This might the first Zatoichi that I’ve disliked and it is definitely the weakest in the series so far. While the Zatoichi series has touched on the plight of the peasants under feudalism before, the way it handles it this time around feels so off, so cruel. The problem here is that peasants are not really presented as honest people who work the land who are finding themselves in precarious situations at the hands of the powerful, they are mostly portrayed as sheep who need a shepherd to guide them. It really does strip them of a lot of their agency throughout the film.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the tiktok user CrutchesAndSpice (aka Imani) talks about how the grassroots organizing that a lot of liberals wish they could do is actually being done by disabled people simply because time and time again, no one else is advocating for them. In a sense, this is the Zatoichi film that exemplifies this ideal but it is handled in such a harsh way that in the end extols this as a virtue rather than a failure of the systems themselves - and only Zatoichi has this virtue. No other disabled person has this virtue.
It just feels weird to see after what is already a low point at the beginning of the film which just feels like “Zatoichi Sings His Greatest Hits, vol1” for the first ten minutes, where Zatoichi basically redoes a lot of iconic “tricks” from his prior films, this time without much in the way of transformation or connection to a story or even any beautiful compositions to look at.
This might the first Zatoichi that I’ve disliked and it is definitely the weakest in the series so far. While the Zatoichi series has touched on the plight of the peasants under feudalism before, the way it handles it this time around feels so off, so cruel. The problem here is that peasants are not really presented as honest people who work the land who are finding themselves in precarious situations at the hands of the powerful, they are mostly portrayed as sheep who need a shepherd to guide them. It really does strip them of a lot of their agency throughout the film.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the tiktok user CrutchesAndSpice (aka Imani) talks about how the grassroots organizing that a lot of liberals wish they could do is actually being done by disabled people simply because time and time again, no one else is advocating for them. In a sense, this is the Zatoichi film that exemplifies this ideal but it is handled in such a harsh way that in the end extols this as a virtue rather than a failure of the systems themselves - and only Zatoichi has this virtue. No other disabled person has this virtue.
It just feels weird to see after what is already a low point at the beginning of the film which just feels like “Zatoichi Sings His Greatest Hits, vol1” for the first ten minutes, where Zatoichi basically redoes a lot of iconic “tricks” from his prior films, this time without much in the way of transformation or connection to a story or even any beautiful compositions to look at.
