This is the saga of a family of farmers, some of whom become distinguished soldiers and even generals. It begins the evening when one of their numbers comes home, having captured an enemy general, earning great praise. That night, his nephew is born, as is the son of the local daimyo. We don't follow the nobleman, but the farmer, as he grows up, is persuaded not to run off to war by getting him a wife, has sons and daughter, and.... well, 'persists' is the best word I can think of, while other men in his family go to war and die, while the women move to town, and go mad, while the river Fuefuki flows outside the house that everyone refers to as an 'insect trap.'
Keisuke Kinoshita's movie is an epic, but it breaks the rules, by being an anti-war epic. It's shot in wide screen, with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, but it's not shot in color, color is shot through it, in tints and tones and what looks like Handschlegel effects, and gels that color part of the screen like airbrushed clouds. This is the war of the samurai class, so these splashes of color suggest old scrolls. However, that's during battles, and the aftermath. When it's just the peasants, and no one is dying, it's all black and white. Back when this was made, black & white was the film of reality. Color was for fantasy, or perhaps madness. Over all, it's saying "We could do this sort of movie straight and make the Big Bucks. That's not we want to do."
There's quite a cast, and Kinoshita and his regular cameraman, Hiroshi Kusuda, know how to fill that wide, wide screen. The samurai sequences are shot as well as anything that Kurosawa did, but his sequences lack Kurosawa's bravado.... and his humor. Kurosawa's samurai might be stupid, but they are always noble. There are no crippled mothers in Kurosawa, so far as I can recall, hobbling along as fast as a mounted army, begging her sons to come home. There are no samurai killing themselves so they won't suffer the agonies of burning to death, while priests sit calmly. There are no silk merchants burned to death because they dare to be rich in Kurosawa's films.... although perhaps he and his collaborators might write it so they deserve to die for other things. Because they are not samurai, they are merchants, and so they are evil.
Well, Kurosawa's family was a samurai family. I have no idea about Kinoshita's family. In 2019, this looks like going well overboard to make a point. Given the popularity of samurai movies when it was made, I'm not sure.
