Kill! (Kiru, 1968)

Okamoto Kihachi

Japan

114 mins, B&W, Japanese (English subtitles)

Review © 2005 Branislav L. Slantchev

What a marvelous film! I have been Mr Okamoto's fan ever since I got my introduction to this work with Sword of Doom, and have come to expect consistently high quality stuff. Of course, such expectations are invariably disappointed sooner or later, but I am happy to report that this film, if anything, has raised the bar even higher. Leave it to this iconoclastic director to subvert the jidai-geki genre by suffusing it with elements of straight-laced chambara set in a distinctly spaghetti Western landscape where generous dollops of parody and genuine thoughtful existentialism mix with the dying remnants of a genre that has taken the Bushido world that never was all too seriously.

Not your spaghetti Western dust	What does Bushido say about chickens?

This film is essentially the same basic story as Kurosawa's Sanjuro, and it is so incredibly different from the master's version that it makes one wonder just how Mr Okamoto managed to be so original. I think the answer probably lies in the focus: Kurosawa's ronin carries distinct and easily recognizable traits of the serious historical genre whereas the main characters here are very new types of heroes. It is not that Sanjuro is a cliche---far from it, he was actually a challenge to the idea of a noble samurai who lives strictly by the code and whose life often came to an unhappy ending because of the transgressions of his corrupt superiors whose evil, but tricky, ways eventually force the samurai to abide by his code of honor, resulting in his demise.

The slaughter of the not so innocents	Genta knows this is the beginning of the end

Sanjuro was a man without much illusions left, a man who would scornfully laugh at the pretense of the code, but whose noble behavior would nevertheless save the day when necessary. The two main characters in Kill! are both similar and different. Most obviously, Tabata (Takahashi Etsushi) and Genta (Nakadai Tatsuya) are two distinct people whose major traits were unified in Sanjuro. Tabata is a farmer aspiring to be a samurai. He has witnessed the suppression of a local peasant revolt that has resulted in many (unarmed) people like him getting killed by samurai. Somewhat bizarrely, instead of revolting against the vicious murderers (which would have been futile) or wanting to get revenge on at least some of them (perhaps doable), Tabata has resolved to become one of the very men who have so upset his way of life. He wants to become the thing he's supposed to hate because he hates being helpless even more.

I slashed, I stabbed, and you didn't die	Genta cannot refuse these eyes

This journey is a difficult one, not least because Tabata actually has only a vague idea about his destination. He imagines samurai life being easy, consisting of parroting their proud bearing and waving the long sword around. But he does not know what he must sacrifice to get there, and that these necessary sacrifices are not noble, heroic, or worthy of admiration, but rather despicable. He will soon find out that true adherence to the samurai code requires one to betray friends, murder people who are in the right, and obey the orders of the higher-ups even when they come from corrupt men. Tabata will realize that this life is not for him because it will force him to give up what he cherishes most: his common sense of decency and honesty. In the strongly regimented Tokugawa society, everybody had his place: the ruling class of the daimyos, the warriors, the merchants, and the peasants. Nobody was supposed to cross over, but Okamoto says that this is not the reason Tabata will not become a samurai in the end. Rather, it is Tabata's admirable humaneness which produces an adherence to values that are obviously much more worthy of adopting than the samurai code. Tabata will not become a samurai because he will realize that he does not want to be one.

Ancient hiking was no fun	Deep in spiritual contemplation

It will, however, take him a while to realize that he is pursuing a dream that he does not want to fulfill. He ignores many warning signs on the way. My favorite is the incident with the prostitute. Tabata awakens from a drunken slumber only to find the copiously powdered woman falling asleep in the corner of the room. He asks why she is still there after he ordered her out: he wants nothing to do with this artificial creature but wants a woman that "smells like the earth." That is, he wants something that his farmer sensibility would recognize and respond to. As he tries to get her out of the room, he notices that her hands are not as refined. "Have you ever held a hoe?" he asks, and when she confirms it, he gets even more excited. In the end, he splashes tea on her face and furiously rubs off all the mascara until the round face of a woman of obviously peasant stock is revealed. Overcome with passion, he is then all over her, his woman that smells like the earth, and we witness a hilarious sequence where she bounces high in the air, like a girl on a trampoline.

A true samurai knows no fun	Tabata's feats of strength

More directly than tracing the response of Tabata's sexual urges is the intervention of Genta, a former samurai who has renounced his elevated status to become a wandering yakuza. The two meet in a windswept village that has recently been destroyed in yet another unsuccessful revolt. They are both starving, and the scene in which they attempt to capture a distinctly shabby-looking chicken serves to introduce them to each other as fellow travelers, but also to start the inevitable process of bonding. Of course, initially we do not know who Genta really is. He seems to cower before the band of rebel samurai that show up, dropping his sword and claiming that it is only a bamboo imitation of the real thing (he being an insignificant commoner, nobody bothers to check). Genta is the super-intelligent totally proficient swordsman who just does not take anything seriously (much like Sanjuro). Or perhaps he takes everything extremely seriously, which has led him to realize that existence is essentially absurd, and that one can find meaning only in simple things, like responding to the plea for help from a beautiful woman, or saving a bunch of idealist young men from their shortsighted folly. Along the way, he will also try to convince Tabata that this samurai thing is just not worth it.

