The Art House Beat: “13 Assassins” Is No!3{2}”Seven Samurai” But It Will Do
Takashi Miike has become such a fast and sloppy film-maker that one is tempted to write him off as a hack, especially after the severe disappointment of 2007’s “Sukiyaki Western Django.” His newest, “13 Assassins,” might be embraced as a comeback, although the six pictures he has made in the interim have not been seen in the United States, so it is quite possible that one or more of them marked the recovery of Miike’s directorial prowess. His career has always been a difficult one to stay with, as the proliferation of television projects and straight to video quickies has diminished the quality of his overall oeuvre.
Miike had already been working as a director for five years before I discovered him in 1996 with “Fudoh: The New Generation.” Three years and nine films later, I caught the first installment of his “Dead or Alive” trilogy. In 2000, “Audition” brought him worldwide recognition, and eight of the nearly thirty films and videos that followed assured him a place as the one of the most manically inventive purveyors of what came to be known as “Asian Extreme.”
I haven’t found much to like in his work since 2004’s “Izo,” a confounding yet mesmerizing character study of a demonic executioner who massacres the unworthy through several decades, if not centuries. His cult status as an over-the top goremeister has long overshadowed the diversity of his work, much of which is rooted in Japanese theatre traditions such as Kabuki and Butoh.
With “13 Assassins,” Miike returns to straight cinema, proving himself, if not a worthy successor to Kurosawa, at least an entitled heir who does his best to maintain the tradition. Although he does a reputable job of telling the true story of the thirteen warriors who set out to assassinate Lord Naritsugo, the Shogun’s sadistic younger brother, whose imminent presence in the government threatened the country’s well-being, “13 Assassins” is no “Seven Samurai.”
Its biggest problem is that, with the exceptions of Lord Naritsugo and Shinzaemon, the samurai who leads the suicide mission, there is a lack of detail in character distinction. For example, Koyata Kiga, the thirteenth assassin, who resembles Toshiro Mifune’s seventh samurai, the one who is not a samurai at all but an optimistic buffoon, has neither the clarity nor the fullness of Mifune’s character, but is a passing imitation that reminds us of the superiority of Kurosawa’s picture. In story, the two pictures have little in common, although they bear much structural similarity. “!3 Assassins” is actually a remake of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 film of the same name, and Miike closely follows the original story and structure of the earlier film.
Miike’s most obvious accomplishment here is his success in communicating excessive cruelty and pain without showing anything too graphic. The opening scene sets the pace. A man commits seppuku to protest the Shogun’s younger brother’s raping and killing a young girl. The camera remains fixed on his face as the motion of the blade is suggested and the sounds of his disembowelment explicitly captured. It is an agonizing scene, made more torturous by its being played out in our imaginations rather than in front of our eyes.
The subsequent cruelties of this character appall and sicken us, especially when their suggestion reaches deeper into our psyche than would have their explicit representation. Here is a character every bit as horrific as Aaron from Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus,” which seems the inspiration for the picture’s first hour. The second hour is mostly one long siege, quite good for its limitations but something of a disappointment in light of the potential suggested in its first half. I was more interested in the Shogun’s brother than those embarked upon his assassination.
Still, the second half of the picture offers action as good as in any samurai picture of the last decade. There are some lapses into improbable imagery via computer generated graphics, particularly in the discs of fire atop the backs of advancing beasts, but most of the fighting is traditional and without gimmickry. Miike proves himself to be a director quite capable of delivering a classic story in a classic package that will engage the modern viewer as completely as the classic films engaged audiences of bygone years.
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