The Samurai and the Prisoner

Vancouver Premiere “A twist on how the safety of enclosed worlds can recreate the conditions of imprisonment … Kurosawa’s cerebral, discursive, and ultimately abstract wartime film ironically [centres] on the theme of mercy in a society at war with itself.” Daniel Kasman, MUBI Notebook Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s latest, a samurai picture set during Japan’s war-ravaged 16th century, is unlike any other in the auteur’s already genre-omnivorous catalogue. It’s also something of an outlier in the chanbara class to which it ostensibly belongs—here, the tongue, not the katana, is the sharpest weapon of warfare. Adapted from the novel by Yonezawa Honobu, the film concerns Murashige (Motoki Masahiro), feudal lord of Arioka Castle and its clan, after he betrays the warlord Oda, renounces the bushido code, and is faced with four mystifying crimes, one for each season segmenting the story. Cunning strategist Kanbei (Suda Masaki, Cloud), imprisoned in the fortress’s dungeon, yields answers. Political—perhaps metaphysical—forces, meanwhile, test Murashige’s resolve. A stately, staccato-structured whodunit informed, in part, by Kobayashi’s Harakiri (also screening this cycle), Kurosawa’s period procedural might be short on bloodshed, but the violence of its revelations leaves deeper, more indelible wounds. In Japanese with English subtitles “[A] masterful drama … Kurosawa has made one of his best films, a work that feels a bit like Agatha Christie, a bit like Shakespeare, and even a bit like Samurai Columbo.” Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com “A refined murder mystery dressed up in sumptuous feudal garb, offering [Kurosawa’s] own take on one of the oldest Japanese genres.” Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter