being a warrior in a videogame in my previous post, I thought it
would only be appropriate and make my first official review about
real-life warriors; specifically, The Last Samurai, one of my
favorite movies. We'll address the obvious issues most people have
with the film before diving into the story:
-Yes, it is a rather
idealized representation of how the samurai actually behaved and how
tightly they adhered to their principles. However, not only is this
easily excused because it's fiction, intending to make specific
points rather than be a perfectly accurate representation of history,
but because the samurai are just a vehicle for the some deeper
examinations about life and war in general. More on that later.
-No, the title does not
refer to Tom Cruise's character, nor even Ken Watanabe's character;
at least, not the latter specifically. As explained by the director,
the title refers to the samurai as a social class.
The Last Samurai proper
begins with Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a veteran of both the Civil
War and the American Indian Wars, now working to promote the sale of
Winchester rifles to civilians. As is quickly apparent, Algren is a
broken, troubled man, so haunted by the atrocities he has committed
during his time with the Cavalry that he devotes all of his money to
keeping a drink in his hand as often as possible. Hired by the
Japanese government to train their newly-Westernized army, he comes
into conflict with the samurai lord Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) and ends
up a prisoner. Algren doesn't spend his time in chains, though;
brought to a remote mountain village as winter sets in, there is no
need to keep him confined, so Algren spends his time conversing with
Katsumoto, observing the Japanese people and culture, and learning
their ways of warfare and philosophy.
If this sounds like a familiar premise, that's because it is; there are, after all, very few entirely original stories left in the world. It's important to note, in this case, that the execution is what really makes this story; unlike in a few other movies with this premise, the plot doesn't focus on a heavy-handed “nature versus technology” or “noble savages” moral message, but rather on the characters, their relationship with each other, and what it means to be a warrior. The movie places a subtle, but deliberate, focus on how the characters are connected through circumstance and how their interactions evolve their understanding of each other.
We'll briefly step into
spoiler territory for a moment and talk about a woman named Taka.
Taka is the one who nurses Algren back to health after he is brought,
wounded and exhausted, to her village. She is also, as we later
learn, the wife of a samurai Algren killed in battle. Though she is
polite and attentive to his needs, it's occasionally shown that she
despises him and is ashamed to be housing her husband's killer; when
not stated outright, it's shown through the way she avoids looking at
him or letting him interact with her children. Yet, as the movie
progresses, Taka learns more about Algren, who he is as a person and
what kinds of demons he struggles with, while Algren learns about her family and the repercussions of his actions. Finally, in a quiet moment,
Algren cobbles together what little Japanese he has learned by that
point to apologize to her for her husband's death. It takes her a bit
to find the words, but she ultimately forgives him, stating, “He
did his duty. You did your duty.”
It is through these
character interactions that the meat of the movie's story is
occasionally revealed: an examination of the principles behind being
a warrior and how they relate to an understanding of life and death.
Though the samurai are the focus of the plot, these are principles
that could be applied to warriors of any culture, of any time period,
and even to anyone who engages in conflict of any kind, on some
level. Discipline, respect for yourself and your enemies, and
acceptance of death through an appreciation of life are all given a
few moments in the spotlight, and the movie draws a contrast between
the embracing of these principles and the abandonment of them through
the conflict between the samurai and the Westernized army that has
been drawn up to destroy them.
Now, you would be forgiven
for looking at the obvious and claiming that the message is “swords
and samurai are good, guns and Western soldiers are bad!”, but you
have to take a moment and think about what's behind these two
approaches to combat. On the one hand, you have the sword, an elegant weapon for a more civilized age, which requires a great deal of
training and discipline to wield properly and effectively. On the
other, you have the gun, which lacks elegance but makes up for it in
how easy and intuitive it is to wield: just point it at a target and
pull the trigger. Obviously, in a straight-on fight, the gun wins with ease, especially as the development of guns becomes more
sophisticated, producing weapons that kill more accurately, more
quickly and more easily over a longer distance. Who wouldn't prefer
that over the sword?
But the weaknesses of the
sword are also, in an odd way, its strengths; the discipline and
training you need in order to wield it also serves to teach you
respect for the weapon, for the power it gives you to take a life.
Its shorter reach, when compared to the gun, also forces you to look
your opponent in the eye as you kill them, and to put your own life
on the line if they are similarly (or better) armed. But in that
moment, where your skills clash and only one of you is walking away
alive, you also learn to set personal feelings aside and have respect
for your opponent; the understanding that each of you are only doing
what is necessary for survival, that success for one means tragedy
for the other. As Katsumoto states in the movie, that is Bushido, the
way of the warrior; to master the use of a sword is to know how to
handle power with maturity and restraint, to temper its deadly force
with the need for personal risk and to see, intimately, who you are
using that force on.
In the move to adopt the
gun, the militaries of the world were now able to circumvent these
requirements for proper combat and jump straight to the killing, and
in the process forgot many of these principles that kept their
willingness to use power in check. Their commanders no longer needed
to participate in combat themselves, and their soldiers could kill
from so far away that they barely even needed to see their targets,
making it so much easier to use that deadly force on any whim they
pleased. As seen in Algren at the beginning of the movie, and as we
see in so many veterans who return home from our modern wars, this
begins to weigh on the conscious of those who experience such
detached killing; it is difficult to see the value in life, your own
and others', when it is so easy to take away.
This is the conflict that
the movie addresses: the principles behind combat, not necessarily
the means through which it is carried out. Through Algren, it teaches
the audience these principles and the value behind maintaining them,
while also rejecting the notion that we all need to toss our guns in
the trash and go back to living in huts; the samurai's struggle in
the face of modernization is a futile (dare I say, feudal?) one, as
they are so literally out-gunned. Rather, the message of the movie is
that the advance of technology shouldn't make us forget the
principles of the past, stated blatantly when Katsumoto has a sword
forged for Algren, telling him that the inscription along the blade
reads, “I belong to the one who has joined the old ways with the
new.”
The Last Samurai is a
powerful film, with all of its different narrative elements pulling
their weight. Its characters are sympathetic and grow over the course
of the movie through their time spent together. The dialogue is
well-written and bolstered by deliberate word choice. The actors
deliver an expert performance, making liberal use of body language
and tone to communicate without the need for words, Cruise and Watanabe in particular. The action scenes
use clear visuals and excellent choreography to put the skills of
these warriors on display. And as already discussed, the depth of its
plot and the messages it delivers give you plenty of food for
thought. It's the kind of movie I not only recommend you watch, but
one that you watch more than once and really pay attention to the
details.
If you were severely
disappointed by that other samurai movie starring a bearded white guy, or want a “hero from civilized society learns valuable lessons from the natives” film with a little more depth, The Last Samurai
has you covered.
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