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NATHAN
ALGREN’S BLUES : THE LAST SAMURAI
1876: Capt.
Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), an alcoholic American ex-soldier is hired
by the Japanese to train their army in modern fighting techniques. The
young Emperor Meiji (Shichinosuke Nakamura#), under the goading of his
nefarious advisor Omura (Masato Harada) wants to open up his country to
western influences – but warrior Samurai forces led by the formidable
Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) aren’t convinced, leading to civil war. When
Algren is captured by the Samurai after a disastrous skirmish, Katsumoto
spares his life – recognising both his usefulness as an informant and
also his innate warrior skills. Fascinated by the culture he discovers
in Katsumoto’s rural village, Algren slowly learns the ways* of the Samurai
– and ponders his own role in the looming battle between the ‘new’ and
‘old’ Japan…
In all respects
bar one, The Last Samurai is a standard-issue, overblown, big-budget
Hollywood star-vehicle – a vehicle which isn’t especially well suited
to the star around whom it’s supposed to fit. Cruise (brazenly in Oscar-bait
mode) isn’t very convincing as Algren, either sober or drunk – especially
alongside, say, Russell Crowe’s blood-and-thunder turn in another of this
year’s 19th-century epics, Master
and Commander. Part of the problem is simple over-exposure – we’ve
now seen Cruise play this kind of heroic role too many times, and his
own massive celebrity gets in the way of our empathising with his characters
(he doesn’t have this problem when playing against type in Magnolia
or, perhaps, the upcoming Collateral.)
Cruise’s ex-wife
Nicole Kidman suffers similar difficulties in her current 19th-century
epic, Cold Mountain
– in both cases, there isn’t enough in either the performance or in the
film itself to allow us to forget we’re watching extremely famous and
glamorous people pretending to be period figures living through
tough times. (In any case, the whole Way-of-the-Samurai gubbins tends
to work much better in unorthodox, apparently incongruous modern settings
– see Alain Delon in Melville’s 1967 Le Samourai, or Forrest Whitaker
in Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog.)
The issue of
star status isn’t the only parallel between Cold Mountain and The
Last Samurai – both are geographically phoney: in Cold Mountain,
Romania stood in for the 1860s American south; here, New Zealand doubles
for Meiji-era Japan. Both are opulently well-appointed, sumptuous-looking
films featuring an array of esteemed, award-laden talent on both sides
of the camera: Zwick employs Hans Zimmer for his score, John Toll for
his cinematography, and the three scriptwriters include Gladiator’s
John Logan (along with Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz). Both films tell
stories of men sickened by their experiences of front-line battle – conveyed
somewhat clumsily here by juddering monochrome flashbacks as Algren relives
his role in a grisly massacre which would nowadays be called a war-crime
“atrocity.”
But what would
Algren himself be called, if his story took place in a present-day context?
It depends who’s doing the calling, of course… If, say, Fox News had anything
to do with it, Algren would probably find himself demonised in the same
way as, say, the ‘traitorous’ John Walker Lindh during the 2002 American
invasion of Afghanistan. Because Cruise’s character goes a significant
step further than even Jude Law’s in Cold Mountain – a film which
justifies and, to some degree, lionises, an act of desertion.
The Last
Samurai is about a man who actively and honorably changes sides,
taking up arms against his ‘own’ country. Algren ultimately allies himself
with Katsumoto’s Samurai against forces which include representatives
of Algren’s own former army (Tony Goldwyn’s Col. Bagley) and of the United
States government: Scott Wilson as Ambassador Swanbeck, whose main motivation
in his dealings with the Emperor is explicitly financial. In the current
crazed American political climate, Algren’s shift is as radical as it
is unexpected, and, while it’s the only area where Last Samurai departs
from the requirements of the “standard-issue, overblown, big-budget Hollywood
star-vehicle” – it’s sufficient to compensate for the film’s shortcomings.
And make no
mistake, these are plenty of those: the skimpy characterisation
of the only named female character, Katsumoto’s sister-in-law Taka (Koyuki)
- whose feelings for Algren are required to shift from revulsion (understandable,
considering he killed her husband) to romance (implausible); dialogue
that’s loaded either with exposition (Timothy Spall as English gent Simon
Graham) or duff Kung Fu style cod-philosophy (“I believe a man
does what he can until his destiny is revaled,” etc etc); the overlong,
straining-for-epic running time; an over-reliance on on-screen titles
(mostly superfluous) and off-screen narration (mostly from Graham, but
with bits of Algren’s diaries) the cardboard villainy of Omaru and Bagley;
the haziness of the central modern-vs-ancient conflict; the bizarre (but
clearly deliberate) decision to have the Emperor look, act and speak like
a 19th-century Michael Jackson; Cruise’s sub-Clint Eastwood
tough-guy ‘rasp’; Billy Connolly’s absurd “Irish” accent as one of Algren’s
old pals; and, worst of all, the absurd conclusion to the final battle,
in which a major character miraculously survives virtually unscratched
while all around him/her fall.
This nonsense
apart, the combat sequences themselves are stirringly handled, and effectively
integrated into the rest of the plot. Spall gets to shout a lot in Japanese
(unlike Lost in Translation,
this film makes commendably copious use of subtitles). And the stern Watanabe
cuts a suitably imposing figure as the poet-warrior Katsumoto – his character
all the more effective for being based on a real-life person (Saigo Takamori)
in a film which otherwise made up largely of convenient fictions.
Algren, of
course, is the most convenient and fictional of all: according to Mark
Ravina, Takamori did have a western friend, the surgeon William
Willis. But Willis had no military expertise, didn’t train
troops, didn’t become a Samurai, and most certainly didn’t
personally intervene in a pivotal moment of Japanese history, as Algren
does here in the unconvincing coda. Willis’s intriguing story (which sounds
more like the Maturin aspect of Master and Commander than anything
here) presumably wasn’t heroic enough for Cruise’s requirements. On this
occasion, however, it seems reasonable to let him off – it isn’t every
day, after all, that Hollywood’s biggest megastar ends up playing what
is, in effect, an American Taliban.
5th
January, 2003
# – in accordance
with the film’s end titles, all Japanese names in this essay are presented
‘western-style’, with the family-name given second.
* The samurai
code of honour, bushido - the way of the warrior… based on Zen and Confucian
wisdom, its seven principles - courage, honesty, courtesy, honour, compassion,
loyalty and complete sincerity - are almost the opposite of everything
Hollywood stands for. Perhaps that's why it appeals to elite players such
as Cruise, who seems to be on a personal quest to transcend his movie
star status. "Bushido is really the reason I wanted to make this
film," Cruise says of The Last Samurai. "I strongly identify
with those values of honour, loyalty and passion. It's a very powerful
code; those are wonderful things to aspire to in life."
(from
article
by Steve Rose)
For the sushi-sized
samurai review click here
by Neil
Young
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