The Twilight Samurai

Family man: The Twilight Samurai gracefully captures the death of a way of life

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Winner of 12 Japanese Academy Awards, Yoji Yamada's The Twilight Samurai is a beautiful, deeply personal story framed by the death rattle of an ancient way of life. Set in the mid-1800s--the same period as the recent Tom Cruise vehicle, The Last Samurai--the movie addresses the painful transition from feudalism to capitalism through the eyes of an aging warrior compelled to behave according to codes that no longer hold any meaning for him.

Seibei (the great Hiroyuki Sanada) is a low-level "petty samurai" toiling in the accounting offices of his clan. A widower with two little daughters--the youngest of whom, Ito (Erina Hashiguchi) narrates the film as her much older self--Seibei is crippled by debt from his late wife's funeral and the care of his aging, senile mother. His scornful co-workers laugh at his shabby appearance and nickname him "Twilight" because he hurries home at night instead of drinking with them. When the lord of the clan furiously chastises Seibei for forgetting to bathe, the humiliating incident reaches the ears of his fierce old uncle and Seibei is instructed to find a wife--"even an ugly one."

But Seibei is secretly in love with Tomoe (Rie Miyazawa), a far-from-ugly childhood friend recently divorced from her drunken, abusive husband (Ren Osugi). Challenged to a duel by this lout, Seibei is a reluctant champion; he hates to fight, and long ago sold his sword to buy food. Yet even though armed with only a bamboo stick, his skill is such that his opponent is easily subdued and the clan lord--surprised to discover Seibei's hidden talents--orders him to kill a half-crazed rebel warrior who's refusing to commit hara-kiri.

The Twilight Samurai is as different from most samurai movies as Unforgiven is from most westerns. Mature and wise, Seibei is a warrior defined by humility and gentleness, his concern for others always outweighing his own desires. Though Tomoe clearly wants to marry him, Seibei feels unworthy; he knows her family is wealthy and thinks the marriage would disgrace her. Instead, he farms for extra money and encourages his daughters to read Confucius. "Reading makes you think," he tells them, helping them copy letters at a time when women were forbidden to read and write.

A humane and thoughtful director (best known in Japan for the astonishing 27-year run of the Tora-san series), Yamada draws amazing performances from every one of his small cast. The feudal village, rendered in soft, earthy colors and dusty light, feels like a real place; the carefully choreographed fight scenes (there are only two) are filled with moments of quiet and grace. By taking samurai-movie conventions and placing them in the harsh light of daily survival, where necessities like food and medicine eclipse battles and bravery, Yamada is showing us the twilight of an entire way of life.

But the director isn't sentimental about his country's past, and doesn't hide the bloated bodies of peasants floating downriver after losing the fight with famine. And at the end of the film, in the astounding confrontation between Seibei and the rebel, the brutalities of the samurai era are slowly deconstructed in a battle unlike any this genre has yet produced. Filmed in a dark, rotted house littered with empty bottles and pierced by silvery beams of light, the action plays out like an extended conversation as the two men, both exhausted by life, exchange words and blows. The thick sound of blood, dripping relentlessly onto the wooden floor, reminds us that--live or die--their days are numbered.