A helpless woman sows seeds of distrust	...and that's how you kill a man

Okamoto populates the story with easily recognizable cliches of the genre. There is the very wise chamberlain who is going senile (Tono Eijiro), the scheming and duplicitous superintendent (Koyama Shigeru), whose lackey Shiroku (Tsuchiya Yoshio) will easily manipulate the guileless young retainers who believe that their clan is rife with corruption. The samurai are forever yelling, grunting, and dying when they are not fighting or drinking. Not much philosophical discussion of the Bushido code, but a lot of swagger, braggadocio, and genuine good swordsmanship that ultimately goes nowhere. Okamoto actually emphasizes this by having superintendent's men shoot at the samurai. There is also the pristine love story between a down-and-out samurai and his woman who has been forced to prostitute herself for the sake of her mother. Not to mention that this samurai himself (Jurota, played by Kishida Shin) is a caricature of the stern, perennially humorless dedicated man who will give up his life for his goal. The irony, of course, is that by giving up his life he accomplishes precisely zero. It is this sort of useless sacrifice that the film mocks repeatedly and sometimes directly (when one of the young samurai is about to leave for Edo to expose the goings on, he vouches that he will do it even if he dies, to which Genta replies, quite sensibly, that if he dies, he won't be able to do it.)

We really are brave and virtuous	Samurai are scum! Tabata disagrees

All these stock characters provide a frame of reference for the audience. On one hand, they serve as links with the films in the genre that Okamoto is not so much as parodying as subverting. On the other hand, they give him an opportunity to distinguish his new characters by forcing them to deal with this contrived world that others seem to so effortlessly inhabit. Sometimes he lays it on quite thick: witness, for example, the result of the samurai (supposedly best friends) getting their hands on some sake. Very soon, they are assaulting each other, some trying to surge out and get killed, others attempting to rape their leader's fiancee (Chino, played by the rather captivating Hoshi Yuriko), others lashing out at the rapist out of nothing more than scorned love, and so on. All the vaunted discipline disintegrates with a cup of sake, and the irony is that the smarter among them are quite aware of the danger. Magobei (Nakamaru Tadao) actually hides the alcohol and when it is discovered, he claims it to be reserved for medicinal purposes. Given how much drinking ensues, he really must have had in mind field surgery on at least regional scale.

Genta pays for his good heart	The stern samurai's secret revealed to Genta

There are many very funny sequences whose full impact can only be understood in the context of the genre that Okamoto is contributing to. Take the scene where Genta is leaving the brothel in order to go and kill superintendent Ayuzama. This takes place after he was captured by the guy, beaten to a pulp, and then rescued by Tabata. He has recently woken up in the brothel, where Tabata and the chamberlain have brought him. His head is heavily bandaged, his left arm is useless, and he limps, barely able to stand on his feet. As he struggles down the stairs, leaning heavily on his volunteer henchman, the chamberlain warns him again not to kill Ayuzama, if possible (presumably to take him prisoner for evidence and questioning instead). Now, a prior training scene has revealed Ayuzama as a formidable master of the sword, and even if Genta is easily his match when healthy, he is so incapacitated now that the request sounds almost sarcastic. The wonder of it, of course, is that it is nothing of the sort! It is a genuine request, as if Genta has any chance to do anything more than perish in the futile attack on Ayuzama. And that's exactly what makes it so funny: it is entirely in keeping with the conventions of the genre but rarely has the absurdity of the situation been revealed so amply.

As dramatic as it is useless	Tabata nonchalantly dispatches an evil samurai

Genta does succeed, against all odds, even against a fully armed Ayuzama. But even the superintendent is astonished at the turn of events, he dies (after being stabbed with a candlestick) asking who Genta really is; a mere commoner could have done all this, he reasons. And Genta is no commoner, as his background story has shown: he had found himself in an analogous situation many years ago when his best friend took arms against their corrupt lord, and Genta was ordered to kill him. He complied with what he thought was the demand of the code only to realize that he had done a great wrong. He has spent his life running away from big decisions, living life on the margins of society, but cannot stay away from an opportunity to redeem himself. It is only fitting with his character that he would reveal all of this to the serious Jurota while leaning whimsically against a tree after just having dispatched several samurai with matchless alacrity.

Genta's unlikely last "duel"	You forgot about me (Tabata with topknot)

Overall, an excellent film: funny, well-made, and engrossing, even if Okamoto's penchant for framing people such that the upper portions of their faces end up being off-screen is a bit distracting. Superb performances all around, but especially by Nakadai who we rarely see in such comic roles. The Criterion DVD has no extras (save a somewhat rambling academic essay), but the transfer is superior: anamorphic widescreen at 2.35 with crisp mono audio and very good English subtitles. Any samurai film by Okamoto is worth having, and it is a delight that Criterion has now given us two of them.

November 11, 2005