carlos-e-mora

This is a very intelligent movie, telling the story of two men who ride the tiger's tail out of loyalty and grace. The courage of one of them is explicitly portrayed in the film. It is the samurai Benkei who cleverly defends his lord at a very high personal risk. Benkei improvises an eloquent speech reading out of a blank scroll the prospectus for the temple when required to do so by the commander of the military outpost seeking to capture his master. Benkei uses logic to convince his comrades that it is not a good idea to fight the soldiers of the barrier. The samurai may kill all the soldiers this time but that will result in more soldiers and more persecution later on. Benkei uses a clever trick, to flog his master who is posing as a porter when the second-in-command suspects that the porter is the master they are trying to capture. Since a servant would never beat his master, the porter cannot be the master, reasons the top commander.

But more impressive than Benkei is the street-wise guy, the real porter played by Kenichi Enomoto, who joins the party of samurai in the forest. He treads on two tigers' tails. The first tiger is represented by the party of samurai. He is rejected by them, he is called a nobody, he is treated harshly, he is even threatened with death. He disappears at times but he returns to help the samurai who walk in the forest pretending to be itinerant priests. He collects information valuable to them and shares that information. And the second tiger is the military outpost who will surely kill him if they discover that the master is among the party of fake itinerant priests.

While Benkei does his heroic deeds in a ceremonial manner framed by rituals and high tension, the loquacious porter does his heroic deeds in a discreet, even awkward manner, without fanfare or rituals. His heroism is so discreet that even seasoned Kurosawa critics missed the point of the movie: natural, humble heroism offered not out of loyalty, but out of grace.

(The master of the party of samurai is such an obscure figure that out of respect to Kurosawa I have not even mentioned his name in my review)

This is a great movie. As noted by other reviewers, the cinematography is fantastic. I saw it on DVD on a large screen and it was majestic. My comment is not so much on the movie effects and the acting, all of which has Kurosawa's signature of an art film, but on the complicated message that it weaves. So complicated that it is hard to see if you watch the film once. Ursu is a clever man because he knows the forest, but in the city he is not clever at all. On the contrary, he stumbles on inane things such as paying for water to the water delivery man, or trying to fire his rifle in the middle of the city or trying to camp on a curbside. It is as if the man is very good in certain contexts and not good at all in other contexts. Now, if you think about it, the same can be said of any one you know, unless he happens to be Albert Schweitzer. The Being is the sum of a man and his milieu. Captain Arseniev is not very good in the forest. He makes many mistakes and Ursu must lend his helping hand on many occasions to save poor captain from his own follies. In the city he seems to be doing OK, with a nice house, a beautiful wife and a real cute boy. So what would the good captain think is good for Ursu? Obviously, what is also good for him: city life. And he takes the man who saved his life to the city, to his house, but that breaks the sum of man and milieu, and the Being becomes miserable. Then the captain finally gets it and lets Ursu go back to his world of hunting in the forest he loves so much. But the captain botches it up again.

To express his love for Ursu, he gives him a great rifle and that will bring death on Ursu because other greedy people would kill Ursu to get his rifle. Captain Arseniev knows that Ursu's eyesight is going downhill so a great rifle would not do as much good as a pair of glasses. Captain Arseniev also knows that the forest is inhabited by evil people and has seen the damage and pillaging that nasty guys to do animals and people in the forest. But he sends a half-blind mind with a valuable possession to a place infested with thieves. The end was easy to predict: Ursu will be killed by thieves who want his rifle, which is exactly what the bureaucrat at the crime scene tells Arseniev. The moral of the story is that you should not try to make other people happy with things that make you happy, unless you both share the milieu where the happiness occur. Arseniev should have learned to appreciate the Being, the sum of man and milieu, rather than the man alone. Kurosawa is inviting us to be more thoughtful when we try to do good.