Kagamusha

Akira Kurosawa's late career masterpiece "Kagamusha" is a story I'm just starting to fully understand. Throughout his career, Kurosawa had been interested in the mortality of mankind, you could see it early on in "Ikiru", the story of a man dying of cancer but wanting to leave something lasting behind before he died. "Ikiru" by comparison was a small intimate piece, a modern Japanese story; "Kagamusha" is far more epic in scale, yet I found it deals very much with the same themes of trying to achiece immortality and wanting to leave something lasting behind.

"Kagamusha" stands for the "Shadow Warrior", in this case, it's the story of an impostor, but an impostor who keeps a dream alive for a great emperor. The story is set in the 1500s when Japan was in the middle of a civil war. Shingen Takeda (Tatsuya Nakadai) is the leader of the Takeda clan when he is mortally wounded by a sniper bullet. Takeda survives for awhile, but soon dies, his clan take it upon themselves to use a double in order to fool their enemies. This double is thief, saved from crucifixion in order to play Takeda. At first he hesitates, but his loyalty to the clan and his sorrow over the death of the emperor overtakes him and he decides to do it. Takeda's dying wish was to keep his death a secret for at least three years in the hopes that his clan would be the first to conquer Kyoto. Takeda's loyal brother Nobokadu (Tsutomu Yamazaki) takes the thief under his wing and teaches him how to be an emperor. There are both tense and funny moments as the thief must go through the ringer of fooling everyone who was close to the emperor. As all of this is happening, he finds himself falling more and more into the role as it becomes less a performance and more a way of life. The way Kurosawa handles this identity crisis is intriguing.

The heart of this film lies in the thief, he was a local peasant taken in and being told to be a leader to this clan. The thief believes in the mantra of the clan that it is an immovable mountain and he proves this during one of the film's pivotal battle scenes, and probably the most famous scene in the film. He is only told to sit and not fight, he acts more as a symbol than anything. Around him people die for him, the irony isn't lost, it's here where it seems the spirit of the dead emperor has possessed the thief, in his eyes, he believes he's immortal, yet Kurosawa knows this could only end in tragedy.

The final act of "Kagamusha" is a perfect demonstration of the frailty of the delusions of immortality as the thief witnesses a massacre. There isn't much action in these scenes, only the consequences of hot headedness and the futility of war. The dream of immortality is lost, the men who's hopes it would last are shown in pale faces looking like ghosts, it's a tour de force image.

"Kagamusha" was made in 1980, Akira Kurosawa had not made a film in over a decade, luckily loyal fans Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas came to his rescue and financed his film. It's strange thinking Kurosawa needed help financing a film, seeing that he's primarily responsible for bringing Japanese cinema to western audiences in the early 50s. It is said while waiting for production to start, Kurosawa kept himself busy by storyboarding the entire film in advance so he would've been well prepared when financing finally came through. The intricate artwork shines through, this is indeed one of Kurosawa's most stylized films. His use of color is quite extraordinary, in one scene he contrasts soldiers different bright colored uniforms with that of a running soldier who is covered in mud.

Many of the images seem to come as a dream, we see a night shot of a battle scene from afar, we don't see any action only behind a mountain a cloud of smoky red as if it were a volcano erupting. For me the most striking image comes from three clansmen on their horses ready to do battle, Kurosawa films these three men with no ground below them and only the sky, as if they are descending from the heavens, it's a myth that Kurosawa soon destroys with the devastation of the clan.

"Kagamusha" began Akira Kurosawa's twilight career, he had at least one more great film after this with "Ran" which was a take on "King Lear", he was a man showing his age, it was no wonder these films touched on immortality. As one soldier sings in the film "Once life is given, it is not meant to last forever", this was no doubt in Kurosawa's mind, he was a poet who concerned himself with life and death, and all the things in between, it's seeing his films you must wonder just what it's all about.