His wife's dead, his mother's senile, his tiny paycheck is eaten away by debt and he has to bring up his two kids by himself. In fact, he's so preoccupied with misery that his co-workers can't help but notice he's neglecting his own personal hygiene. Then his childhood sweetheart walks back into his life almost by accident, and everything changes.
This isn't the premise for a modern-day drama, but rather one of the best period films from Japan in some time. What makes Twilight Samurai so interesting is that it's period in its setting, but contemporary in its feeling. Change a few of the details and you could have a story about a harried salaryman trying to keep his head above water. It could even be taken as an allegory for some aspects of modern life, but the story works just as well on its own.
Twilight Samurai is aptly named, since it takes place in the last years of the samurai (the mid-1800s) and features a hero, Iguchi Seibei (Hiroyuki Sanada), who himself seems to be past his sell-by date. He's not that old, but life has conspired to crush him: his wife died after a long illness, his mother is slipping into senility, and he's forced to make birdcages as a sideline business just to be able to keep his two girls fed and clothed. His day job consists of maintaining the clan's storehouse of dry goods, and once his day's work is over he rushes home to take care of things there rather than join his work companions for a drink or three. They feel bad for him, but are otherwise unwilling to step in and do anything.
After work, Seibei heads home to do right by his family, much to the chagrin of his colleagues.
One day Seibei sticks his neck out a little further than he should. A friend of his reveals to Seibei that his sister Tomoe has been married to an abusive, drunken lout, and he arranged for a divorce to save her neck. The former husband doesn't let go easily, however, and challenges Seibei's friend to a duel. Seibei steps in on his behalf — and defeats the other man with nothing more than a wooden stick.
This duel is the first of only two fight scenes in the whole movie, both filmed with very little editing or camera movement. This was a wise choice. Rather than break the fight up into an MTV montage, the director (Yoji Yamada, of many Tora-san movies) elected to shoot the whole thing essentially uninterrupted. It's a welcome relief after so many years of CGI, wire stunts and machine-gun editing to see an actual swordfight, and it also cements just how good Seibei really is.
On a favor from a friend, Seibei semi-inadvertently comes to the rescue of Tomoe.
Seibei doesn't want to fight, however — he just wants to bring up his daughters in peace and earn a decent living. He only did this as a favor for a friend; he's no hero. Too bad for him, because his clan wants him to kill a disobedient retainer who has barricaded himself in his house and refuses to commit suicide like the rest of his rebel cronies. At the same time, Tomoe has become very attached to him and his family, and he to her — over his objections that he doesn't want her sharing his misery. Usually it works the other way around.
As you've probably guessed by now, Twilight Samurai is anything but typical. That's only part of what makes it so compelling. Aside from being excellently written, acted, and directed, it also has exactly the right tone and attitude towards its material. Yamada and his cohorts have resisted the temptation to punch things up, to make it bigger than life and to end the whole thing with some massive fifty-to-one chanbara battle. Because the story sticks so resolutely to its guns, because it is determined to stay on the small scale and doesn't cheat us by becoming overblown, it becomes thoroughly endearing.
Seibei's sword skills allow him to handily defeat a man with a blade ... using nothing more than a stick.
The most important scenes in almost every great movie are the little ones, and there is a scene here that underscores that wonderfully. Just before Seibei is off to kill his quarry (and probably get killed himself), he calls Tomoe to him for an errand. He needs to have his hair and kimono done, you see, because he should at least present an effort to look respectable before being slaughtered. She does, and the scene is so lovely and sad that we almost forget that he is probably going to die. It becomes all the more poignant when the man he is about to kill turns out to be every bit as pathetic as he is, but no less determined to survive at any cost.
Hiroyuki Sanada is an interesting case. I remember him from comic-book fluff like Satomi Hakkenden, prancing all over the screen, and now he's one of the most mature and respectable Japanese actors out there. He's been in all three Ring movies, Onmyoji, and tons of other good films; he can now add this one to an ongoing and immensely impressive resumé. Rie Miyazawa (Erotic Liaisons, Basara: The Princess Goh), Tetsuro Tanba (in everything from Riki-O to Happiness of the Katakuris) and and Ren Osugi (you name it, he's been in it, just about) also add their own talents to the story.
Tomoe grants one last favor before Seibei heads off to what he expects to be his doom.
I saw Twilight Samurai after a long slog through a great many films so unrewarding and disappointing I couldn't even bring myself to write a review to bash them. (One was Baise-moi, which deserved a bad review simply because I found it so morally bankrupt that I could not ignore it.) By staying modest and human in its aims, it manages to achieve far more than most films ever approach.
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