It really is unfair for this movie to be saddled with the idea that it's nothing more than "dress rehearsal" for Ran - those are the words of the director himself, and I'm not gonna say he's wrong, but while Kagemusha may not quite achieve the nihilistic, apocalyptic grandeur of that film, I think it deserves a hell of a lot better than to be talked about as a slave to it, or with the asterisk of "well, yeah, but Ran did a lot of the same stuff but better". You know, I'm now realizing I could've just as easily not started my review this way. Nobody's forcing me to talk about Ran. This is a prison of my own making.
What I'm saying is - what a fucking dress rehearsal! Any film this beautifully composed, eye-meltingly colorful, and epic in scale would be the crown jewel of another director's filmography, even a good one, and the fact that it's only a footnote in Kurosawa's just goes to emphasize how the man spent an entire career stacking bangers. The painterly use of color here occasionally goes so far as to enter the realm of the uncanny and the surreal, something I don't recall Ran doing, at least not this overtly and consistently. That may have been due to monetary reasons, as I don't think you're using red and blue lights against smoke in place of fire if you've got a healthy pyro budget, but it really adds another dimension, particularly in that dream sequence. And the dramatic material is strong, especially as anchored by the always-excellent Tatsuya Nakadai - a handsome dude, but my god is he scary looking in both of his '80s Kurosawa films. Ultimately has kind of a dark joke at its center - if you can effectively take a leader's place for years by literally sitting on your ass and not moving (like a mountain!), what the hell do we actually need them for?
It really is unfair for this movie to be saddled with the idea that it's nothing more than "dress rehearsal" for Ran - those are the words of the director himself, and I'm not gonna say he's wrong, but while Kagemusha may not quite achieve the nihilistic, apocalyptic grandeur of that film, I think it deserves a hell of a lot better than to be talked about as a slave to it, or with the asterisk of "well, yeah, but Ran did a lot of the same stuff but better". You know, I'm now realizing I could've just as easily not started my review this way. Nobody's forcing me to talk about Ran. This is a prison of my own making.
What I'm saying is - what a fucking dress rehearsal! Any film this beautifully composed, eye-meltingly colorful, and epic in scale would be the crown jewel of another director's filmography, even a good one, and the fact that it's only a footnote in Kurosawa's just goes to emphasize how the man spent an entire career stacking bangers. The painterly use of color here occasionally goes so far as to enter the realm of the uncanny and the surreal, something I don't recall Ran doing, at least not this overtly and consistently. That may have been due to monetary reasons, as I don't think you're using red and blue lights against smoke in place of fire if you've got a healthy pyro budget, but it really adds another dimension, particularly in that dream sequence. And the dramatic material is strong, especially as anchored by the always-excellent Tatsuya Nakadai - a handsome dude, but my god is he scary looking in both of his '80s Kurosawa films. Ultimately has kind of a dark joke at its center - if you can effectively take a leader's place for years by literally sitting on your ass and not moving (like a mountain!), what the hell do we actually need them for?
