Masahiro Motoki as Lord Murashige Araki in 'The Samurai and the Prisoner.'Blue Fox Entertainment Canada/Supplied
The Samurai and the Prisoner
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, based on the novel by Honobu Yonezawa
Starring Masahiro Motoki, Masaki Suda and Yuriko Yoshitaka
Classification N/A; 147 minutes
Opens in select theatres, including the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, Aug. 7
Critic’s Pick
The great satisfaction of a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film lies in the director’s seeming indifference to, well, delivering satisfaction. At least the kind of conventional, everything-in-a-neat-bow tidiness probably expected by devotees of the many genres the prolific Japanese master plays in.
Whether working in horror (Cure, Pulse), melodrama (Tokyo Sonata), politically tinged thrillers (Wife of a Spy) or nervy social satire (Cloud), the filmmaker prefers to leave his audiences in a state of instability, left to interrogate just what it is they saw, and what its creator’s thematic intentions might be.
This isn’t to say that Kurosawa’s films are impractical, frustrating puzzles – more so that the director places a high (and increasingly rare) value on letting a film take its time to seep into the hearts and minds of an audience. There is more to think about in the final few minutes of Cure, for instance, than the dozens of horror films (made both inside and outside Japan) it inspired.
In a way, that wait-and-think approach will help you digest Kurosawa’s latest film, The Samurai and the Prisoner. But at the same time, there is something luxuriously comforting about watching the director use his many skills to tell a relatively straightforward murder mystery about power and corruption. Classical in construction and rich in execution, this might be the most immediately, abundantly satisfying film in the 71-year-old director’s magnificently long career.
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Adapted from Honobu Yonezawa’s 2021 historical novel of the same name, The Samurai and the Prisoner is set in the mountains of 1578 Japan, where a castle is under siege. Inside is Araki Murashige (Masahiro Motoki), who is leading a fractured rebellion against the warlord Oda Nobunaga (Bando Shingo). Both characters are based on neatly torqued versions of their real-life selves.
After Nobunaga dispatches a cunning member of his forces named Kuroda Kanbei (Masaki Suda, the star of Cloud) to urge Murashige to capitulate, the rebel leader throws the man in the castle’s dungeon. But once a series of betrayals rocks Murashige’s fragile kingdom, the ruler seeks Kanbei’s help in playing an increasingly dangerous game.
Part Agatha Christie and part Throne of Blood – the latter director by Akira Kurosawa, whose surname the unrelated Kiyoshi has been outrunning his entire career – The Samurai and the Prisoner is as clever as a warrior and sharp as the sword he might carry. Certainly, the narrative relies on extended conversations that some might deride as talky, but there is power in the words that Murashige and Kanbei volley back and forth – just as there is in the blunt cinematic force of Kurosawa’s dedication to reimagining feudal Japan. Each chamber of Murashige’s lair, and every article of clothing sported by his subjects, feels at once real and otherworldly.
It isn’t hard to understand why some audience members left The Samurai and the Prisoner feeling disappointed, or even defeated, after its Cannes Film Festival premiere this spring. There is a patience and commitment on display from Kurosawa that requires an equal investment and energy from his audience. But it also doesn’t take much to fully give in to this intricately constructed world of vengeance and mercy, order and dishonour. Sit down, and embrace the mystery.