Harakiri (Japan: Seppuku), 1962.
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi.
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Ishihama, Shima Iwashita, Rentaro Mikuni, Kei Sato and Tetsuro Tanba.
SYNOPSIS:
An elder ronin samurai arrives at a feudal lord’s home and requests an honorable place to commit suicide. But when the ronin inquires about a younger samurai who arrived before him things take an unexpected turn.
Of all the many features he churns out in a year, Takashi Miike didn’t need to direct a remake of Masaki Kobayashis Harakiri. Simply put, Miike didn’t need to update Harakiri for modern audiences – there’s nothing tame about Kobayashi’s original, not in its anti-authoritarian stance, its downbeat attitude to the rich/poor divide or in its cutting violence. Films so overtly about the evaporation of honour in the modern world or the system crushing the little man weren’t so common at the time Harakiri was made, lending an early air of counterculture to this masterful samurai tale.
A sequence at the beginning of Harakiri – and what a sequence it is, only problematic in that the rest of the film can’t possibly compete – is more akin to a short horror story, an early example of torture porn. We’re shown, in flashback, an event that will slowly reveal itself as having tremendous effect upon the narrative.
Chijiiwa Motome, apparently one of the many roaming ronin now opportunistically seeking employment from pitying clan lords, purports to seek permission for Harakiri (ritual suicide) from Kageyu (Rentaro Mikuni), clan counsellor, to end his life in the house of the Ii clan. Suspecting Motome is looking for charity, and seeking to make an example of him, Kageyu and his swordsmen force Motome to disembowel himself in the palace courtyard. Only Motome has since traded the metal in his sword for a blade of bamboo.
So sickening is the sense of dread in this moment, and so exacting is Kobayashi for detail, this lone 30 minutes is more excruciating than the vast majority of horror output today. After this flashback, Kobayashi gifts us information only slowly as to the intentions of his protagonist Tsugumo (Tatsuya Nakadai), a run-down old ronin also claiming to be seeking seppuku, but obviously concealing ulterior motives. Thankfully, flashes of dark comedy prevent the slow-burn from ever slowing the film too badly.
The cinematography, too, is gorgeous, Kobayashi using monochrome as an enhancement for his moody style. Steadily roving cameras, ghosts of the Ii house, haunt the shadowy corridors and that quietly violence-filled courtyard. It’s in that courtyard that much of the action takes place, but it doesn’t trap the film into feeling small-scale – Harakiri is meditative, more about its ideology where the viewer might expect action. And when the action does come at the close, the film is more unexpected still.
Tensions builds in Harakiri to what you know will be an action-filled bloodbath, a showdown of essential revenge – except it isn’t. Actions and dialogue in Harakiri are founded in realism, even if the performances aren’t (the yelling ghost of gravelly Toshiro Mifune haunts lead Nakadai). So the climax is a frighteningly realistic petering out, low on body count and high on desperation.
Harakiri is anti-violence from the start (and why wouldn’t the war veteran director of the Human Condition trilogy be?), but this ending makes Harakiri anti-film violence – swordplay is clinical, exhausting, real, not slick or exciting. Kobayashi risks it all by not making good on what the previous two hours promise, by not delivering that inevitable payoff. But his message is strong, and his mastery of mood is unquestionable; Harakiri is a Japanese jidaigeki to leave a deep impression.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brogan Morris – Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the young princes. Follow Brogan on Twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion.
Originally published November 15, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
